May 26

I wasn't expecting to work too much in the yard this weekend. The forecast kept saying "rain, rain, and more rain" and I interpreted that to mean that it would rain.

Silly me, believing those funny weather guys.

Saturday morning dawned dry, so we packed up and headed out to a giant nursery up in Snohomish. There I finally found some tomato plants, though they were not the plants I was looking for.

I wanted to do just cherry tomatoes this year, maybe romas, but that was it - it seems that anything larger just doesn't seem to ripen in my yard.

The nursery, though acres and acres in size, had no cherry tomato plants to be found. They did have romas, and something called Jullian - which look like romas only longer and thinner. I also picked up a yellow pear tomato plant (looks like they are pear shaped, and slightly larger than cherry) and a mystery plant labeled simply "yellow".

They also did not have any zucchini plants - yellow squash, but no zucchini.

Wha?!? Either they sold out, or the weather has just been so bad that the greenhouses aren't moving.

We made it back to the house about mid-afternoon, and still no rain... so I went to work in the back digging holes and removing the wild foxgloves from the garden beds.

Last year I put up these posts with the nylon lattice for the tomato plants and they tipped under the weight of the plants. This year I dug them into the ground further, and spread the plants further so hopefully we won't have a repeat of last year.

First, here is an update of the herb garden (freshly weeded - those forget-me-nots are prolific as hell) I added a few basil plants.



Here is the beginning of the Tomato Wall.



A couple of the plants were actually quite large to begin with, and I sprang for those to help get a jump start on my garden (since my growing season is so short) The two little squigilly guys are a couple of yellow squash plants. My lettuce is growing pretty well... it hasn't been eaten by critters yet, so I guess that's good, eh?

May 4, 2008

Upon further investigation of the path next to the house, I did find hoof prints towards the front of the yard, where I know I did not see the deer jump. The trail shows where he jumped from a lower part of the hill to the path. About 10 minutes prior to seeing our visitor at my rose bush I recall hearing what I *thought* was Dan coming home through the back door, but then he didn't walk in the door so I didn't think much of it. I realize now that it was likely the sounds of hooves on my deck that I was hearing.

I've moved some of the yard waste cans to block the path. I realize the deer can technically jump the cans easily, but I also placed my wood-carrier (metal "U" shaped) at a distance from the cans that would make jumping look like a bad idea.

Hopefully.

This is my 4th season in this house, and I finally have a real honest to goodness herb garden planted.

Angle One:


And from the other side:



I went a little crazy buying herbs today... some of them smelled just too good to pass up. When I arrived home with my new additions I walked past the fire pit and was surprised to see that some of the herbs I thought died out over the winter had actually come back. So, those are moved up to the beds as well.

I also learned today that dill is an annual, not a perennial... which explains why my dill never comes back. (One would think I would have noticed that little tidbit of information sooner *rolling eyes*)

I've also tempted fate by planting lettuce (that little row of leafy stuff where the dirt is turned over in the back bed)

The nursery doesn't have much in the way of summer veggies yet because of our extended cold weather... maybe next weekend!

Oh, and we were discussing the ugliness of the cinder blog garden bed edge, and how I am constantly battling the grass that wants to grow inside the blocks. We have thought about covering the tops with wood (which would look nice, but I think it would not last long, and attract bugs) and I've thought about just taking some of the larger rocks around the yard and covering over the tops (but Dan is convinced the grass will still grow from underneath) We've also thought about filling them with dirt and planting flowers all the way around, but I realized today that leaning over the wall to actually work in the garden part would be near impossible for me.

Today Dan suggested we just get capstones. I'm liking that idea.

May 1, 2008

You know what I could use a nice, fresh from the garden raspberry sauce on?

Venison. Doesn't that sound yummy? I sure think it does.

Gee... I wonder where I could pick up some nice... fresh venison.

Hmm... maybe if I set up a bear trap next to my rose bush, I could snatch up a nice fresh bit of venison.

*sigh*

I'm not trying to sound evil... well... maybe a little (though I should feel bad about my thoughts, particularly given what my friend Foz just recently went through at his job) however... I'm relatively ticked off at the deer that I found in my back yard.

You know, the back yard that has been fenced off to prevent deer from wandering through?

Granted, we are not entirely gated off. There is about a 6 foot span of space on the side of our house that is only blocked by a make-shift temporary fence to keep deer out until such time as Dan can finish that gate. This area is a steep slope, ending in a retaining wall that leaves about a 3 foot wide path to walk down along the side of the house. Technically they could jump from the slope down into the fire pit in the back yard, step up to the deck and be in the yard... however the deer around here are lazy, and tend to avoid being that close to the house. I've watched them from my dining room... several times... wander along that slope, hit the temp fence, and wander back. Why jump into what is clearly a "human zone" when there is so much nature to mope around in?

The deer today is apparently of the ambitious sort. I didn't see where he came in from.. but there are only 3 possibilities.

1) Since the undergrowth of the neighbor's house has been cleared, it now has enough room to get a running start and leap the 8 foot chain link into our yard.

2) It came from the side of the house and actually wandered in through the fire pit, up onto the deck, and into the yard

or

3) It squeezed through the space between our fence post and the neighbor's fence post (which from a distance doesn't look that wide, but this sucker was kinda skinny)

If he jumped, there is nothing we can do. The neighbor's yard is actually fenced all the way around with 8 foot chain link... but a tree came down in one section way in the back and deer have been leaping over that kink in the fence and into their yard regularly. Since the fence is down, they don't let their retriever run the yard (he's on a running line) so the dog can't keep the deer out unless they fix their fence (which in theory would keep the deer out anyway)

If he came up the side of the house, we could resolve that by finishing the fence. I presumed he came in that way, so when I walked him out of the yard that's the direction I herded him. He got to our side of the temp fence and paused... looking down, judging the distance, looking at me, looking down, looking at me... finally he jumped from the top of the fire pit wall to the path next to the house, and then immediately back up just on the other side of the temp fence. So... even while being chased from the yard, it was reluctant to walk along the side of the house, favoring the hill.

