Suburban Sodbusters

Harvest Time

2011-08-29T13:14:00.001-07:00

I think it's safe to say that this has been a good year for cucumbers in spite of the extended cold spring weather.

This is our second round of picking - we've already pickled some last week, eaten quite a few fresh and given several bags away to neighbors and friends.

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Quick Photo Update

2011-08-18T20:55:00.001-07:00

Just a quick photo-only garden update:

Photo taken right after my morning run at 6:00 am

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Another Whimsical Garden Project

2011-07-04T13:13:00.000-07:00

current work-in-progress

A couple of my neighbors have told me that they love how whimsical our garden is.

I told Charlie that it made me wonder if 'whimsical' is a really nice way of saying that we choose a lot of rather garish colors for our garden structures. Oh well, if so, here comes another whimsical garden project, lol!

(please note that all of our neighbors are quite nice and lovely, and I don't really think that any of them are trying to give some sort of backhanded insult - it was just a funny thought)

Garden Portrait 6/28/2011

2011-06-28T07:59:00.000-07:00

Resident Crow surveying the garden

Finally, sun!

2011-06-25T19:49:00.001-07:00

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Cone of Plenty

2011-06-12T07:41:00.001-07:00

Ginormous cone o' string

Pretty sure we won't have to worry about running out of string this year...

(or perhaps even next year and the year after that)

Potato Blossoms and Bindweed

2011-06-11T14:11:00.001-07:00

potato blossom with bonus field bindweed

The potatoes that Charlie planted back in February are starting to bloom. I think these are the fingerlings, but I don't know for certain because someone neglected to make up labels as they were planting. ::cough, cough, Charlie, cough::

We used the potatoes that we grew last year that somehow escaped being eaten for dinner and sprouted quietly in a corner of the basement.

These were planted in a trench and then hilled two or three times as the vines grew up. We'll harvest the potatoes once they're done flowering and the vines start to die back.

At one point I was concerned that the vines were developing a blight because the leaves looked singed and crispy, but the vines bounced right back and look nice and healthy now so, in retrospect, I think it was just the really unseasonably cold weather we had this spring.

The field bindweed* that you see amongst the potatoes is a real problem in our area and the end of the garden where the potatoes are this year has the heaviest bindweed infestation. I plan to clear out this area after the potatoes are harvested and work on eradicating this weed with some focused weeding and root removal followed by a late summer/early fall application of RoundUp.

Field Bindweed (Convolvulus arvensis)

We usually rely on persistent manual weeding and root removal to clear out an area (which is exactly how we cleared out the huge patch of ivy in the back yard after we bought this house), however bindweed is very challenging to clear out this way and even if one is really dedicated it only provides limited (and usually temporary) success. Missing just a couple of bits of vine allows the roots to quickly regrow and a single, tiny piece of root will rapidly produce miles of vine that quickly overwhelm other plants, being nearly impossible to remove without damage to the desirable plant.

Field bindweed in perennial fuchsia

So just how difficult is field bindweed to control?
Here's an excerpt from the link about field bindweed above:

In its first year it can grow from seed into a plant with a root system five feet deep and ten feet in diameter with many plant shoots. Each plant will store nutrients in the root system that can reach depths of greater than fifteen feet and will grow new plants wherever the root is broken.

Each plant can produce as many as 500 seeds that can sprout for over 5o years.

(emphasis is mine)

That's why I like to combine manual removal (to weaken root reserves) with a carefully timed, light application of RoundUp. RoundUp gives really good results if used in the late summer or fall when the plant is storing energy and nutrients back down to the roots. If applied earlier in the season, the plant is growing from the root and will quickly recover from the initial die-back, requiring multiple applications. My goal is to kill the bindweed while using as little chemical spray as possible.

* also often referred to as morning glory, wild morning glory, European bindweed or creeping jenny

Weekend Progress 6/05/2011

2011-06-06T05:57:00.000-07:00

Just a quick Monday morning post on the weekend activity. I worked in the garden until 6:30 pm and, as usual, after dinner I just did not have the energy to go back to the office and sit at the computer to write a garden update.

I'm still trying to get caught up on the planting, hopefully the end of this week will find the garden back on track.

I planted pole beans, cucumbers, *another* planting of snap peas (third time's a charm?) and more lettuce and greens. I also thinned and fertilized the broccoli. I still need to thin the onions.

