Because it's never too early to think about gardening.
This year I think we're planting pumpkins, living in the upper Midwest and all.
Later, as I'm able I'll post pictures of our garden space.
Any way, feel free to share advice, tips, pictures, or anything gardening related.
This is our garden space before i tear into it.
As you can see, it's a triangle. A neighbor gave us her bird bath and i've been laying out a different patio design with that as the focal point in the middle. The kids call it the Bill Cypher garden, which might explain how our tomato plant got over six feet high...
Also because it's at a grade, i've been using rocks to make tiers.
Last year our tomatoes and hot peppers grew like gangbusters (which are evidently fast at growing...) but our Cantaloupes and corn really struggled.
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Last year our tomatoes and hot peppers grew like gangbusters (which are evidently fast at growing...) but our Cantaloupes and corn really struggled.
Bury a fish in a small mound and plant the corn, beans, and pumpkins in that mound (one mound per three seeds). It's a traditional way to enrich the soil (legumes, fish) and give the beans a climbing structure (corn plant) while the gourds (or pumpkins) twine around the bottom.
The beans were planted in the flood area, so no surprise there, usually they do well when planted elsewhere. Corn has never done well, it used to be a giant thistle patch but I tore it out, put a yard of top soil down and have been adding to it, I keep my mulching pile in the garden. Great idea about the fish, I'll totally do that.
Mostly focusing on pumpkins in the garden this year.
Something about the kids wanting to run a pumpkin stand. :-)
You know that popcorn is just another kind of corn, right? How cool to grow popcorn and pumpkins and your favorite beans
Lol!
Yes, after growing up on a farm and then another fifteen years of landscaping, I know where popcorn comes from. :-)
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Because it's never too early to think about gardening.
This year I think we're planting pumpkins, living in the upper Midwest and all.
Later, as I'm able I'll post pictures of our garden space.
Any way, feel free to share advice, tips, pictures, or anything gardening related.
This was my first real garden from years ago. In hindsight from that year and those that followed, the tomatoes were too close together, which facilitated some fungus and made it too easy for the juice-sucking stink bugs to spread. They are really voracious and fast; I had to give up on full-organic and use Sevin dust powder to get rid of the b!stards. While I love the taste of heirloom tomatoes, especially Cherokee and Carbon, I always had to fight to keep the ends from rotting; this is a calcium deficiency in the plant, not a disease or fungus, so I kept adding crushed eggshells to my compost pile and dissolving pulverized calcium tablets into the tomatoes' water a couple times a week. Hybrid tomatoes do sooooo much better and are much more prolific. And a vine-ripened hybrid tomato is still incredibly delicious... they are nothing like the mealy tasteless red things sold as tomatoes in supermarkets.
Haven't grown anything these last couple years, partially because of laziness and partially from a flaky pump on the well. I've got a fresh batch of seeds for garlic chives, flat-leaf parsley, Genovese basil, and cilantro that I need to start... but I keep procrastinating.
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The potatoes did very well this year - I've still got some leeks to eat, too.
Chili plant is still alive, which is remarkable - I do not have a good record with houseplants.
I have replaced some of the fences in the back garden with trellises, so intend to grow climbing plants - Morning Glory and whathaveyou. We'll see how well they work.
Morning Glory is considered a weed here. I love the stuff, especially along the bike trail, really brightens up morning strolls.
The wife has been using the dried hot peppers in soups and sauces during our bout with the flu. It's really helped clear out the sinuses.
I like Wisteria myself, Clematis is popular around here. And of course the nearly indestructible Vinca, which the cockroaches will feast on as they shade themselves under Hostas after we nuke ourselves into extinction. Or become Abbies.
Every year, the morning glory mistaken believes it is supposed to live in the garden. And pretty much only the garden; a few might hide in the bushes along the front of the house. Right now, the honeysuckle is more or less under control along the drive way, as it's already caused the Virginia pines to collapse under its weight, taking itself out in the process. Poison ivy is quietly minding its own business along the southern exposure of the backyard. The english ivy seems to be completely gone after much physical pulling and some Roundup. No wisteria or trumpet vine thankfully. Virginia creeper still pops up along the fence however, and I haven't figured out what that other vine is that likes the parking pad.
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I grow herbs in the house.
Basil has taken over. No really, it has potentially killed one plant and we have had to transplant its now woody growths to glass jars, new pots and the like. The sage is still hanging in, as is a withered thyme, but the lavender, mint and peppermint did not make it. We mourn their loss...
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Yeah, basil needs its own separate pot. It can be very aggressive and will crowd out many things planted with it. I used to plant my basil by itself in a 2' wide planter with a leftover tomato trellis, and the basil would easily climb almost 6' high. I could barely keep up with it, giving most away in fresh bunches, as compounded basil butter, and as pesto. When it buds, pinch off the fresh buds but don't discard them; they are basil-flavored too and a pretty garnish sprinkled on food just before serving.
Unless you have a nut allergy, don't limit yourself to just pine nuts in your basil pesto. Almonds, pistachios, cashews, macadamias... it all* works as slightly different but delicious pestos. It keeps well refrigerated in a little resealable plastic container or frozen in ice cube trays (handy for having pre-measured pesto to drop into a recipe, like fresh marinara or even pizza sauce**).
* I haven't tried pecans. I'm sure it'd be delicious, but I have very poor impulse control with pecans; I eat them all before they can end up in any recipe.