I saw no evidence that he came in that direction. I could find no hoof prints in the gravel, no indication that it walked along the side of the house, nothing showing where it might have gone from the fire pit to the yard. There is also nothing eaten on that half of the yard.

So I walked the yard and found he had eaten stuff on the other side... just a few nips here and there of the tops of some plants under the trees to the left... and of course my rose bush. I stood at my rose bush and looked back towards the plants he ate in the next bed over... and the next thing in my line of site beyond that spot is the corner of the fence, with the 1.5 foot gap.

Over the past few weeks we've found evidence that someone's dog has been in the back yard as well... so I put a call in to Dan (who also thinks venison sounds yummy) and he has added "fix weak point in fence" on his list of things to do this weekend.

So far the deer hasn't gotten to my raspberry stand... so here's hoping.

April 11

Alright! I *think* the snow in our area might be done for a while... though technically our last frost date is officially April 15... but anyway...

So first pic is of my blank garden beds. We cheated this year - due to time and weather restrictions - and hired a crew to come and do our spring yard clean up (basically pull the winter weeds and drop a lot of compost everywhere)

The landscapers pulled all the weeds, but left the foxgloves that started themselves in the beds. These will be moved to new homes.
The two pots have the extra raspberry plants... we really need to find a home for these.
Yeah... I know we need to mow the lawn something awful. I'm hoping it'll be dried out enough this weekend to get that done.

This shot is of the 30 some odd raspberry plants I put in the ground last month. They are starting to green up, so they stand out against the fence.

My plan is to put stepping stones along the raspberries to help keep a nice path to the berries.

A new year, a new adventure

Heh... whoda thunk I'd start this blog up again in February?

My next door neighbors are avid gardeners... and I tend to get inspired by their enthusiasm. When we started having multiple days in a row last week with no rain I had a feeling they'd start to dig up their yard and put seeds in.

Me? I'm not that inspired... I give up on starting from seeds... but I do admire their enthusiasm.

A few years ago they decided to put in raspberries - which is decently native to the area and therefore a rather smart idea. They started with 12 plants... 6 died, but the other six sprouted runners that came up all over the place. They dug up a few canes, and also bought 3 more plants for their second row. The rows doubled in width easily, then more sprouts came out further away from the original rows, making it nearly impossible to walk between them. Last year they dug up the wandering canes and used them to double the length of their rows, confining them with some support posts and guide wires... and as runners came out the sides again they dug them up and stuck them in pots to over winter. Last week he was pointing them out to me and asked me if I'd like "a couple plants"... and since this is bare root time, it's a good time to transfer them over.

This weekend I came home from shopping to find a wheelbarrow filled with compost and about 47 raspberry canes.

A "few" plants?!?

After Dan put in the fence across the back of the property last year, we put a few canes in (also from the neighbors) but we hadn't gated the front of the property yet, and the deer wandered in and ate a couple of them down. Now that we are decently fenced and gated, I feel pretty good about expanding our raspberry area along the fence... so I dug about 20 or so holes and dropped in about 30 of the tallest canes along 5 sections of the fence. I'm not entirely sure, given the light changes because of the trees surrounding, how well they will grown and produce fruit in the various sections, so I figured one long row, and we'll see what works where.

As to the garden beds.... I still want to do herbs up there in one of the plots, but the expanded bed is long enough - I've decided - to throw in a couple of cherry tomato plants and some summer squash. I know I said I was giving up on tomatoes, given that they originate from Mexico and I'm far too far north for them to work well... however... cherry tomatoes do decently well, and ripen much faster than regular tomatoes so they don't require so much heat. I'll not bother with cucumber though... the main reason I grew them was for pickling, and not only are small batches annoying to deal with, they also require a lot of heat, and it's infuriating when I don't get enough to grow them.

So... since I dug in the dirt yesterday, I guess it's officially the beginning of my gardening season. Next task: winter clean up - my yard is so frightening looking right now *shudder*

October 7... bwahahahahahahaha!

Last post May 14th... man was I ever optimistic, hu?

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

OK, here's what happened. I got my garden in.
It grew.
I took pictures.
Never had time to post them.
We went out of town two weekends in June.
We went out of town, or had guests, nearly every weekend in July.
We went on 2 vacations in August.
That's when everything started getting ripe.
Then it rained.
Then it rained some more.
My massive, 8 foot high tomato vines, got heavy in the rain and fell over.
The cucumber vines grew to only a foot off the ground, then stopped.
I had one batch of cucumbers that ripened right before our vacations, which meant they rotted in the fridge while we were gone... making them useless for canning.
My zucchini produced two edible veggies.
My bush squash produced one.
My yellow squash produced 3.
I had a billion beets, which I let sit in the ground too long, so I never canned them.

In the end (which was today) I did end up making my goal of having too many tomatoes... unfortunately they all fell over before I really got to enjoy them much. The squash were hopeless, aside from one (count it... ONE) pumpkin which is still alive and just starting to turn orange. Good thing I decided not to can the beets, since most of them were barely the size of my thumb anyway.

So... lessons learned this year.

1) Don't bother starting things from seeds. There is an art to starting veggies from seeds without a proper green house, and I don't have time to learn that art.
2) Reinforce the netting for the tomatoes. The nets themselves worked brilliantly, but the posts need to be buried deeper, reinforced with rocks, and have a wood beam across the top for added support.
3) Don't bother growing what I want to can. The beets were a disappointment, and the one batch of cukes I could have done something with went bad due to scheduling conflicts. I'm better off loading up at a farmer's market when I have the time to schedule canning, instead of doing two or three wee batches over the course of several days.
4) Scale back the tomato plants. I need to spread them out (not growing cukes will help that next year) I've kept the tags for the plants I enjoyed, and at 6, that should be good enough to spread out across my garden plots, leaving Gayle room to grow the carrots she decided she wants.

