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Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Spotted in the garden

asparagus

garlic

All five asparagi are sprouting and there are a handful of garlic shoots. Yes, I said asparagi. And they're really cute.

It's been dry for several days and warm, but we're expecting rain tonight and then back to almost-winter temperatures in the 40's, with possible lows close to freezing. I hope everything survives.

Tuesday's birds: grackle, house finch, robin, house sparrow, cardinal, downy woodpecker.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

The cool thing about my carrots


The garden April 28th


It looks like I've been planting string. The two long strings on the right are peas and carrots. The two short strings on the left are beets. I'm kind of clumsy and forgetful, so the strings are there to keep me from neglecting or trampling the things I've planted. I have officially seen three asparagus sprouts, and the onions are growing. Other than that, there's nothing to look at except string.

Today I planted the carrots and beets. I promised something cool about my carrots, so here it is:


You're wondering what that is. Well, it's homemade seed tape. I learned how to do it from the Canned Quilter over at Hickory Holler Farm. She is a brilliant woman.

Since I wanted to do rows, I used toilet paper, and I made them in five foot increments. I rolled out five feet of toilet paper, used a ruler and a Sharpee to mark where the seeds should be, and glued them down with Elmer's school glue.

seed tape production

I did this a few weeks ago, and then rolled them up until I was ready to plant them. It was breezy today, so as I unrolled the seed tape, I placed small rocks on it. Then I covered it with potting soil.


Finally, I watered them. The plan is that the toilet paper will biodegrade as the seeds sprout. The ability to get them perfectly spaced and in a fairly straight row really appealed to me. I was so excited about the seed tapes that I wanted to make a whole bunch more, but pretty much everything else I'm planting has fairly large seeds so seed tapes are kind of pointless.

According to the plan, I think the next things to be planted will be flowers. I'm planting marigolds and zinnias, largely to attract pollinators, but also because I love flowers.

Sunday's birds: grackle, house sparrow, robin, cardinal, downy woodpecker, house finch, bluejay, starling, mourning dove.


Saturday, April 27, 2013

The Other Garden

I am finally convinced that spring is really here. And she brought tulips.


I've been working on my flower beds for 10 years. They're far from done, but I have some pretty flowers each year. I cleaned the beds up this morning and took some pictures of my tulips while I was at it. Since I don't have anything new to show in the vegetable garden yet, I thought I'd share my tulips.

 
This is what those orange and yellow stripy ones look like inside:


Then there are these:


A little closer:


And inside:


You may have noticed that they're all orange. That's because they're in my orange garden. The pink tulips in my pink garden aren't blooming yet. They actually don't look so good. I think the sleet, hail, and freezing nights got to them.

Yes, I said I have an orange garden and a pink garden. When I first started with the flower beds, my goal was to have a whole bed that was nothing but orange flowers. That wasn't so easy 10 years ago. There weren't a lot of orange perennials at the garden centers or in the catalogs. These days, it's easier, but the orange bed is still not done.

Limiting my garden to one color helped me not go crazy buying flowers every year. The problem was, looking for orange, I couldn't always find something, so I decided it was time for another color. A few years ago, I expanded my flower bed and created the pink area. Pink flowers are much easier to find, and if all grows well, it should be fairly full this year. There's just enough room for some annuals. I have to leave room for annuals, so I have an excuse to go to the garden centers and buy something every spring.

I'm planning to plant carrots and beets tomorrow. I'm trying something really cool with the carrots that I'll share.

Saturday's birds: house finch, robin, grackle, downy woodpecker, cardinal, chickadee, mourning dove, house sparrow, bluejay.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

The Other Thing I Did Last Weekend

Well, actually we did last weekend. We being me and D, the man formerly known as "my husband". It didn't take me long to realize I was going to get sick of typing "my husband" every time I mentioned him. Besides, D is a little more personal.

So, anyway, what we did was build a rain barrel. We'd been saving a magazine article with instructions for several years and finally decided it was time. We aren't completely finished, but close enough to share.