Weekend Before and After:

June 3, 2011 (my weekend starts on Friday)

June 5, 2011

I think I need to pick a different location to take the weekly photos. These two shots are both taken from the sidewalk at the end of the driveway. The combination of the location and the wide angle of the camera lens is making the trellises look a bit off-kilter and tilted. They look straight in real life.

The green trellises on the right are for the cucumbers.

The unlovely pile of lumber in all of these shots is for the test fence section that we need to build. Charlie and I did some sample layouts on Memorial Day weekend and (finally) decided on a pattern so now we just need order the remaining supplies and get started.

Here's a slightly different shot of the garden from the driveway next to the house:

The hoop house is covering the broccoli and cabbage. We seem to get a LOT of cabbage moths here and even though I'm diligent about regularly checking the leaves and hand picking the caterpillars and the eggs, there is always one or two that escape execution and they can cause significant damage when the plants are young and the leaves are small. This is our first attempt at using floating row cover (Reemay) to prevent insect damage so Charlie and I are both really interested to see how it works out.

We need to build a second hoop setup over the carrots (the bed to the left in the photo above) this week because I want to prevent a repeat of last year's carrot fly infestation that rendered a lot of the carrots inedible.

Many Parts Are Edible

2011-06-05T08:06:00.000-07:00

Or:
What would Euell Gibbons eat?

Sure, good old Euell liked to stalk the wild asparagus, thought GrapeNuts tasted like wild hickory nuts, and tried to convince us that many parts of pine trees were edible (notice that he never said they were actually *tasty*, just edible), but would how do you think he would feel about a nice pan of scrambled Fuligo Septica?

Charlie discovered an odd-looking volunteer in the garden the other day near the raspberries. We both thought it was some sort of fungus but it turns out it’s actually a slime mold* even though, rather confusingly, it goes by the common name of ‘Dog Vomit Fungus.’

It just so happens that our recent weather was just about textbook perfect for being conducive to the development of this slime mold; a bout of drenching late spring rain followed by warmer weather. Combine that with our generous use of hog fuel mulch and you get a perfect slime mold nursery scenario.

Had I realized the interesting progression of the slime mold, I’d have taken a series of photos that showed the dramatic development, oh well, maybe next time. Instead you get a photo that shows the slime mold as it moved from the colorful, quickly creeping phase into its less interesting ‘drying up so I can disperse spores and take over the world’ stage:

Here’s a photo that I borrowed from the Dog Vomit Fungus Pictures and Information page that shows the colorful early stage (also? It grows and creeps rather quickly at this stage)

According to a Chicago Tribune article, Dog Vomit Fungus is edible and native people in some parts of Mexico gather it and scramble it like eggs for a dish called ‘Caca de Luna’ (essentially, moon poop).

I think you really have to respect the imagination and sense of adventure (not to mention the intestinal fortitude) of the first person who looked a dog vomit fungus and thought ‘hmm, I wonder what that would taste like scrambled?’

Thankfully, slime molds aren’t harmful in the garden, which is good since there isn’t really any way to prevent them.

So there you go, we do the research so you don’t have to!

Remember, with a name like ‘Caca de Luna’, it has to be good (and Smuckers thought *they* had it bad - ha!)

*and even more confusingly, slime molds aren't actually a mold (a type of fungi) either.

May 22, 2011

2011-05-23T06:17:00.000-07:00

Another post-dated post. I haven't seemed to master the art of working in the garden most of the day and writing a blog post the same evening. Charlie and I came in from the garden at about 6:00 pm, cleaned up, walked the dog, stopped by the grocery store (it's within walking distance so part of the dog walk), came home cooked dinner, cleaned the kitchen and then that was about all she wrote for the evening, lol.

We got the two top dressed beds turned under and raked, assembled the bean trellises, weeded, and planted carrots in bed 1 and marigolds at the ends of beds 2 and 3.

April-planted onions - carrots are at the back

fall-planted garlic

Garden view from the driveway

Quick Update for May 21, 2011

2011-05-22T10:38:00.000-07:00

Not looking too much different yet...

Yesterday's morning activities and errands seemed to expand into the afternoon of their own accord and before I knew it, most of the day was gone with very little gardening progress to show for it.

