hibernation!

nothing, absolutely NOTHING is going on right now in the garden. there is pruning to do, and the garden calendar to attend to, but in general there is nothing going on. and good thing too, since we've had some family health issues and other preoccupations. i'm looking forward to getting out there and pruning. i'm looking forward to ordering seeds and planning the calendar and garden for next year, but i'm happy right now not to have to do anything. a much needed break.

Peppers!

The chili peppers, eggplants, and green peppers did fantastic this year. A pepper called "Big Bomb" was late to mature, but very very tasty.

Here are some of the chili peppers that we ended up drying! We borrowed a friend's dehydrator and I think one may need to be a future purchase. Last year, drying them inside, many molded. This year, they were all preserved by fast, hot drying. I debated drying them in the oven but was afraid our eyes would start burning downstairs.

Yay! Hot peppers! One of my favorite things.

Some photos

It has been a crazy summer all around. Not just the weather, but that as well. Eggplants did fantastic - did I mention that before? I think I may have reported on that now several times. We are still harvesting them. I count about 25 eggplants all together, both Oriental and Dusky varieties. Apparently they love water, and that is what they had. They would have gotten bigger but it's been chilly.

The peppers are turning red on their vines.

Green peppers are very small but tasty,and we are harvesting many of them.

BEANS! I do not have a photo, but the six or so bean plants out back went NUTS in the sunny, cloudy, rainy months we've had. I know you are supposed to harvest beans as they develop so that the plant will produce more, but I don't like them enough to do that. I gather that we've harvested all together one of those big painter's buckets worth of beans. Dora likes to eat them raw.

PUMPKINS are also nuts. The ones, like this one below, ballooned up early and I'm afraid will rot before pumpkin carving time. And they are apparently no good for pies. I have to investigate to see if we can eat them. But smaller ones are coming as well! Perhaps ten pumpkins altogether. I have a very late winter squash growing, which will probably fail to ripen. There are also a myriad of zucchini and other squash plants that are doing well but it will get too cold for them very very soon. I was so concerned about the pumpkins that I forgot to get our other squash out in a timely manner this year.

We have more beets, kale, mizuna, and lettuce growing. And spinach.

Larvae Galore

I wish I had a picture for this, because it's very very disturbing. I've noticed a great quantity of black fly larvae in our compost tumbler. We got this new tumbler as a gift and it's EASY but I'm not used to the amount of insects it attracts. I suppose because they are truly contained in the bin, they are just easier to see.

Anyway, lately I have been going out to dump food scraps and in the handle depressions, there is maybe an inch of water. In this inch of water, there are about 30 inch long black larvae, all squirming around. I am not sure how they appear so quickly in the depressions after a day of rainfall, but they do! It looks like something from a sci-fi movie, all those larvae squirming about in the clear water.

Yuck! But it's all part of nature.

Late Summer

The pumpkins are HUGE. I did some research, back into my seed ordering archives, and discovered that they are Magic Lanterns, a hybrid. Based on that, as well as their size, they are probably not too tasty for eating. D discovered today that they were beginning to turn orange, and she is very excited. It's hard to say if they will ripen just in time, or perhaps too early. I have a feeling I have timed it just right. By accident, of course. I had such a fiasco getting pumpkin seeds to start this year! And after all of that, we now have GIANT pumpkins out side. The ones in front have really been allowed to roam and soak up the sun. Very exciting.

I have been thinking a lot about pumpkins. And reading this.
We also have more and more onions. Some onions did so poorly, others so well. Most, very well. But they were all from the same seed packets... so it's odd. Again, I have soil discrepancies everywhere. My goals for this winter are:
Evaluate my soil all over the garden in its various little pockets
Re-do my garden calendar
Make plant cards for every plant out there that is NOT a vegetable. There are so many plants to care for - ornamental plants, berries, trees, nut trees, vines... only some of which I know the names for and know how to care for.

Anyway, I digress. I have been thinking about how busy I am and how much there is to do, and I've been cataloging things for wintertime activities. Excitedly.