I've always wanted to grow roses, but haven't bothered with it here because the deer mow them down. Now that the back yard is fenced, however, I'm considering roses next year. I think I'll read up in my gardening book about when to plant them. I'm really... really tempted to bag the idea of veggies and just make the plots a rose garden, ala my Home Town. It's not a bad idea, actually... since Dan wants to put a small patio up there anyway, it would actually be pleasant to have an ornamental garden there.

Bird watching

Here's what I love about wireless internet... sitting on the deck listening to the birds and blogging at the same time :)

During the week last week I got the dirt I needed to fill in the new bed a bit... 3 bags of 3 cubic feet of soil amendment (does that equate to one cubic yard? I don't know... I've never dealt with volume measuerments much) Anyway, after throwing that on the ground I pecked at finishing the trellises (trellisi?) for my plants, but was still wary of putting them out before Mother's Day. Saturday I spent mainly on the roof, blowing it off and scraping the chunks of moss off the shady side. Powertools and heights, what a lovey combination!

That's me on the lowest part of the roof. I'm phobic about heights, but with Dan's bad knee I'd rather be the one to go on the roof. While I was up there I took some shots of the yards... one of the front (which needs massive attention) and the other is a panoramic I stitched together of the back (which I'm proud of!)

(You see why the wind storm last winter made us so on edge... 19 evergreens in the front alone)

So on Mother's Day I finally took the plunge and put my tomato plants in the ground... at least the store bought ones. I also planted the zucchini that Gayle started from seeds at school. My seedlings are still indoors as I decide where exactly to put them. I have been taking them out to get some fresh air a few times, but the cucumbers didn't seem to like it last week so I'm reluctant to plant them just yet.
Alright, the finished garden beds, with tomato plants...





The nursary had an amazing assortment of tomato plants, all started at a place on Vashon Island, so I bought one of each of the most interesting sounding and I figure we'll see how it goes. Here is the rundown of the plants and the short descriptions of them on the tags:
Taxi Tomato: baseball sized yellow fruit
Viva Italia: Roma
Stupice: extra early, cold tolerant
Patio Tomato: compact size good for containers
Tommy Toe: Yeilds hundreds of apricot sized fruit, won Australian trial in competition with 100 other varieties"
Yellow Currant: tiny fruits with crisp tart flavor
Sweet Baby Girl: very sweet red cherry compact indeterminant plant
Sungold - hybrid indeterminant

My neighbors grew Sungold last year and had good results, so that was a big goal of mine this year was to find one. Also, the gardening expert around here, Ciscoe, recommends Stupice, so I picked up one of those too. Everything else I was just excited about from the tags. I have my starts still inside the house, and they are so piddly compared to what I've planted that I wonder if I'll ever get anything from them, but I'm considering sticking a couple out in the garden just to see what happens.

Lots of heavy lifting this weekend

SMT - I answered your other questions in the last post's comments, but I think Dan's torching is too much to explain there, and I'll probably refer to him lighting fires quite a bit this summer, so here it is.

Dan bought this thing called a "weed dragon" which is basically a small flame thrower - you attach a hose to a can of gas, light the end, and torch away. It is wonderful tool for weed control if you have areas like gravel where weeds, moss, etc... like to grow. (Note: dandelions will die when you torch them, but they come back unless you remove the root manually, we've discovered) Dan also uses it for around the edges of our yard where we don't have stuff planted, but weeds cross over from the neighbor's yards. It's also great if you want to burn a pile of debris but can't get it lit because it's somewhat damp.

Yes, I'm positive several of the neighbors HATE us for the smoke, but we don't do it on days where burning is banned, and the next door neighbors (thankfully) do the same thing (sans the weed dragon, they use a match the old fashioned way) so at least the rest of the 'hood can't quite tell who to blame. Unless they read this. And we always have the hose out next to him so he doesn't, you know... burn the place down.

Anyway, Dan has used it in spotty areas in the lawn where the weeds were really concentrated, but it will torch the grass too... so unless you want to live with burn marks until you over seed the grass, it's not all that great for the middle of lawns. For my garden bed, Dan torched the grass in an outline of where the bed would go so it would be easier to remove. That's the other thing, if you plan on making a patio or something, the torch is great for burning down the greenery so it's easier to remove.


On to this weekend's adventures! Two whole days of fun in the dirt!

First off... digging up sod with a garden fork really sucks. My back and shoulders were terribly sore last week, so I went and bought myself a garden claw. I *LOVE* the garden claw... poke, twist, and the sod is ripped up... then poke, twist and a good 6 inches of hard earth are broken up. I like to dig deep, so after running the claw over a section of hard earth I come back with the garden fork
and get down about 18 inches. After having broken the surface with the claw, the fork slides in (with a little push and shove) and breaks chunks off like sections of polar ice caps. A distance that took me 2 hours with the fork alone took me 1 hour with the combination of tools.
I'm not editing the photos today, so if they seem a bit dull it's because I took them last night when it was starting to turn dusk.



Here's the garden beds today. I finished digging up the new beds, and on Dan's advice finished the wall with cinder blocks. His original thought was to cap off the blocks with wood so the beds look prettier... I'm all for it, I just don't think it'll happen anytime soon anyway. I moved some boulders around to create more of an official entrance to the garden area (on either side of the path in the middle) and mulched the path so it's soft mulch to walk on instead of hard mud/weeds. I rebuilt the interior walls of the beds with downed trees from the storm, and also opened up the fence end of the path (rather than have it end abruptly with cinder blocks) The smoke you see in the background is from Dan's burn pile in the far corner of the yard, he's been clearing the line where we'll be putting in a fence.