We used a 32 gallon trash can and we drilled two holes in it, one near the top and one near the bottom.


The hole near the bottom is where water will come out when we want it, so we put a spigot in it.


The hole near the top is the overflow for when the barrel gets too full, so we put a hose connector in it.


We will connect a length of hose to this when we install the rain barrel in its final location. Then we drilled holes in the lid of the trash can for ventilation.


We want to let air out of the can, but also keep leaves, bugs, etc. out of it, so we covered the holes with screen.


What we have left to do is cut a hole in the lid for the downspout connection. We think we need one more piece to be able to connect this to the downspout where we want it, so we'll have to go back to the store before we can finish. We also need some blocks to set it on. I want it set up high enough that I can get a small watering can under that spigot. I'll post a picture of the completed rain barrel once it's installed.

For anyone wondering, we found the instructions in the October, 2008 edition of "Workbench" magazine. We got all of the pieces we've used so far for less than $60.

Wednesday's birds: goldfinch, grackle, junco, robin, house sparrow, song sparrow, house finch, chickadee, bluejay, cardinal.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Productive Saturday

The garden April 20th. Lots of digging going on.
We finally had a couple days without rain, so I was able to get in the garden on Saturday.


Do you know what that is? It's an asparagus sprout! I only saw one, but that was enough for me.

I planted a 15 foot row of peas. I've had peas in the past, but never this many, so this year I decided to try two different varieties. I planted Laxton's Progress No. 9 and Little Marvel, which is what I grew last year. We'll see if one does any better than the other, or if I can even tell them apart. The other thing I did differently was to inoculate. Most seed catalogs suggest it, so I figured it couldn't hurt.

pea planting tools
And, of course, I used my tape measure. How else would I know the row was 15 feet long and that I planted the peas four inches apart? The screwdriver is my pea-planting-hole maker.

I also planted potatoes, six red Pontiac. I've never planted potatoes before, so this is a whole new experience. I tried to follow the directions. I've heard of using straw to cover the potatoes instead of hilling with soil, and I wouldn't mind trying it, but I haven't yet figured out where I can get straw. Oh, I could buy 25 bales from a farmer 40 miles away, but that's not really what I had in mind.

The last thing that went into the ground Saturday was garlic. I know that spring is not the best time of year to plant garlic, but I wanted to try anyway. I only planted six feet of it, and I had many more cloves than I needed, so I was able to pick the biggest and best looking ones to plant. I might end up sticking some more in the garden somewhere.


The last thing I did in the garden Saturday was install a couple pavers in the gate. It still has the janky plywood door, but now the door has something to stand on. The idea is to make a real gate, and having the pavers in place might help.



Saturday's birds: grackle, robin, cardinal, chickadee, starling, house finch, house sparrow, blue jay, junco, song sparrow (a brand new bird for me).

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

More progress

Home of asparagus
 
That dug up patch of ground is where I put my asparagus. I think I mentioned that it had been living in a pitcher since it arrived because the weather has not been conducive to gardening. When I finally got around to planting it, I realized something really funny. I'd had it in the pitcher UPSIDE DOWN! Yep, all the long roots were sticking up and the crowns were on the bottom of the pitcher. When I realized that, it was completely obvious. I can't figure out why it didn't occur to me sooner. At any rate, I put five of them in this space, even though the plan said only four would fit. I'm a little concerned that my unconventional asparagus storage technique might have some negative consequences. Besides, they won't grow enough this year to fill that space anyway.

The garden April 16th

I had hoped to get my peas planted this week - I strung a string (to the right of the asparagus in the above photo) to show me where they will go - but it started raining last night and has continued most of the day. My garden looked like a swamp this afternoon. I shouldn't complain, because we need water, but I'd really like to get some things in the ground. My garlic arrived the other day, and my potatoes will be here this weekend. I don't think I can keep them in a pitcher.