We have been picking mulberries every week for a future mulberry pie!

Here are some images from the garden. Oh and we are having a massive porch built!

Insects

I am slowly becoming more aware of the plethora of insects outside our door. I was never a fan of bugs of any kind, but gardening has changed that. So has my friend Milagra whom I casually refer to as a bee specialist, although she would deny that.

Still, I have been looking around at all the insects out there and growing amazed, really. I used to just think there were bees, wasps, ants, big spiders and little spiders. Now I realize there are many many different kinds of insects. Well, I did know of course that there were many many different kinds of insects, but I suppose I always thought that living in the city, there really weren't that many where I lived. Hawaii was the first place I lived where I realized cockroaches could actually be small animals, that cane spiders were as big as taurantulas, but could fly, that fire ants could burn your feet off, silverfish would destroy CDs, and that carpenter ants would actually eat electronics (as in my computer). That was Hawaii.

It's also true that the numbers of insects in general are on sharp decline, so there are not as many as there could be or should be. But still, it seems that there are perhaps 6 or 7 different types of bees, 3 or 4 different types of wasps, many different kinds of spiders and a few different kinds of ants, just outside our door on a daily basis.

Some sting or bite, others do not. Some pollinate, others do not. Some eat all those annoying cabbage worm larvae! Some eat aphids!

This year, we have had a drastic decline in aphids on greens, as well as cabbage moth larvae. But we've had an increase in wasps! At first, when I noticed how many wasps were about, I got nervous. But with a little research, it seems I should be hugging them for sticking around! Perhaps hug is the wrong action. Then, with yet more research, it seems that I still don't even know what kind of wasp I am trying to identify. I have named a few different wasps in the meantime, however: thread-waisted wasp, spider wasp, and mud daubers.

We also have honey bees, bumble bees, carpenter bees, hover flies, and a few others. I am learning alot. D is fascinated by bees and so I am trying to make her understand how to react around them without taking away her innate curiosity and wonder. So far it has been working.

I'm not sure why I was never a fan of insects, probably because I saw so few of them, growing up in the city, without a garden. We had plants and space outside to play, but you just don't see the mass amount of insects that you do when you actually have a functioning garden. D and I like to talk about all the insects and creatures out in the garden. She washes lettuce and points out bugs and takes them outside to help them (even slugs). I encourage it and show enthusiasm for bugs. Bugs are so important, so misunderstood, and so feared. It's too bad.

But back to wasps. I am trying to name the wasps that seem to hang around the grassy areas. Mostly because D plays there and I want to know how aggressive they are or what they are trying to do. If they are mud daubers, then they are trying to collect mud. But it's more wet and grassy than muddy. Plus they look more like yellow jackets, but I know they aren't since there isn't anything that would attract a yellow jacket there. Plus, they are bigger, longer, and simply look different than I've known your standard yellow jacket to look. They also seem unphased by us walking around and doing stuff there. What I want to know is: are they beneficial for the garden? Are they beneficial for us? For the yard? Also, will their queen hibernate and therefore their nest grow year after year? I'm not sure I want that. We had paper wasps in Hawaii and they got pretty bad, and they were right by the doorway to the house. These seem to be making their home underneath the back porch, so they are also in a high traffic area.

To be continued...

Update on the stunded bed

Well, the stunted bed continues to grow. There are tomatoes, chard, and pumpkin. All are growing and flowering and developing, just teeny tiny. I checked for root maggots but don't see any. Perhaps the bed is missing an essential nutrient. I'm not sure, but think that we'll just have to take out this bed in the fall. It's no great loss really, but it is amusing to see very miniature pumpkins and tomatoes.

Garlic!

I finally harvested the garlic and it looks GREAT! Fifteen huge heads of garlic. Well, maybe ten huge heads and the rest, your average garlic. I cured it and it's now hanging in the basement in bunches. Very exciting. My garlic last year was tiny and silly.