Here's the other side of the garden beds. As I said, I opened this side of the path and on either side of the opening sits our big pots from Ikea that we bought on a whim last year. I'm not sure what will end up living in those pots, but it'll likely be tomatoes... unless something else catches my eye.
The trellis - this one will be for cherry tomato plants of various type, and I'm happy to say it turned out exactly as I pictured (although the neighbor keeps asking me when we're having the badminton tournament) I know I'm ambitious making them 6 feet tall, but I really want the plants to have room to grow this year. The netting is called Gardeneer Trellis Netting - I read about it online and I'm excited to get a chance to use it this year. I was concerned about how sturdy the sticks might be in the ground, but Dan came up with the idea of creating cement bases for the sticks using quick set cement and old plastic gallon flower pots.


I'm excited not ony that I made them myself, but that I'm recycling those plastic pots that we keep stacking up every time we buy plants.


Here's a shot of the finished garden bed. The interior walls, like I said, are made up of downed trees from the storm. Dan cut up a few branches to make stakes for me and I pounded them into the ground to hold the trunks in place. The leftover space I filled in with rocks that I dug up (oh yeah... the new garden bed yielded an entire wheelbarrow full of rocks. I think digging wouldn't take so damn long if I didn't stop to examine them to see if any were worth polishing. I have a bucket of rocks to polish now) Anyway... the path is MUCH more comfortable to walk on and kneel on now that it's mulched... and again, I'm super excited to be recycling things from the yard to make the garden beds.

Ongoing projects... I'm not getting a truckload of dirt, because we don't have a trailer yet... so I'll make do with probably 10 or so bags of compost added to the new bed. I think the old beds have enough soil in them, and staking the interior walls this year will help keep the logs from rolling, and the good soil from traveling into the path (like it did last year) This is the reason I haven't buried the other posts for the next two trellis structures... I need to dump compost in the new bed and I might add a little to that old portion. Anyway, I need to buy more trellis stuff for those.

The hanging baskets - Dan decided (wisely) that putting them on the wooden portion of the fence over the fire pit is a bad idea, since there is absolutely no sunlight in that portion of the yard. Hanging them on the chain link would be easier and less permanent (and cause less damage, since it's not our fence I'm not inclined to hang anything on the wood portion) He also said I can plant whatever I want, so trailing tomato vines are again a reality. Woo!

The garden takes shape

So being gone two Saturdays in a row has done a lot for me mentally, but physically I can't take it anymore. If I were out at a spa getting massages all day long it would be one thing, but two Saturdays flying stunt kites down the beach only to come back sore and tired, then hit the yard the next day? Murder on the legs. (but at least I don't feel guilty missing my body flow class!)
While at the beach I read the paper (cuz they give it to us at the hotel) and they had a monster article on tomato plants and info on monster sales this weekend. Eek! I gotta get my garden moving! After giving some TLC to my herb section I made my way to the back of the yard for the Attack on the Weeds. I pulled about a dozen foxgloves out of the garden beds (they are mostly planted under the cedar just next to the gardens now) yanked a good couple cans of weeds, rebuilt my walls and started diggin up the sod for the new bed. Dan helped by torching the grass where the new bed will be... not that he really needed to, but he enjoys getting out his weed dragon.

Next week I need to finish getting the sod dug up, then build the interior walls of the garden somehow so I can be ready for dirt. This is going to require coordinating with Dan, as we'll need to take the camper off the truck and have a couple cubic yards dumped in the back (this'll be cheaper and much, much easier than having it delivered... since I don't want to shovel dirt from the driveway and Dan can drive the truck right up to the garden beds) I haven't priced out those cute little interior wall things yet at the garden stores, I'm debating about putting in a low fence like thing, or just using the extra tree trunks we have lying around and hoping they stay put. Maybe a couple of good sturty tent stakes will hold them in place? Last year I used logs and they rolled just a bit after I got the dirt in place, but I'd like to have a flat surface if it's economical enough (and I'd like to avoid using cinder blocks for the rest of it, because... they're heavy)

Pictures!

OK, for this to be impressive you have to scroll down to last week's photos of the Weed Beds of Doom - but look at how much progress I made in just a couple of hours! Wee!


This is a closer shot of the new bed. The cleaner boulder to the right is where the bed used to stop, everything to the left was lawn two days ago (well, half of it was dead from having left storm debris piled there) Dan was kind enough to torch what was left of the living grass, so in theory it'll be OK to just flip it over and dump dirt on top of it. Of course, I feel the need to dig down so my roots have more space to grow... hence the two new boulders I've dug up. If I'm lucky I'll find enough rocks to make a wall without having to build anything!


My herbs from above looking down. Rosemary rocks... it's SO easy to grow and these guys (the three big ones on the right) were on sale a couple years ago for 5 bucks a piece. Woo!


It has always been my dream to have a big ol' herb garden planted in some funky geometric shape like in all my herb books. I discovered, however... that if I plant them too far from my kitchen I tend not to use them. So, they live in pots, and for now the best place for them is this wall. From left to right, oregano, flatleaf parsley, chives, flatleaf parsley, garlic chives/dark leaf oregano and.. raspberry.
The oreganos and chives wintered over and came back on their own, the parsley is new this year, as is the raspberry (not an herb, but we don't have the designated raspberry area ready for planting yet, and this pot was empty, so it's renting space) I moved my thyme bushes into pots and stuck them on the railing holders so they are currently hanging off the deck near the waterfall. I'm not entirely happy with having the herbs on the wall, but it's the best place for them right now. Although, if the deck railing works out, I can imagine having an entire row of pots hanging off the railing and growing all my herbs that way... then I wouldn't have to worry about the racoons knocking them off the wall again... hmmm...