Which is why at 4:00 pm yesterday Charlie and I were shoveling mushroom compost out of the truck in the rain in order to top dress some beds and make some headway on the list of tasks still to be done for this weekend.

beds top dressed with fresh mushroom compost

I also managed to make some progress removing that last patch of sod near the driveway (Charlie had gotten it started a few days ago).

The salad mix is coming along now that the weather has progressed from frigid to merely chilly

hurry and grow, I would like to eat you!

The peas have been kind of a non-starter this year. We've grown peas without any difficulties in the past so I suspect that the varieties I've chosen this year are not a good match.
The Sugar Star snap peas have been planted twice (they occupy the blank spot in the photo below) and, with the exception of three plants from the second planting, failed to come up both times. The Avalanche Snow pea is currently doing a little better.

the rather pathetic pea patch

So now I'm off to run some hopefully shorter errands today and then get out in the garden to finish up the weekend to-do list before the work week starts up again. I'm running behind on planting, having gotten distracted with some other non-vegetable garden projects.

A Rhubarb Deflowering

2011-05-19T20:35:00.000-07:00

Last week after yet another of the very large, hairy dog's many daily constitutionals, Charlie and I rounded the corner near our garden and happened to notice that the rhubarb had a large flower stalk emerging from the center of the plant. Hmmm, that's interesting, I thought to myself, I don't remember the rhubarb ever flowering before. Is it supposed to flower? Better go check the Google...

As it turns out, flowering rhubarb is not, as Martha Stewart would say, 'a good thing'.
According to the oracle of Google, rhubarb may flower for various reasons:
- the selection may be prone to bolting
- plant maturity (older plants are more prone to bolting)
- low nutrients in soil
- weather (plants stressed due to drought or heat may be more likely to bolt)
- excessive crowding

Given that we've just experienced the wettest, coldest April on record for quite some time here in the PNW, I think the weather options can be ruled out. I fertilized and then mulched with mushroom compost last year so I think the plants are good nutrition-wise. The plants were here when we bought this house about 12 years ago so I suppose maturity could be a factor.

I'm going to have to go with 'crowding' as the primary cause since we moved the rhubarb from the ground near the sidewalk to one of the raised beds two years ago when we were removing the horrible yew bushes near the back fence (the rhubarb had to be moved to avoid being run over by equipment), and the plants have really flourished in the new location (most likely due to better summer irrigation but the better soil and mushroom compost has surely played a role as well) and are larger than ever but the roots are now constrained by the sides of the raised beds.

Allowing rhubarb to flower greatly reduces production, since the plants biological mission to reproduce and blanket the earth with rhubarb seed will have been accomplished at this point and it doesn't really have much incentive to continue to work at growing stalks as a result, thank you very much. Therefore, it's very important to remove the flower stalks as soon as possible in order to ensure the ongoing availability of delicious rhubarb stalks for as long as possible.

Here Garden Guy demonstrates how to successfully deflower your rhubarb:

hold the stalk and cut near the base*...

and remove

be sure to look for smaller flower stalks hiding in the leaves...

and cut those out as well

You can check here for more handy tips about growing rhubarb.

Gardening with Ciscoe had an interesting looking rhubarb recipe featured on a recent show: Rustic Rhubarb Tarts. I bought some puff pastry the other day and plan on making them this weekend. I'll be sure to report back on how they turn out!

Oh, and an update about my unfortunate new Crimson Red rhubarb start that I ordered this year from Territorial Seed: I called the very helpful folks at Territorial and told them about my rhubarb failure and they refunded my money no questions asked since they were sold out of rhubarb starts and there were no more available from the grower.

* As you might suspect, this post was full of tempting opportunities for some double entendre fun. I hope you will appreciate the rare display of self-control and maturity that prevailed. Barely.

Garden Portrait - 04/27/2011

2011-04-27T20:32:00.000-07:00

The garden still looks pretty bare at this point:

you can just barely make out the newly planted blueberry bushes in front here.
The dead looking sticks to the left of the blueberries are our new raspberries
(currently not looking too promising)

The stakes and twine are serving as stand-ins for the fence we're planning to put up this year. Nothing too big, just large enough to keep out the free-range neighborhood dog(s) who insist on walking through freshly planted beds or to serve as a slightly more inconvenient barrier for mischief makers who pull out pepper plants planted close to the sidewalk. We're thinking something picket fence sized but with a horizontal design rather than the typical vertical one, which we think would be more in keeping with our 1960's ranch house.