Onions are coming up too. For some reason my onions have started to bolt - perhaps because of all the wacky weather we are having this Spring and Summer. So I pulled a few onions that were supposed to be storage varieties. Seems we will have to eat them like shallots. I also planted new spinach seeds next to my onion I am trying to dry out in the ground. Possibly my most stupid gardening mistake of all time. So we may have to eat all the onions as shallots!

Cauliflower

I recently read that the size of the broccoli and cauliflower heads depend on how big the plants get before flowering. No wonder the heads last year never got too big - the plants themselves were pretty small.

This year is my first year growing cauliflower! I read too that you can grow cauliflower pretty much year-round here in the Pacific Northwest, from overwintering to Early varieties to the standard varieties, you can harvest heads year-round! This is good news considering how good it is for you.

We have some heads that are developing and looking good!

PUMPKINS and more PUMPKINS!

Well, after what I thought were a few transplant failures, then a few more false starts, it seems we are now in for a huge number of pumpkins! Both the sad transplants and the late sowings have taken off! We have two plants out front that are each about 9 feet long!

Stunted Bed

The two beds that we made from the leftover old pile of concrete bits is not doing that well. I realize that saying I made a vegetable bed from "leftover... concrete bits" sounds like well, of COURSE it would not do well ...

I still haven't done much investigating, but everything growing in the first bed is extremely stunted. In the other bed, the wildflowers have done well, and so have the strawberries, but everything else looks yellow, sickly and also is simply not growing. Root maggots? Bad soil? There are lots of quick, black spiders running in and out between the rocky concrete, and in March and April they had egg sacs, and were fiercely defending their territory (one bit me and it hurt like hell!). So my other thought is that somehow their presence draws other bugs that are affecting the plants. I will have to do some more investigating. Here is a picture of the sad, tiny plants (lettuce, tomatoes, chard, and pumpkin are all the same size).

Other things growing in the garden

Here is some more of what is going on in our soil. The fourth attempt (after some indoor failings and transplant failings) at pumpkins are doing great!

Next you can see the garlic growing with lettuce in between. It's time to stop watering this garlic, so we are going to have to pull the lettuce soon.

My transplanted beans (from another area of the garden) are growing well but slowly. They are a bit yellow too. The patch they are in was where the old compost was, so there may be some bizarre mix of soil there. Not sure. It's also not too sunny, so I'm not sure how they'll do.

Then there are the potatoes which I think are doing well. I've tried my best to mulch and keep the soil consistently moist, but there are quite a few of them in that little square bed!

The peas out along the backyard fence have been thriving for months!

Peppers and Eggplants

Here are the peppers and eggplants that survived from the downpour and frigid temperatures we had in May and June. Here you can see some little purple peppers on a couple plants, some very very sad looking peppers under a soaker hose, and the eggplants looking healthy and robust!

Early Summer Harvest

Here are some pictures of our harvest last week. Snap peas, collard greens, Touchstone Gold beets, one of the 47 heads of Drunken Woman Frizzy Headed lettuce, and some overwintered shallots that I grew last Summer or Fall.

We harvested maybe 60 or 70 huge collard green leaves, blanched them and froze them to use this winter.

The beet greens were partially devoured by leaf miners that I didn't tend to, but we made a large warm beet green salad with the rest!

The pictures don't do the greens and brilliant color of the beets justice. These were taken with a camera phone that is not very good with color. The beets are a vibrant orange-red and the taste of these beets (this is my first year growing this variety) is very very mild, which W prefers, since he is not a huge beet fan.

Sunshine!

Sun has finally come to Portland, Oregon! And I take stock of the damage done by the rain. It seems most of the eggplants have hung in there and come back, looking good. As for the peppers, the sweet ones are yellowing and have been mostly devoured by slugs, but as for the hot peppers, they seem a bit stunted (leaves are tiny), but I see a few small peppers coming!

So in this past sunny week, I have done the following:

Harvested much of our 47 heads of lettuce. As much as we can eat and give away, we are. There is still way too much lettuce out there, note for next year!

Harvested snap peas which are doing well, despite their initial battle with slugs.

Transplanted beans to another area of the garden, which was a gamble. They seem to have recovered easily and both sets now are growing vigorously.