Seedlings!
The top shelf are the seeds I started in March... the little whispy guys are tomato vines, the ones on the left are what's left of my cucmber seeds (only 5 :( ) The bottom shelf are all the squash seeds I restarted two weeks ago. They are growing like gangbusters, and are much stronger than the seedlings I started last month. Only one bush squash seed didn't sprout, I think I may have planted it too deep. The tomato plants are growing, fragile as they look, they are developing true leaves... so although the greenhouse doesn't feel any warmer on the inside than the rest of the house, they must have been somewhat drafty being by my windows, so the plastic is helping. I figure once I get the seedlings into the ground outside I can use the shelves in the firepit area (maybe even put my herbs on that instead of the wall? I'm just always thinking, aren't I?)

Oh yeah, couple of updates on plans. Dan has put a halt to the idea of putting tomato vines in hanging baskets. damnit. The MIL (bless her?) backed him up by suggesting that if the tomatoes were to split then it would drip juice on the deck. Damnit. So Mr. Egg would rather have "something pretty" growing in those baskets. Whatever. He thinks I'm going a little "tomato crazy" because it's all I talk about planting, but it's just beause it's all I talk about planting, it's not all that I plan on planting. Besides, with the crap crops that we've had in the past, I need to plant more plants so we have a better chance of getting some food out of all this effort!
He also bought a few cone-shaped baskets to hang on the fence and plant "something neat" into. Apparently he has talked to the neighbor and he said we can do whatever we want to our side of the fence. He handed them to me as if I'm going to do all the planting... part of me wants to hang at least one on the chain link by my garden and plant (dumdumdumdaaaaa!) Tomatoes! After all, if my seedlings do make it I'm going to have like 10 cherry tomato plants to stick in the ground somewhere!

To answer LauraJ - and seedlings!

To answer LauarJ's question in the comments a few days ago... the jean thing in the photo is a quilt, which I now use as a rug under the rocking chair because the chair makes scratches on my floor.
A couple years ago I used to frequent a sewing forum, and a couple times a year they have stash competitions of varying degrees. This was my entry for a recycling contest... I took about 10 pairs of old jeans and some flannel that I'd used as curtains in one of the places we lived, and made a ragtime quilt out of it. Silly me, I put batting in it too, so the combination of flannel, denim and a layer of batting makes this puppy really heavy. Here is a photo of it back when I'd first finished it, since the I've trimmed all the strings back so it looks a little nicer as a rug.


The seedlings that I planted back around the 14th are growling like crazy! Add to that, Gayle planted zucchini seeds at school, and they are huge as well. I'm realy hoping to keep her plants alive, she is very proud of them and is excited at the idea of getting food in our garden that she grew all by herself (even if she won't actually eat the food!) I still have 5 cucumber plants left from the first round of seed starting, although a couple of them are looking a little faint, and the tomato plants are still alive... some have grown a couple of whimpy little true leaves, but other than that they still seem so, so tiny. I may end up keeping them in pots outside near the house for a while, once it is warm enough to put them out, and buy plants for the bigger garden. We'll see. I know for the cherry tomato plants I had already planned on keeping a couple in hanging baskets on the deck (saw it in a greenhouse once, the vine cascades down like an ornamental plant... very cool!) so if I can keep these seedlings alive long enough, that's where they'll be.

Happy Earth Day!

I spent a good portion of Earth Day Weekend either in the yard or at the nursary down the street. This place has become my new favorite place to buy plants, the prices are decent and the people are far more knowledgable than those mega-home improvement stores. For example, did you know that in my region, Mother's Day is the best time to put tomato plants outside? No? Neither did I, because the mega stores like to put tons of plants out as soon as they can in April, which always made me believe that getting my garden together in the beginning of May was far behind when I *could* be starting my garden. Turns out I have perpetually been right on time with starting my garden... and all this time I thought I was behind. I still want to get my garden beds prepared soon, so they'll be ready to go when I can put plants in the ground.

This weekend I mowed the lawn and even brought out the weed whacker to get those pesky sections that I can't reach with the lawn mower. I still haven't gotten the angle quite right on that weed whacker... either I'm not close enough to cut the grass, or I get it too deep and end up digging up the ground... but with a little damage control I managed to make the edges look slightly better than when I started. Beyond that I concentrated on the beds surrounding the deck, filling 3 32 gallons cans with weeds and forget-me-nots.
The Waterfall

It doesn't look like I did much, but the vinca and bishop's weed were both growing over most of the rocks next to the waterfall, and choking out the hostas we've got. Weeding this area takes a lot of balance, as I have to prop myself on unsteady rocks and yank plants out of the ground. We also had some unruly forget-me-nots growing from between the rocks and through the ornamental grasses to the right side of the waterfall. I left the smaller guys in the middle of the vinca though... I like the blue flowers and in years past when I try to yank them from the center of the vinca it tends to leave unsightly holes in the hill. I also had to pull the bird bath apart and re-level the base, as a critter has decided this hill would make a nice home, and the entrance should be dug out from under the heaviest item in our yard *rolling eyes* The top area, where the massive lilies are growing, is now happily mulched with our magic Storm Mulch Mix (the piles of our shredded storm debris)

The Dogwood Bed


This is the bed to the left of the waterfall area. I pulled all the weeds growing in the big stairs (I really think we should gravel those sometimes) weeded under the dogwood and mulched. Ten wheelbarrows of mulch moved from the far corner of the yard down the hill to this beastly area, but it looks so darned pretty now. The dogwood is blooming (big tree in this shot) this week will be a great time to take pictures of these guys.

Star Magnolia/waterfall area from the top

This is the same area, looking from the middle of the yard towards the house. A lot of today's work involved crawling under the star magnolia (big tree in the middle) and digging out all the dead leaves from last winter. Gotta say, leaving them over the winter helped keep weeds from growing under there... most of the weeds grew in areas that had not been covered in leaves. It's still a pain in the tookas to climb under there though. I mulched this too, to make it just as pretty as the rest of the beds.