We really like the current open quality of the garden, and judging by the disappointment that we sensed from the neighbors when the fence was mentioned it seems they do too, but it's a bit too open right now. The plan is to design a fence that will protect the garden but still allow it to feel accessible and friendly because Charlie and I both enjoy how many of our neighbors stop to chat with us when we're out there working and would hate to lose that.

The type and size of fence we're considering won't do anything to keep the deer out unfortunately. May have to come up with a secondary plan for that situation.

Garden Update - April 22, 2011

2011-04-22T08:35:00.000-07:00

(sorry, no photos for now but I'll update later - I wanted to get this blog post written while I was thinking of it since waiting until I have everything ready usually results in not having time to write the actual post)

Sometimes the hardest part of getting a blog post together (for me anyway) is trying to come up with a snappy title for the post. You can see how hard I worked at it for this post.

But I had to move past that limitation because there's a lot of garden accomplishments to post before I lose track of them. I'd already forgotten about a few things I've gotten done this month and had to go back through my impromptu Facebook posts to refresh my memory.

Perennials
New to the garden this year are some perennial fruits and veggies.
Charlie and I have decided to forego corn in the garden, it doesn't really do very well for us here and takes up a considerable amount of space for not a lot of food in return (in other words, the ROI is not worth it). So in the front garden space formerly occupied by corn, we have:

12 Raspberry plants (all planted 4/10/11)

5 blueberry bushes (all planted 4/9/11)

Patriot
Olympia
Misty
Legacy (Raintree - no link available)
Jersey

and 2 wine grapes (still to be planted)
Zweigelt Grape
Burmunk Grape (Raintree - no link available)

The wine grapes were an impulse purchase of Charlie's and there were some rather ::cough:: extended negotiations involved in deciding where they could be planted.

Another impulse purchase by the garden guy while wandering the greenhouse at Raintree: Marionberry plants. I have no idea where we are going to put those. (I thought accountants were supposed to be the obsessive, pre-planner personality type?)

In the narrow garden bed that runs along the sidewalk there are 25 newly planted Jersey Supreme asparagus crowns. I planted them on 4/8/2011 and there are currently just a few skinny spears poking up over the initial 3 inch layer of soil used to cover the crowns.

I have dedicated one of the raised beds at the back of the garden to 28 Tri-Star Strawberries. The bundle was for 25 but apparently a couple of tiny bonus crowns crept in to the bundle.

Annuals
Back in February (2/18/2011, I believe), Charlie planted out some potatoes. They were our harvest from last year that had gotten sprouty in the basement. The leaves are up and ready to be covered up again soon.

Once again our PNW weather has been exceptionally cold and wet so I haven't gotten a lot of planting done, but here's what I've got in (all seeds from Territorial Seed Company):

Planted planted 4/5/11
Sugar Star Snap Pea

Planted 4/10/11
Candy Sweet Onion
Copra Storage Onion
Salad mix (my own random mix of last year's lettuce and herb seeds)

Planted 4/15/11
Red Bull Storage Onion

I also planted a new Crimson Red rhubarb start but it seems to have died. I'll be following up with Territorial Seed on it as it looked a bit sad when it arrived but I gave it the benefit of the doubt and planted it out anyway. My other established rhubarb plants look great so I don't think this new plant's untimely demise was due to bad weather for rhubarb. Hopefully Territorial won't balk at replacing it.

Today we are having more traditional PNW spring weather. It's only 39F degrees right now (at 9:10 PDT), but the forecast is for sunny and 58F degrees today. I'll be out in the garden!

Belated Garlic Update

2011-04-06T12:29:00.000-07:00

During a (much overdue) cleaning of the office, I found my empty garlic bags that I'd stashed in there, and then subsequently forgotten about, so that I'd remember to blog how much garlic I'd planted.

I also neglected to log my total harvest last year but the we used a lot of garlic from the garden in last year's pickling production and just general eating before planting the remainder out in Fall 2010:
Chinese Pink: 9.25 oz (early)
Broadleaf Czech: 11 oz (mid-season)
Italian Late: 1 lb 2 oz (late)

I only bought 8 oz of each variety in Fall 2009 so I think we had a pretty good rate of return on the garlic investment.

My plan is to buy a couple more varieties this coming fall.