Pumpkins are doing fabulously. The two planted in the ground versus the ones started indoors. Still, the indoor ones are doing ok.

Harvested beets! Leaf miners attacked the leaves more than I hoped, but there are still many edible parts, and the beets are a good size and look great!

Harvested collard greens and blanched and froze them! Harvested the rest of the spinach. I did not grow enough spinach this year.

Many of the tomatoes are doing great. Others look ill and stunted.

Chard is coming up. Strawberries are doing great. Garlic and Onions look great, and so do the potatoes!

Harvested some shallots from last Fall which look great. Right now they are hanging on our front screen door to dry out, but I have to find a better spot for them!

I will post pictures soon. I was hoping to do them simultaneously but I'm trying to catch up on posting.

More Rain

I am about to book a flight to somewhere. This rain is damaging my psyche. I recall laughing at people who said to friends from California, "Summer doesn't really start in Portland until mid-June." I said, "That is completely untrue. It was like that last Spring, but you're exaggerating." I was defending our life here in Portland, trying to look on the bright side in the middle of February.

Well, now here we are on the bright side, and it's been acting like November for over a month. I'm ready to pack up my garden here and move. So are the eggplants. So are the peppers and the tomatoes. And what about all the rotten seeds that I planted in hopes of some perfect June germination weather, who got drowned repeatedly?

I won't dwell anymore than I already have. We are due for some dry, warmer weather sometime near the end of the week, and I will keep my fingers crossed that it will be here to stay.

Rain Rain Rain

The title of this post says it all, really. It seems it has been raining for most of April and all of May. And not just Portland Spring drizzling, either - heavy showers, flooding, and hail.

I'm so glad I put my peppers, eggplants, and tomatoes out a few weeks back, now they get to face this beating. At least the temperature hasn't dropped down too far, but still - there have been gusty winds, hail and just tons of water without much sunshine. I'm afraid for my hot climate plants. I'm worried for all my hard work, and cursing my impatience and my trend towards root-binding my own seedlings this year.

Like I said before, it seems there is always something you are exceeding at, something you are failing at. But then, who would have predicted this?

I have been taking stock of what I do have through all of this: the internet to tell me what the weather will most likely be like for the next 10 days in advance, the option to replant or (heaven forbid) buy starts from up the road should things really fall apart, and lastly the knowledge that whatever happens we will not go hungry. I have been thinking back to what it must have been like for farmers, and not just in Oregon, farmers in the midwest, in the dustbowl during the depression... I cannot imagine having planted (by way of tradition or the Farmer's Almanac) most of what you needed for eating and selling, only to face week after week of torrential rains, or worse, no rain at all. I am thinking of the days before running water, before hoses and pH testers and Home Depot, before people lived close enough to a market should things fail, when their entire livelihood depended on those seeds germinating and having enough water to mature.

And there are still people today who are quite dependent on the weather, even with modern conveniences. No wonder Monsanto has gotten so big - what a great thing to have drought-tolerant, disease resistant crops! A guarantee!

This weather was also the impetus for reading that Steve Solomon book, Gardening Without Irrigation. Not because we are having a lack of water, but because the weather itself has made me reflect on a time when people depended on the weather in its entirety, when there was a need for a rain dance. "Dry gardening" was practiced, not out of trying some quirky new technique in a popular book, or to save on a utility bill, but because it was the only option. People planted differently (plants spaced farther apart, often in trenches, rather than in raised beds like people do today) in order to accommodate the natural rainfall levels. What those people would say to our monsoons this Spring here in Portland, I do not know, but all of this certainly reminds me that nothing can be that controlled when you grow living things.

In our family, we have control issues. My dad once said that he was surprised that my sister and I turned out the way we did; that he realized now, as both my sister and I enter our 30's, that he could not control the way we lived our lives. It took him 30 years to realize that. It was not a negative comment, but just one of surprise. I, too, like to control things around me. And so does my gardening friend, S. But as parents and gardeners, there is little we can ultimately control, and it is surprising we have chosen to do both. And yet, at the same time, it is good to be reminded that we shouldn't try, which is what this weather is telling me.