The Birdfeeder Bed


This has been Dan's ongoing project for the last month or so. When we moved into the house this bed housed a dying butterfly bush, and that was about it. Slowly we have been adding plants... this year Dan took an oversized hosta, split it into three sections, and put them in the ground and has systematically added plants around this whole bed. Our big issue is that the previous owners moved their lilac bush from wherever it was to the spot it is now, which blocks the sprinkler (which they also put in) so we are currently debating about changing that sprinkler head to a series of pop-ups or a soaker hose solution for this bed.

Time to hang my head in shame. :)





My garden beds, this year's before photo. After the storms, Dan pulled a lot of the cinder blocks we used for the side walls and built up a mid-yard fire pit to get rid of a lot of debris. Do you like my cover crop of weeds and foxgloves? I actually like fox gloves, so they will be removed and placed in a happy home at the back of the yard.

April 14

So I made a bit of an impulse buy this week:



It was on sale and I figure since covering the tomato seedlings seems to have helped them (they perked up, and some even have true leaves coming in!) I figured a big plastic dome over everything might be a good idea. Technically it is supposed to be an outdoor greenhouse, but I couldn't figure out how this outside would keep the plants any warmer than they already were inside my house... particularly at night. So I put it together and stuck it in my front windows. Well, it looks better than that old folding card table did anyway. I also re-started a few squash seeds... I figure that I'm not getting my garden beds put together by mid-April anyway, so I might as well just start some more seeds and get them growing... maybe by the time they are ready to harden off I'll have a place to put them outside.

The frog eggs have landed, in massive quantity. I found a couple of terrarium type things at the store that have clasp on lids, so we can safely have some froggy friends grow without the danger of them crawling out of the bowl. (The first year we pulled tadpoles that happened - luckily I saw the little bugger up on the bowl and set him free outside immediately) After digging through the algae to find the egg sacks it became clear to me that I could no longer put off cleaning the pond, so that was my Main Accomplishment of The Day today. I'm happy to report that my pond is now sludge free, I have recovered my froggy statue that the raccoons plunked into the pond last winter, and the waterfall is in good working order, so perhaps the mosquitoes will stop laying eggs in my water! (And I did replace most of the egg sacks in the pond, save for the ones I pulled for Gayle's preschool class and for our own little watch-them-grow cage in the house)

Dan has been busy working on getting the new plants into the ground. Once he is done cleaning up the messes he has made (he likes to pile weeds on the sides of the beds and just leave them there for weeks at a time. Grr....) I'll get some pictures.

April 9, 2007

Ugh.
I think if I want to start seeds indoors in the future I'm going to have to invest in some sort of table top green house. The little plastic lids that go over the seed pot starter kits are OK for smaller plants, but once they touch the top of the plastic I have to take them off, then they get too cold to grow any further.

This is what I have discovered after finally talking to some nursary folks. I described my entire seed-care process and the lady can only assume that my living room is too cold for the plants to grow decently. I've replaced the cover on my tomato seedlings to warm them up, but I have lost all the zucchini plants and most of the bush squash as well. Several cucumbers are still alive, but they have also simply stopped growing. I'm debating about looking for a little green-house type set up this season or just chucking the whole seedling thing and buying plants from the nursary. My garden is nowhere near ready for planting anyway, so I have a good few weeks to think about it. My tomato vines can at least stay under the cover for a bit, but everything else has been repotted and is far too large to put back under that wee little cover.

I figured I'd end up buying plants anyway. I learn something new every season, hu?

In other yard news...

I've been hearing the frogs in the yard again, and yesterday I noticed what looks to be egg sacks in the pond. Yay! I plan on pulling some out and putting them in a fish bowl so we can watch the tadpoles grow up close (and out of harm's way, since the raccoons like to eat the little buggers out of the pond) but I also want to bring some to Munchkin's school, so I need to find a container at a store for that. I have to pull them out to clean the sludge from the pond anyway, and I'll probably put at least some of them back in the pond once I'm done with that chore. (can you feel the excitement? Scraping muck from the bottom of a pond is just so fun!)

I mowed the lawn for the first time this season on Tuesday and it makes the entire yard look tons better. The lawnmower picked up a lot of the fiddly little branches we missed in our post-storm cleanup and helps the yard look nice and even. Dan is still convinced that we need to kill off the moss, but I've learned to live with it. It's still green, and there's enough grass growing through it that it looks like lawn for the most part. There are a few areas that look like forrest floor instead of lawn, but I'm not complaining. It's green, so who cares? If we concentrate on ridding our lawn area of anything, I vote dandylions and clover, because the flowers attract bees.

More pictures next entry... we bought a lot of new plants last weekend and are in the process of finding them homes.

March 31, 2007

*sigh* Frustrations abound.

Every time I try to start seeds I learn something new. The first year I learned to start far more seeds than I ever plan to plant, because they will not all make it. I'm glad I've taken that lesson with me through the years, as this season has proved to be no different. I've lost at least one tomato seedling, a pumpkin of Gayle's, a cucumber plant and possibly three various squash.

This year I was so excited, although also a touch confused, at the massive length my seedlings have taken on - except the tomatoes which seem to have simply stopped growing. I repotted the larger plants, staked them, and watered them to keep the soil "moist, but not dripping" Some of the squash plants have started to develop their first true leaves, the cucumbers seem to be stationary in their growing efforts, and the tomato vines... well, as I said, they sprouted and haven't seemed to budge a bit.