Garden Art

2011-02-07T21:59:00.000-08:00

As a result of his time in the welding studio at SPSCC, Garden Guy has been busy in the off season creating some wonderful art for our garden:

Mr. Rusty Head in the garden

Though our eventual goal is to have more fall and winter gardening, right now the only gardening going on in the colder months is the imaginary sort. I've been perusing our many seed catalogs and reading gardening books (and wishing for fresh vegetables!) while day dreaming of warmer weather.

In the interim, Mr. Rusty Head is keeping an eye on things for us!

Tomatoes - Finally!

2010-10-03T15:13:00.001-07:00

Thank goodness the fall days have been warmish despite the lack of sunshine and our beefsteak tomatoes are finally ripening on the vine!

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Now that's a carrot!

2010-08-29T13:48:00.001-07:00

A super-sized carrot from the garden:

More later, busy canning veggies from the garden.

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Drive-By Garden Update

2010-08-04T15:26:00.000-07:00

We harvested our potatoes last weekend. The potato bed was then turned and given a little snack of mushroom compost to prepare it for the fall brussels sprouts and peas.

I cleaned out the bolted bok choi and then planted some new radishes, green onions and basil transplants.
ETA: and cabbage - forgot about those! I planted some red and green cabbage that will hopefully have enough time to mature before the weather gets too cold.

Vegetables 'Now Showing' in our kitchen include: broccoli, beets, onions, garlic, lettuce and two tiny cherry tomatoes (which disappeared so fast it was like they'd never even been there!).
ETA: and also kale, green onions, parsley, dill and potatoes

I have more things that need to be planted but those will have to wait as I'm a bit busy right now playing nurse to Garden Guy following his surgery.

D is for

2010-07-24T09:07:00.000-07:00

Deer.

Deer tracks through the peppers
(I am thankful that at least they didn't step on the plants this time)

Deer Nosh: topped tomatoes

There is quite a deer problem in our neighborhood, and consequently in our garden, which is kind of funny since we live in town only 1.5 miles from the state capitol.

We used to live quite rurally (or as our oldest son used to refer to it "Deliverance Country"), technically in Buckley but actually closer to Wilkeson and Carbonado, where our 2.5 acres were a good mile or so down a private gravel road and bordered on Plum Creek Timber property. We had quite a large garden and never once did we have a deer come in for a nosh or to inadvertently trample freshly planted beds. Now here we are in the middle of town with our little side-yard garden and we get hit by deer several times per season.

Last year we deployed a water-fueled Scarecrow, which was pretty effective when one remembered to turn it on at night. Unfortunately, deer are very good at detecting when the stupid humans go to bed without turning on the water supply. Leaving it on all the time was not an option because it is also quite good at detecting human movement in the garden and deploying the startling jet blast of cold water at the unsuspecting person coming out to weed the garden or take out the trash.

This year I think I may have inadvertently discovered another option for deer deterrent, baler twine

and
cedar stakes

Stand back! Protected by baler twine!

I say inadvertent because this setup was initially to encourage roaming neighborhood dogs and our own dogs (who, it must be said, are not so bright about keeping to the pathways when out in the garden with us) to stay out of the freshly planted garden beds earlier in the season. The stakes also do dual duty as hose guides when I'm out doing hand watering for freshly seeded areas.

I didn't think it would really do much for deer since they can easily jump even 6 foot fences, but it seems to have been a deterrent for this latest deer visit.

Because, the only nibbles were on the tomatoes and the peppers,

look ma, no twine!

where we had unfortunately run out of cedar stakes. A visit to Lowe's should take care of that today.

Garden Guy surmises that the deer (much like the crows and string) don't like to get their feet tangled in the string, which is not as predictable as a single tall fence to jump, so they avoid the stringed up areas. I hope this is true! We'll see how this theory holds up over the course of the season.

And suddenly, it was July

2010-07-12T14:27:00.000-07:00

In the words of Inigo Montoya: Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

In summary? June was a craptastic month for gardening in Washington. If you live here you already know that, if you don't? The sixth month of the calendar year, known elsewhere either specifically as "June" or more generally as 'the beginning of Summer, was being referred to here as "June-u-ary" due to the fact that the weather was more like January than June.

Cold, grey, wet. Did I mention cold? That pretty much sums it up. I would add dismal and depressing as well simply because it felt like summer would never come. And also because the garden just wasn't making any progress.