Steve Solomon

Steve Solomon is one of my heroes. And not only because he once told me in an email that he was certain I'd be a successful gardener. His books are filled with immense knowledge and are written so well.

And I just realized, although it's been up for a while, that his book Gardening Without Irrigation is available to read in entirety online, here. Of course, I have to read it, online or in print (in print to support him), but I'm hesitant to do so, because although I really want to utilize water better both for the planet and our pocketbook, the last thing I need is more gardening information to digest.

First Harvest and Calendar Fail

Well, first the bad news: it seems my oh-so-toiled-over garden calendar is basically a fail. Not entirely, but it needs much re-working. I suppose this is next winter's project. It has served as an outline and a tool to make sure I stay on target, but as far as taking it literally, forget it.

In brighter news, we had our first salad of the season! And it was delicious! I grew Tom Thumb and Drunken Woman Frizzy Headed lettuce that have both really blossomed, even with the threatening cat poop of February and March. I am looking forward to many more tasty salads.

We also harvested some collards, spinach, and chicory that overwintered from last Fall. D has been eating spinach leaves right from the yard. She likes to spray them off and then just eat them, which pleases me immensely.

Herbs

Yay for thyme, oregano, dill, cilantro, sage, and basil!

Peppers!

I may have stunted some of them, but the peppers are all OUT and seem to be doing well.

I recently read that you should snip the flowers that come out before transplanting and for a week afterwards so that the plant grows strong enough to hold it's future yield. So I did.

I planted eight plants in pots and about seven into the ground. I have a LOT of peppers! All different kinds too, from the very hot Bulgarian Carrot to Lady Bell's. But, like the other hot weather plants, I kept them in, and in cramped pots, for too long. I'm hoping they are ok.

Peas and Beans

Well, I realized that my wonderful attempt at a pole bean trellis just isn't going to happen. Why? Because the soil at the foot of it is in the shade!

Drat.

In Portland, it's really hard to tell what spot may be in the shade until May. Because before May, there is no sunshine. And even then, it's optional. So there I was thinking that where I was putting my crafty tee-pee style pole bean trellis was in full sunshine. But no, now that the sun is actually shining, I realize that it is a foot too south, and is shaded by that damn arbor vitae hedge.

The beans at the North side of the backyard have come up but they are weak and being slaughtered by slugs.

I don't really like beans that much, and I'm sad to admit that I am more disappointed for the aesthetic purpose they were going to serve. Perhaps they knew that, and decided to protest. It's definitely a possibility, considering what seems to do well in the garden based on my input and interest. Hmm.

The peas don't have as much sun as they'd like but they are doing well, are not affected by slugs and are progressing smoothly.

I am learning a lot about the sun conditions in our backyard. It's a tricky place; it's not so obvious where the sun will hit and for how long. It's only five or six feet wide, but 30 feet long, and there is a fence to the East, our house to the West, and a hedge to the South. Last year, I only had the eggplants and peppers and some tomatoes back there in pots, that I left in the center of the yard. This year, I'm trying to work with the existing soil and make a few areas for planting. Difficult.

Onions Onions Onions!

I am not sure how many onion plants I have, but I think I am setting a record. Not just a personal record. They are everywhere. I think I may have 50 or 60 plants. And all are doing well.

I was thinking lately how every year there is something different happening. This year it seems the booms are all about onions, garlic, lettuce, and herbs. Last year, I tried so hard to get good lettuce yields, onion and garlic to grow more than the size of a dime, and forget about herbs. But I did have 23 tomato plants proving prolific, and too much broccoli. This year? I hope I get some tomatoes off the plants that I seemed to have stunted indoors, and as for the broccoli, well, it all got eaten and the second planting never germinated.

It seems to be true that the more thought and effort you put into a plant, the better it does. Last year I was so worried about the tomatoes and the broccoli; this year, I really wanted some success with alliums and lettuce. So there you have it. Perhaps as the years go on, I will become more familiar and therefore more relaxed about all of it, and therefore have more of a general success. That is the hope at least.