** This may sound like heresy, especially to a NYC or margherita purist, but try it before you judge. It's delicious.
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Now that I have access to an area that gets more than 30 minutes of sun a day I'm thinking of restarting my miniature rose collection.
Yay! It's warm!
For now...
Anyway.
Relevant tips about starting a community garden. Courtesy of The Onion.
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It was delayed by frost, and rain, and more recently a five year old with viral pneumonia, but I finally got my garden tilled and ready for planting.
So far we pumpkins, farmer's market bought tomatoes and beefsteak tomatoes planned. I'd also love to do some more hot peppers as those dried out wonderfully and were a life saver when we got hit by winter congestion.
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Somebody gets to go vegetable garden shopping today!
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We have our first strawberry!!
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We harvested our first orange cherry tomato!
Some sort of hybrid picked up at the farmer's market. :-)
The pumpkins are spreading everywhere, but no actual pumpkins yet.
Beefsteak tomatoes are growing ever bigger (but still quite young).
The rabbits have mostly decimated bell peppers but i saw mother hawk take one out in the field yesterday, so. this year's baby hawk in our tree is as screechy as ones born in year's past.
The hot peppers (which were planted to surround the bell peppers, what happened there guys!) are doing quite well for themselves, even though one of the pumpkins is encroaching on one of them.
I harvested some blackberries from the bush by my fence. Across the yard are the grapes and hops but they are not ready yet. Been enjoying the chives for some time.
I miss Seattle!
You could literally just walk down the street and harvest a gallon of blackberries as big as your thumb in no time, and then go back for more the next day.
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There was something in the news recently about UK hop-growers getting very anxious about their crop given the hot (at that point) summer.
They wanted rain, and by golly, they got it, so at least our beer is safe.
The raspberry bush has been producing meagre amounts of raspberries, so I've been eating them whenever a ripe one appears.
This appears to be a good year for onions and spuds, too, and it turns out that the beans I planted were broad beans. At last, the Great Bean Mystery has been solved.
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Finally got around to planting some seeds this morning. It's not even 10:30AM here and it's already 80°+F and humid. No veggies, just herbs: cilantro, Italian parsley, Genovese basil, and catnip.
My orange tabby assistant supervisor kept an eye on proceedings and constantly inspected my progress. She seemed quite unimpressed with the process, except when she remembered she can drink water from the containers' drainage holes.
Tiny T-Rex has two sunflower seedlings in a cup, today is the first time we've hit 60 degrees since the middle of October.
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The bird bath still needs to be levelled but the birds don't care.
I'm showing the kids how to put in a dry streambed but I lost them when they discovered an actual honest to gosh iron ingot during excavation and they're now playing make believe Minecraft.
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I grew up on a farm and we made a huge garden every year. My mom and dad were older and both grew up pretty poor, so it just became ingrained that we had to have these ginormous gardens. Mom canned and preserved so much stuff every year we'd end up giving a lot of it away.
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I live on a 4th floor apartment, so don't really have a garden exactly, but I have over the last year really got into fishkeeping and aquascaping. Hoping to finish planting my aquarium by end of summer (I mail order plants and add them a few at a time. Currently, my 29 gallon has a pretty good diversity, with a couple of types of Anubias, and Java Fern, plus jungle val, crypts, a single Amazon sword and Dwarf Aquarium Lily, and a virtual forest of Water Wisteria. My fish seem happy and mostly things are going well. It's just a pain in the but to plant rooting plant in my substrate...the snail and panda corys tend to knock them over and I find them floating on top the next day.
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I'm trying to grow apple trees from seed. It isn't going very well.
Also got the regular beans, carrots, spring onion, regular onions and spuds on the go, as well as some nasturtiums.
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Finally got around to planting some seeds this morning. It's not even 10:30AM here and it's already 80°+F and humid. No veggies, just herbs: cilantro, Italian parsley, Genovese basil, and catnip.
My orange tabby
assistantsupervisor kept an eye on proceedings and constantly inspected my progress. She seemed quite unimpressed with the process, except when she remembered she can drink water from the containers' drainage holes.
Update: Two of the herbs have started putting up teeny sproutlings. However, I didn't label the containers so I don't know which are which yet.
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Freehold!!!!
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Herbs update: I should have planted the basil in it's own pot (4 gallon bucket), as it's trying to crowd out its roommate. Thinned out 3 of the little encroaching basil plants, chopped up the leaves, and sprinkled over my Mediterranean cream cheese* on everything bagel for breakfast. It was delicious.
Basil is so easy to grow. Give it enough water to keep the soil from drying out and all the sun you can, and it will grow like a weed.
* The everything bagel was just Aldi's store brand, but the cream cheese is a new-ish brand here, Arla. It's normally $4 or more for a 7 oz package, but when it goes on sale, I try to grab some. It's so much better Philly. The Mediterranean Garden (roasted bell peppers, olives, basil, garlic, lemon, & black pepper) and Herbs & Spices (onions, paprika, dill, garlic) flavors are both great. Haven't tried the strawberry or blueberry flavors yet.
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Captain Yesterday update!
I have returned to working in landscaping full time.
So far it's going great, no chopped off appendages, and believe me, I've had my chances.
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This last weekend the General tore through the garden dividing irises and rearranging the borders.
This next weekend I'll go through and fix the border and see what plants survived the shock.
The important thing is, the General had a blast!
Also the kids have decided we're flower farmers this year. :-)