The weather finally seems back on track but our garden is very behind this year. It's hard to say whether all the plantings will have time to be successful or not. If we're lucky and get a summery September and late fall frost we might just be able to turn this one around.

To start with, we were late planting this year. The trip to WA DC (along with all the pre-trip planning and shopping) set us back quite a bit from our usual schedule.. Throw in the exceptionally bad weather with seeds literally rotting in the ground from the cold wet, a bit of vandalism* that required replacing all of our pepper plants and crow damage to contend with (involving the loss of 3 beds of newly planted green beans) and you have what is probably our least successful garden to-date.

Speaking of crow damage, here's our latest attempt the thwart their annoying sprout pulling behavior:

The crow pentagram
(not really, but it does look like some kind of attempt at garden magic, yes?)

We've found that the crows seem to avoid activities that involve getting near or under the string so we set this up to try to protect the lone remaining winter squash seedling.

When is early corn really late? When it's not planted until July 1. It's a good thing we're growing a short season corn (Quickie - 64 days) , we may have just barely enough time to actually get some corn this year.

really late early corn

The tomatoes seem to coming right along now that the warm weather has hit. Our tomatoes are all short season varieties from Territorial Seed Company so we should manage a decent crop before fall. The Beaverlodge plant already has some tomatoes set:

baby tomato

Here's a better picture of the onions:

And finally, a couple of full views of the garden:

From the East (near the tomatoes)

From the West, near the driveway
(yep, still haven't managed to get rid of that last patch of sod)

*an added incentive to get that fence up as soon as time and finances allow! I like the open aspect of our current garden plan but a fence would keep the random dogs out (footprints in freshly planted beds are quite annoying) and discourage acts of opportunistic vandalism by bored teens/young adults.

Onions

2010-07-10T21:20:00.001-07:00

The onions are really doing great this year (due in part, I'm sure, to the fact that they were one of the few things planted on time).

No gardening took place today since Garden Guy and I were busy tearing out our kitchen countertops in preparation for new tile.

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Blogus Interruptus

2010-07-07T20:43:00.001-07:00

Regularly scheduled garden blogging will resume this weekend.
(test post using my new Blogger iPhone app)

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Planting and more planting

2010-05-23T16:22:00.000-07:00

The windbreaker was required for much of today's gardening.
Except during the much-too-infrequent-and brief sunbreaks,
which warmed things up enough to make even a light jacket uncomfortably warm!

I did some planting last Sunday but worked late in the yard and didn’t get around to making my weekly blog post. Here’s what got planted last week on 5/16/2010 (all seed from Territorial Seed Company):

Beets (Bed #2)

Red Ace Hybrid - 55 days
Touchstone Gold - 53 days

Carrots (Bed #3)

Yaya
Bolero

Broccoli (Bed #4)

Packman - 66-75 days
Belstar - 70 days
Arcadia - 55 days
Southern Comet - 80 days

All beds (at each end):

Assorted Marigold (seed saved from last year’s plants)

Sweet Peas (planter pot)

Pink Cupid
Sugar n’ Spice

And here’s what I’ve planted so far today (5/23/2010):

Cabbage (Bed #4)

Parel (green) -2 50d
Gonzales (green) – 1 55-60d
Primero (red) – 2 72d

Chinese Cabbage (Bed #4)

Soloist (baby cabbage) - 40-50 days

Bok Choi (Bed #4)

Joi Choi - 45 days

There’s not much to show in the way of planting pictures since the just planted beds look pretty much like the unplanted beds and the few seeds from last week that are just now sprouting don’t really make for compelling blog photos.

I did finally get around to thinning the onion bed today.

It's painful to pull them up, but it's necessary for nice big onions later!

Some of the thinned plants came up with a respectable amount of root attached so I replanted the best of the bunch into one of the raised beds. If they survive we’ll eat them in salad as early onions. The rest of the thinnings will go into tonight’s salad along with some of the volunteer dill plants that found themselves in the way of progress.

Salvaged onions

Our tomato and pepper plants arrived from Territorial on 5/12/10. They always look alarmingly small in their tiny 2 inch pots!

Teeny-tiny tomatoes
(unfortunately, I didn't think to put something in for scale - trust me they're wee!)