Putting Stuff Out Early

I am not sure what I am thinking this year, but I'm sort of throwing things out in the garden way too early. Or planting them indoors way too early, like the pumpkin fiasco (I seeded more pumpkins a few weeks ago and hoping for the best.) I think it's a reaction to last year, when every step seemed to happen two weeks too late.

I put the EGGPLANTS out! Yes, the eggplants. My friend S said, "Oh no!" when I told her, which was not good news, but she was right. Oh no! One has already died. The others seem to be surviving, but at what cost! I don't know. I can't exactly take them back in, once they go out. We should have two solid days of hot weather starting tomorrow, so I'm hoping they will gain some momentum then. I also put out the tomatoes which also seem mediocre. Well, the problem started when I sowed all of these. I started them indoors too early, and suddenly they were trying to get out of their little cups! So instead of transplanting them to bigger pots AGAIN, I decided since it was May already, to just put them out. Now, I'm trying not to bite my cuticles (since I got my teeth fixed), and I'm hoping they will be ok, or that most of them will.

The peppers will go into big pots (they will be in containers), and possibly go out tomorrow. I know... I'm wondering about that. The eggplants are all in containers and I'm hoping it helps keep their soil warmer that way. Last year they did well in containers! I should also mention that the eggplants and tomatoes all have row cover, light as it is. I have been lazy at getting more row cover and that is also part of the problem. I keep thinking I have enough, but I really don't, or it's in bad shape and i really just need more.

The collard greens are doing great, so is the spinach and all of the lettuce. Time for harvesting already! Very exciting! The potatoes are about an inch and a half up already too, and for some reason I'm noticing what look like some volunteer potatoes in odd spots around the garden - or perhaps they are a weed that resemble the potato plant? I busted out my weeds of the northwest book, but haven't really checked it out yet.

I have one bed that seems to be doing well with its attempt at a guild. I have lettuce, beets, some wildflowers, onions and chicory all in alternating rows. Plus this rose that I yanked to make way for the vegetable bed that does NOT want to quit. It keeps appearing and I keep pulling it.

The greens and onions that I put out that were covered with minimal row cover seem to be doing far better than the ones that did not have row cover. I wanted to do a test, and could spare the extra onions and collards, so now I know. When in doubt, cover.

I also planted more beans since the other ones rotted (another overzealous moment). And the peas, although still only 6 inches or so are doing really well.

I'm hoping to water a lot better this year, and I'm trying to water every other day but for much longer and actually aerate the dirt quite a bit. D can now use the sprayer and she helps with watering too!

And lastly, the wildflowers all seem to be doing really well. It's exciting that new successes are happening and things are different this year! I'm hoping to get out and do a lot more planting this week and weekend.

Sacrificial Plants

I feel bad, but there are always a few sacrificial plants that I see being eaten by the slugs and let them stay, to be eaten! Poor things. I think they would be happy to know that they are sacrificing in the name of the group, wouldn't they?

I just took a look around outside, a real look around, instead of bolting from Point A to Point B with a task at hand, and boy are there a lot of weeds! We have family in town to help this month, this entire month, and I am looking forward to really getting the yard into shape!

I also just looked at my tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers, again, really looked at them. And, they desperately need to go outside! They are huge! Soon, everything, soon!

Cat Poop

I was so worried about the slugs, but it seems that the cat poop in the garden beds is by far the worst threat to the new plants.

Today, not only was there another cat poop that had ruined a few onion starts, but there was a dead, gutted songbird on the front walkway, its entrails just right of it's head beside a long cat poop. Have I mentioned that our sweet, cuddly lap cat has become Defender of the Premises? She recently went outside and since has little interest in being inside with us. Apparently now she is making statements with wildlife. I am still trying to figure out how the entrails of this poor creature ended up next to the cat poop. Did the cat eat the bird's stomach and then poop it out? Or did it simply poop next to the dismembered bits? Seems odd that a cat would just poop on the concrete. Perhaps she was trying to make a statement, to warn other birds. This will happen to you too!