I've discovered that the length of my plants is actually not a good thing. They are "leggy" due to lack of proper light, and now I'm afraid that all their growing efforts have gone into length to reach the sun instead of width to grow true leaves. The cotyledons (first leaves) are supposed to store food for the plant, then as it grows true leaves they shrivel up. Problem is, one of Gayle's pumpkins has already shriveled prior to getting true leaves, and as the squash plants develop their true leaves it seems to me the cotyledons are drying up too quickly. I have scooted my table to be directly in front of the window in the dining room to see if additional sunlight will help them out.

As to the stunted tomato plants... I've also discovered that peat pots will evaporate moisture off the sides, so I need to keep a closer eye on those and keep them "moist but not dripping" (does anyone know exactly what that means anyway?!?)

In the end, it's not a great loss. I love the idea of growing stuff from seeds and having the end plant be taller than I am, but if the seedlings don't make it to the garden, I can always buy plants at the nursary like I have done every year prior.

Photo Fun...now that my new spiffy scanner is up and running I can scan my slides from last year. Here are my neighbor's raspberries (eventually we'll have our own! but first we need the fence)

March 28th, 2007

My seedlings just before re-potting a couple weeks ago:


My seedlings this morning:


The little buggers on the right are all tomato vines, and they seem to have somewhat stopped growing, or they are going really, really slow. But, as they haven't shriveled up yet, I'm going to keep them around to see what happens.

The squash seeds are growing like crazy and I had to repot them because the roots were coming out of the bottoms of the little peat pots. I had intended to only grow one zucchini and two bush squash, so I gave one of each plant to my mom, along with one of Gayle's pumpkins (only wanted one of those, and we had 4 going well) So at the very least I'll have squash that I grew from seed this year. I'm hesitant to rely on my tomato seeds as the only source for plantlife in the garden mainly because they look so wee and plants at the store are so much larger. I'll keep them going, but I may have to buy tomato plants once I get the garden in place (which will be April this year, instead of May. I'm determined I tell you!)

March 23, 2007

Photos coming soon, I'm just posting an entry to test the new template and say that my seedlings are going like gangbusters.

Update... since this new Blogger template insists on cutting off the photos I realize that the panoramas won't work. Which is fine, because they're a pain in the ass to remember to make anyway - so... I put a shrunk down version at the bottom, squint and enjoy.. and further garden updates will include photos that actually fit on the page. What a concept!

March 12, 2007

As of today, nearly all my seed starts have sprouted! Woo hoo!

I decided to start 10 pods of each of the tomatoes, cucumbers and bush squash (the ones that look like white space ships) The tomato starts look really weeny compared to the others, but I have about 9 Brandywine and 9 Supersweets going. For the cucumbers, there are 9 very strong looking starts (yeah pickles!) The bush squash have 5 that have cleared the surface and this morning there are 3 more that are just coming up. I only started 5 zucchini and 5 tomatillos, because I only wanted one plant of each anyway. Of course, I have 5 perfectly happy zucchini starts and no tomatillos so far. Oh well, I wasn't sure they'd work well anyway.

Gayle started pumpkin seeds and flower seed a couple days after I started mine. Her flowers are sprouting wee little plants, but I didn't see anything from the pumpkins so I dug into the dirt on one a little just to check it out, and saw the beginnings of a root. Another pot shows signs of a full blown sprout breaking ground, so maybe in another day or two we'll have something.

I'm determined to get these plants to keep going this year... in years past I've planted seeds only to find that I'd overwatered them and they died as soon as they broke ground. This time around I'm using a mister and spraying them daily with water instead of pouring from a can, but pretty soon I'll need to scoot them from these little pods into larger containers.

According to the instructions I'm supposed to let them stay as they are for two weeks, then transplant them either into larger containers, or into the garden. I don't think the garden will be ready that soon, but I have room for larger containers on my project table, so I'll probably just move them into larger pots until we get past the last frost.

March 6, 2007

It has been a while, hasn't it?

I'm sitting outside on the deck on what has to be the first most perfect sunny day we've had since my last blog update... last summer. The winter has been harsh, with the "storm of the century" wind attack, massive amounts of snow and ice (for us anyway) and the wettest November in recorded history. From an outside point of view, given the circumstances of the weather, I'm told our yard doesn't look "that bad"... however I know better. I see all the fall cleanup I didn't get to last year, the branches we never picked up from the wind storm, and the weeds! Oh the weeds!

Dan has been itching to get out of the house, so last Saturday we headed off to a nursary just to get some fresh air and find inspiration for spring. With the shit winter, and Dan's surgery, we both have cabin fever pretty bad. There we found blueberry bushes, and since we've talked about getting some for a couple of years (but always at the wrong time of the year) we decided to take the plunge and pick some up.

Sunday was mostly spent prepping the area and planting the bushes, along with multiple conversations with the neighbors about their garden plans. Every year she gets her vegetables going far sooner than I do... my plans are perpetually thwarted by unforseen circumstances beyond my control. This year I hope it will be different. Getting the blueberries planted gave a huge boost to my inspiration and I'm now excited to get to the next step.

Last night I started seeds for the vegetable garden. I plan to expand the beds out into the yard, where we get actual sunshine, and also rotate the beds from years past. I'll also be putting the tomatoes up on a trellis instead of in cages... it'll be more work, but I've discovered that since we are in a cold climate, this is supposed to give more fruit exposure to the sun, and give the plants a chance to ripen. I'm hoping that, plus getting the veggies in the ground in April instead of May, will give me better results. Last year I got some romas to ripen at the tail end of summer, enough to can 4 pints, but that was it.

March, however, will likely be All Clean Up. The deer have paid particular attention to our yard this year, eating down quite a lot of our bulbs and (to Dan's dismay) the white flowers at the base of our cedars. These are Dan's favorites... the white blossoms that welcomed us our first week in the house are something he looks forward to every spring, but they haven't been the same since we first moved in. Today I'm getting quotes on fencing across the back of the yard... we'll likely need a company to come in and do it, and I can block the side entrances myself to keep the deer out. Lovely though they are, they need to find a new grazing ground.