Unfortunately, it’s not been warm enough to plant them out since the evening low temperature should be reliably around 50 (F) and the evenings are still unseasonably brisk (for instance, a few nights ago it was only 39 degrees!), not to mention stormy and windy. So the plants have been re-potted and are sheltering in the garage until Spring decides to finally take up residence here in the PNW.

Our moving dolly has been temporarily re-purposed into a Tomato Trolley to make it easier to move the plants in and out of the weather.

Tomatoes and Peppers soaking up the sun between showers today

ETA:

After my brief blogging and tea break, I went back out to the garden and planted some more seeds in the new raised bed.

Greens (Raised bed #5)

Wild Garden Kale - 30 days
Wild Garden Mustards - 30 days
Valmaine Romain Lettuce
Flashy Trout's Back Romain/Cos Lettuce
Victoria Green Butterhead Lettuce
Red Iceburg Crisphead Lettuce
Bordeaux Red-veined Spinach
Tyee Spinach

A delicious dinner salad with dill and baby onions

Mid-week Garden Update

2010-05-12T21:04:00.000-07:00

ETA: For some reason blogger is not emailing me comments on the blog even though it is configured to do that. So thank you for the comments! I didn't know I had any until I was checking a past post for an unrelated reason and saw them.

(I know that's a wonderfully creative title! But sometimes the title is the hardest part of the blog post, seriously, so rather than not post for lack of a witty title I'm just calling this one like it is)

It seems like it has just been one weekend thing after another since we got back from DC. Just to recap:
First weekend: Garden Guy's back was out and I managed a good fall in the hall so both of us were out of business as far as gardening was concerned.
Second weekend: We had house guests.
Third weekend: I enjoyed a not-so-lovely weekend of gastroenteritis.

There has been gardening, just not nearly as much as planned and my planting is now officially behind schedule. Also, obviously, the garden journal blogging did not take place last weekend. So, in order to be caught up for this coming weekend I thought a quick mid-week garden update was in order.

Here's a visual update on the onions and potatoes planted before we left:

Onions waiting to be thinned

Unlike the other plantings, the potatoes are undaunted by the cold spring weather
(the potatoes also secretly think the other plants are wimps)

The fall planted garlic is coming right along too

Italian Late Garlic from Territorial Seed Company

My salad mix is still looking fairly puny and not at all impressive:

Sad salad mix...

What is rather amusing about it is that the more pathetic section on the left was actually planted approximately 2 weeks earlier* than the patch on the right which was planted 4/23/2010. I think between the unseasonably cold weather and the @#$%^ neighborhood squirrels, it just gave up. The plan is to have a hoop/plastic setup over the bed next year to facilitate earlier (and more successful) planting of salad greens.

I'm also proud to report that we have finally vanquished Hog Fuel Mountain, rototilled the front bed and generally restored some sense of order to the garden.

Garden Guy gets busy with the rototiller Saturday 5/1/2010

The garden as of Sunday 5/2/2010

The garden as I left for work Monday morning 5/10/10
Only one last patch of sod to eliminate!

And here's the updated view of the raised beds

Garden beds 5/9/2010

As you can see, we've added a new bed on the far end.

Okay, that's it for now. I'll planting some seeds this weekend and my tomato plants should be delivered in a couple of days - I just got a notice from Territorial that they'd been shipped.

*I don't have the date because someone, and again I suspect the neighborhood squirrel gang or the naughty blue jays are behind this (and for good reason I might add), removed my carefully notated planting marker.

Excused Absence

2010-05-02T18:57:00.000-07:00

The lack of posting doesn't indicate that I've already failed to follow through on my intent to blog about the garden regularly!

There was no new gardening news from home to report because Charlie and I were away in Washington DC from 4/15 to 4/20 for his 30 year Marine Corps TBS reunion. We had a great time and after the two nights of festive events we had two days to see the sights in DC.

The weather was fantastic while we were there and a nice break from the PNW Spring chill. We toured the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, and the National Museum of American History (with an extended stay at the Julia Child exhibit!). We also visited another Smithsonian art museum but apparently I neglected to note the name (it was the last stop on the second day and I was tired and pretty much museumed-out at that point).

On our way to a much needed coffee break at the Starbucks at 6th & C Street, we discovered a great little community garden plot:

We walked around the garden but didn't see any informational signs anywhere, but didn't walk over to the parking lot area (back of picture one) so it may have been there. There was also a little fitness setup at one corner of the garden area that looked to be popular, there was a very fit young military man using it while we were there.