I am glad for the prospect of fewer rats and mice threatening to crawl into the old, cracked foundation, glad for the aggressive packs of squirrels and Stellar's Jays to back off from the hazelnuts and the peas. But I am not happy about the threat towards the local birdlife. Birds have enough problems. We were just starting to see some different birds coming around. Now I'm worried that they will all stay away. I will have to look into habitats we could create for them that they might take to with a ferocious cat around.

Soldier Fly Larvae

In digging up the beds some, I came upon some very, VERY big reddish-brown larvae. About the size of half of my thumb. Looked very Star Trek and very creepy, and because I found them in the beds where the cabbage was, I worried they were some kind of pest similar to the cabbage moth.

So I did some research. Turns out they are Soldier Fly larvae. Apparently harmless, often found where vegetable matter is decomposing. The soldier fly is a large wasp-like fly, but harmless to vegetation, animals and humans. Much relieved.

April 2010 and Plant Guilds

Early this month I direct seeded herbs (cilantro and dill), some shady wildflowers in pockets of the backyard, and beets out front. I also planted beans, entirely too early, and they did not come up - not sure what I was thinking. Well, I think I was reacting to the nice weather we had early in April. Lesson learned. I also sowed some seed potatoes. I wasn't planning to, but my friend K had some extra and I found a place for them. I hope they do well. I haven't been treating them very well since I know potatoes pretty much grow anywhere, under most conditions, but the other day I saw the squirrels messing around in that bed and now I'm worried.

I also transplanted the first lettuce and onions this month. We have a LOT of onions, and I kind of put them everywhere. I hope they do well, they seem so tiny and fragile, but I am banking on them repelling pests both for themselves and the other plants around them. I also spread some marigold seeds around the potatoes, and side dressed the garlic.

This weekend, mid-month, I transplanted the pumpkins, which seem to be doing well. They are BIG, and most sources say they do not do well started inside, especially when they get too mature. Ah, well. We shall see. I may plant one more pumpkin for good measure, but I'm already scared of how much they will take over out there.

I also bought strawberry starts and planted those. My only purchased start, but they take a long time apparently to start from seed and are finicky and I really wanted strawberries, for D's sake. So I bought some.

I also did a LOT of garden maintenance, beautifying, and planning of beds. The hardest thing for me is figuring out which plants will go WHERE, after considering:

good plant companions (and bad ones),
plant rotations (ie, brassicas and tomatoes not in the same spaces as previous year),
and this year, how to integrate more of a guild pattern than before.

Plant guilds are really fascinating to me and something I wish I knew more about. I do have a book, but it's one I have not gotten to. It's dense and my brain already hurts with the amount of plant knowledge added to it lately. It's like plant integration; instead of planting all your tomatoes in one spot, all your lettuce in another, and all your onions in yet another, it's making the integration of plants work for them (and you), by deterring pests, balancing elements in the soil, and using taller, tougher plants to shade more tender ones that need some shade.

This year, knowing more about certain plants and what they need I am trying to do some "guilding" as I plant. Interplanting lettuces and onions and marigolds is almost as far as I've gotten, but it's a start. It also helps ease the stress of having a finite number of each plant per space in a bed. If I interplant lettuce and onions, then I have that much more room for them, vegetables that we can use a lot of. I will see if this method serves me well this year, and of course report back here.

March 2010

I am behind on updating here, so I will post a March and an April entry to get things up to speed. Contrary to popular advice, I started pumpkins indoors. I really want some pumpkins this year, so I am trying to get a head start.

I also planted peas outside, and started broccoli and cauliflower and the second batch of greens inside this month.

I am updating my garden calendar as I go so that next year I can be a bit more realistic. For instance I am NOT going to do 5 batches of greens to follow with succession planting. That is just way too hectic and too much trouble. I suppose some people do it, but they must have a super indoor system that doesn't require any bending, balancing, or guessing where their next start tray will fit.