August 9, 2006

I'm attempting to update even if I don't have pictures (which seem to be the item that's holding me back a lot) Pictures don't appear to be working today anyway, better get with the website host.... grrr...

So last weekend I strained my back, but in the end I have a much better looking yard. I dead-headed (is that what you call it?) the lily stems that were making the whole area near the deck look unkept, trimmed up the wild Japanese Maple by the top of the railroad tie steps, and used Dan's father's day gift of an electric hedge trimmer for the first time on the three bushes that we actually try to shape (the three just on the other side of the deck railings near the waterfall)

Last year a lot of my yard clean up turned out to be quite the issue. My garden had done so poorly that I just left everything out until one fine day in November, where I was out from sunrise to sunset ripping up everything dead and re-shaping everything green. I found out the hard way, that's the wrong time of year to do that.

Last year, because I waited until November to prune my bushes, I ended up cutting off the buds that had formed over the summer and this past spring there were hardly any flowers on them. I also cut them back waaay too far. Also a word of caution... hydrangeas. During my massive yard clean up sweep last November I dead-headed the hydrangea out front. Also... not supposed to do that. We're supposed to leave the dead flowers sitting there on the bush all winter, and cut them off in March. Oops. This year I only have about 4 or 5 flower bunches out front, and none out back. My massive late chopping of the forsythia bush also whacked off all the yellow flowers we should have had on it this past spring. This year I cut that sucker back in June, a little while after it had bloomed, but hopefully not way too late.

The basic instructions I've heard from Cisco is that if you have a bush that flowers in the spring, prune it back just after it flowers. Well... now I know.

So with that history of bad pruning, there is a question floating around between us and the neighbors as to whether or not I've just destroyed my tomato plants. Last week I read a little blurb in my Vegetable Gardener's Bible that you are supposed to cut off any "suckers" from the vine... those are the branches that have only leaves and no flowers, because they suck the energy of the plant away from the fruit. This made sense to me, and I also figured that the fruit would then get some sun and actually ripen. This is Year Three with tomato plants, folks... and I have yet to get the massive yield I'm looking for. Year one I had tons of fruit, but a rain storm knocked down the big plant in mid-August and killed it. Year two... I tried planting along the fence and there was never enough sun or water. So... year three I figured I should try something different.

After a few clips on the Heirloom plant, I realized that not only was most of the plant leaf, but the branches with fruit didn't have any leaves at all. I'd make three clips, pull out three branches, and have a huge gaping hole. This can't be good... a plant needs leaves to feed itself, right? So I left tufts of leaves at the very top of the plant. I worked on the early girl in a similar fashion, then moved on to the roma. Now that one, I didn't even know I had fruit on that plant because the leaves were so dense... it really needed a trimming. I took it easy though, leaving some branches in the middle so it wouldn't look so scrappy.

Dan took one look and said I killed them all, and to be honest it did look really odd. My folks grew tomato plants every year, we never trimmed off the leaves - but they also planted them against the front of the house where they were fried all summer and riped really early. At any rate, I checked on them yesterday and the all-green fruit is starting to shift to the slightest hint of yellow. The vines look healthy and the tops are exploding with new growth. I'm hoping this means I might get a tomato or two out of my garden this year.

Here's another issue... you're "supposed" to trim off the top of the vines to prevent them from growing too big for the cages, but I can't bring myself to do that. I see more flower buds and I want more tomatoes, so I let them continue to grow. The heirloom is huge, and all vine... I might end up stretching that across the other two cages just to hold it up... and ordering larger cages from my dad for next year.

July 25, 2006

It appears my weekly garden update is turning out to be monthly *sigh*

This past month saw a lot of drama in my life so the garden was pretty much on it's own for a couple weeks. My how it's grown!

My triple tomato plants are crawling over the tops of the cages, and all are finally producing fruit. Nothing is ripe yet, however there are many gems on the roma and early girl... so far I've only seen two mini-fruits on the Mystery Heirloom, I'm excited to see exactly what kind of plant I ended up buying.
I've added two tomato plants to the garden... a grape tomato in a pot at the end of the mid-path, and another heirloom (black krim) in between my squash vines. I know it's late in the season, but they were 50% off and looked very sad in the garden center, so I thought I'd give them a nice home. Grape has two fruits on, the heirloom hasn't even bloomed yet, but appears to like it's new home.
The squash are going crazy, I've already picked 7 zucchini over the weekend and judging by the speed in which they grow, we'll have another dinner's worth of veggies by the end of the week.
Off in the distance you can see the back corner of the property... Dan cleared a lot of weeds and created a secondary fire pit with the leftover cinder blocks from the garden. He also cut down a cedar sprout and has started clearing some oregon grape from that triangle section. Eventually we want to expand the garden and hang a sky chair from the big cedar... slowly but surely we're actually landscaping a new area of the yard.

This is a closer view of the tomato half. As you can see, my beets are very sporadic (only maybe 15% of the seeds I threw down are growing) I barely have enough beets for a pint, I'm debating about bothering to pickle them this year... especially since Mom put up 25 pounds this summer. Perhaps I'll stick to pickles.

Dan actually picked out the cute little flag, doesn't it brighten things up? It seems to have bugged the deer, because since we put the flag up I haven't seen any new hoofprints in my garden. They have nibbled the extra reaching tomato vines from the other side, but they haven't gotten to the fruit, and the vines can be trimmed back anyway. Hopefully we won't end up with another missing cage this year!
The tall guys in the center of the pic are my cucumber plants. This is the first time I've planted cukes that actually grew straight up the trellis... I think I need a taller trellis next year! Lots of cukes are starting to grow, so I'll need to brush off my jars and get ready to make Grandma's Famous Dill Pickels this year!