Bonus vacation exercise

Later we headed over to look at the White House and while all the other tourists were trying to get photos of themselves with the White House in the background, we were trying to get a better look at the kitchen garden on the White House lawn. Too bad I only had my little Canon PowerShot with me as these were the best shots I was able to get:

The garden is not located very convenient to the fence from the front (for security reasons I'm sure) and where it's closer to the fence along the side there are heavy shrubberies and plantings blocking the view.

I was so busy trying to see the garden that I almost didn't notice something right in front of me: a beehive!

For some reason, a beehive on the White House lawn pleased me to no end

We had a great trip but by the end we were ready to come home and get back to our own garden.

We both had big plans to use our first weekend back to catch up in the garden, but as luck would have it Charlie seriously wrenched his back right off on Friday. He soldiered on through his self-appointed Friday chores but he was in quite a lot of pain for the whole weekend and basically barely able to walk Saturday and Sunday.

Then Sunday morning I had the brilliant idea to finish painting the hallway as we had guests coming over the following weekend. So I took up the hallway runner to get ready and noted that the floor was extremely slippery underneath. I warned Charlie to be very careful if he had to walk down the hallway and headed out to walk the dog before beginning to paint.

Do you see where this is going?

I returned from walking the dog, took off my shoes and, completely forgetting my own warning given not 30 minutes prior, headed down the hallway in my stocking feet. My feet flew out from underneath me and up over my head and I came down hard on my tailbone while simultaneously slamming my head on the wall.

Needless to say, the rest of my day was somewhat unproductive.

Coming up: Actual garden progress

Off to a slow start

2010-04-11T23:13:00.000-07:00

Raised garden beds - awaiting tidying and planting

newly mulched pathways

Lately it seems our free weekends have coincided rather unhandily with weather that doesn't exactly inspire thoughts of working outdoors. The weekends with unseasonably warm, sunny weather? Well those weekends managed to be the week in February when I was too sick to get off the sofa and the weekend in March that we were committed to working at a fundraiser.

This weekend showed up with no rain on the schedule and quite a bit of sun (if rather breezy and chilly at times) - so outside Garden Guy and I went to clear out the embarrassing growth of weeds in the front flower beds and the side garden.

We filled up two 92 gallon organics containers and probably could have done another if a) we had one and b) we had more weekend.

Garden Guy planted his potatoes:
- German Butterball
- Sangre
- Russian Banana fingerling

and I planted onions:
- Red Bull (red storage)
- Copra (white storage)
- Tropeana Lunga (red storage)
- Candy (white sweet Spanish)

(seeds and potatoes from Territorial Seed Company)

And together we managed to put a dent in Hog Fuel mountain mulching the aisleways. There's still a bit more to spread as we try to eliminate the remaining amounts of sod in the back of the garden and along the sides.

Hog Fuel Mountain - 10 yards of mulch delivered a few months ago

Over the next few weeks we'll clean up the trellises (trelli?) and touch up the paint. We have plenty of time since it won't be time to plant beans until late May or early June.

Trellis parts awaiting maintenance
Mason bee house on the post to the right (more on that in another post)

Hopefully this year will hold more regular garden updates and a real garden journal instead of last year's sporadic posts. Should be easier this year seeing as how we don't have a concurrent major house renovation and a child's wedding on the calendar!

2008 - A photographic retrospective (part 2)

2009-08-16T21:22:00.000-07:00

2008 - A photographic retrospective

2009-08-16T21:15:00.000-07:00

July 6, 2008

July 7, 2008

July 21, 2008

July 7, 2008

July ,27, 2008

In the Beginning

2009-08-16T20:30:00.000-07:00

In the beginning, there was sod.

Before, beginning of Memorial Day weekend (5/24/2008)

And Garden Guy said, "Let there be compost." And there was compost.

Making progress, May 26, 2008

And it was good.

End of Memorial Day weekend, 6/1/2008

2009-08-16T20:26:00.000-07:00

This blog was supposed to serve as my online garden journal. However, it turns out that I'm about as successful blogging my garden as I ever was keeping a paper journal of it...

Now that our suburban garden (or "farm" as some of our neighbors call it) is in its second year, it's high past time start keeping track of things.