The Hedge

I was cutting the hedge today that divides our lot from our neighbors' lot. I hate the hedge. It's in poor shape, having not been attended to well over the years. It's straggly, with big pockets of dead wood in places. I maintain it only so that we can light through our southern windows and walk pleasantly through our side alleyway.

I have my dad's electric hedge clippers which are pretty scary, almost like a mini chainsaw. They make my arms and hands hurt, since you have to hold them at this 45 degree angle in order to "sweep" over the side of the hedge to really do a nice job. Plus, right now I have a sprained wrist, so that is an added handicap and cause for cursing during the job. There is a chain-link fence which the hedge has grown over, and as you are slicing away, you have to be sure not to hit the metal fence. At the same time, you want to get as close as possible since that is the dividing line between the properties.

Today, I got halfway through the job, my wrists and arms aching, when I hit the metal fence. So the blade was bent and there was no straightening it out, at least not today. The only option was to pick up the small, rusty, unsharpened manual hedge clippers and finish the job with those. Oh boy. So I did. And it got me thinking back to life before electric Makita hedge clippers. All those hedges in England! All that snipping by hand! All those hours, all those full time gardeners.

Lately I have been reading my good friend Priya's blog, The Plum Bean Project. She is a historical fiction writer, and her blog centers along the lines I was thinking today. Aside from being a fantastic blog, it has taken me back to imaging things we no longer have to think about. Like attending to all the hedges in England without electric hedge clippers. Which got me thinking about gardening in general throughout time. As a vegetable (food) gardener, I often think about how a) people don't grow their own food anymore, b) even if people do grow their own food, they do not know how to begin with seeds, opting to buy starts at the nursery and start there, or c) how people know little about actually growing the food they want to grow, finding out things via the internet, the backs of seed packages, books. Essentially, how we don't know anything about farming, soil, weather, etc.

But today I was thinking about the importance of tools, the fine art of topiary, how I know nothing at all, and how dependent we are on information and machines.

Planting has begun

Well, those B. sprout and cabbage plants did nothing but bolt to flower. Sad. A handful of kale and some collards are still edible and doing alright. Garlic is about 6 inches, and leeks are going strong.

Indoors, we have many peppers, eggplant, onions, spinach, lettuces, and some basil started. While I was away, W did a fantastic job of keeping everything watered and under light. It's hard to be away for too long with plants! Much like having dogs, I suppose. Today I re-planted some of the plants I started before I left that did NOT make it, like the squash, which zipped up then wilted for lack of space, most likely, and the second round of greens. I am going to try to put the squash outside under cover, but I am probably just kidding myself and should just plant it in the ground like last year when it did just fine.

Right now there is a lot of working of the soil to be done. Amending to be done... So far I have not stayed on top of my massive garden calendar, but it is helping me stress far less about what I have not done, and in general I am more on it than last year because of everything written out that I can reference. I am marking when I actually do things instead, if it's not ON the calendar day.

Recently heard about hydroponic growing for vegetables. Sounds pretty amazing, and an interesting way to grow things in small spaces.

Tomorrow... more slug bait.

Seeds are beginning to sprout!

It has been a long time since I posted here! Winter was mild - an early freeze, and then a mild, mild winter. The early freeze, sadly killed many of the plants I was hoping to overwinter, but there is still lots of kale, one cabbage plant, and several Brussel's sprouts. I am waiting to see what they do. The BP and the cabbage have yet to form buds or a head, respectively.

Got many of the hot weather plants started indoors (peppers, eggplant, squash, pumpkins, basil, etc), and some early greens as well (lettuces, collards, mostly). This year I am using sterile soil and trying to plant LESS of each plant. Last year, I had way too many plants. I always want to err on too many in case some die or get eaten once out in the yard, but I am trying to find a happy medium this time around.

I also have created a very overwhelming garden calendar (or, I should say a series of 6 calendars, all for different aspects of caring for the garden and the vegetables: planning, planting, yard maintenance, harvesting, etc). I hope to follow it somewhat for the year to test it out.

I am hoping this weekend to get the peas in (late!) and do some more maintenance with the beds.