In addition to gardening, I feed birds. I'm surprised at the variety I can get in my urban backyard. Last year I had baby cardinals, blue jays, robins, chickadees and doves in my yard. I like to keep track of the birds I see, so I'm going to start noting them in my blog posts.

Today's birds: chickadee, robin, grackle, cardinal, ring-neck dove

Sunday, April 14, 2013

I planted something!

The garden April 12th with onions

I had to go out of town this weekend, but before I left Friday evening, I planted my onions.

The garden is 20 feet long by 15 feet wide. Being an eager novice, I fell for one of those online garden planner websites where you can drag and drop all the plant pictures you can imagine. So, before I planted the onions, I had to consult the plan and measure exactly six feet from the west end. The plan says the onions are six feet, so the onions have to be at six feet. I never imagined a tape measure would become an important garden tool, but I don't know enough to wing it, so I'm going with the plan. After measuring, I ran a string from one fence to the other to make sure that the onions came out straight. If I didn't get the first row straight, there wouldn't be much hope for the rest of it.

The garden is officially started! Next up, asparagus and peas.

Friday, April 12, 2013

First things first


I'm sure a lot of you were looking at the one measly picture in my first post and wondering to yourselves, "why the heck is her garden so ghetto?" The answer to that is, I was in a hurry and I didn't want to spent a lot of money.

When I decided to make this garden, it was already October, and where I live October can mean winter. I wanted it fenced in before it got cold, and what's quicker than t posts? The answer is, not much, especially when you have a husband who puts them in for you. A little welded wire fence, and it was done. Except that I forgot about a gate. The point of the fence is to keep the dogs and the rabbits out (who am I kidding?), so a gate is pretty important. I think you'll agree that the plywood and bungie cord combo is a showstopper.




The other, less-talked about reason for the t-posts is that they're pretty easy to take out. If we had done wood fence posts in concrete, like my husband suggested, I wouldn't be able to tear them out when if it turns out that I can't handle this.

The garden April 10th

You can see in the pictures that there's snow on the ground. We've had rain, snow, sleet and hail all within the last few days, and it's been below freezing at night. I've got onion starts and asparagus roots in a pitcher with water because I can't get them in the ground. With my schedule and the weather, it looks like it'll be Sunday evening at the earliest before I can plant them.

And about the "family and friends" that I envisioned sharing this with, I still haven't asked any of them if they want to read a blog about my garden. ;)

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

And so it begins

In this, my inaugural post, I'm going to tell the story of how I got here, meaning to where I decided to start a blog.

In the 11 years my husband and I have lived in our house, I've always devoted some time to growing things. I started with flowers in the front yard, then I added a small garden plot with tomatoes in the back. Then I decided the vegetables were too much work and let the garden go back to grass. Then I thought I got brilliant and I started with raised beds. One four foot by four foot bed, to be precise. The next year, I added another four foot by four foot bed. The next year, I added a four foot by eight foot bed.

By this time, I was hooked on growing stuff I could eat, and I began yearning for an acreage in the country where I could have huge gardens and chickens, and everything else you'd imagine on a hobby farm. I regularly searched real estate listings for a small, cheap acreage in the area. And I saw a lot of them, but the reality was, my husband and I didn't have the money to buy one.

At about this time, we decided to remodel our kitchen. I'd hated it since we moved in, but we'd put it off for years, knowing that once we started, the whole thing had to go. The remodel doesn't add much to my story except this: my dad built all of our kitchen cabinets by hand. They are custom, one-of-a-kind, built exactly to my specifications. He worked on them for a year. I can't even remember how many colors we tried before we settled on the dye he used. And then, my husband and dad and a whole host of friends helped with the project. When it was done (or 98% done, as I call it), I looked at my husband and said, "You know this means we can't move out of this place for years." He said, "I know." I think that was his plan all along.

So there I was - nice kitchen, no acreage, 64 square feet of raised garden beds - when it finally dawned on my that I'd have to make the most of what I had. I told my husband I wanted to fence in a chunk of the backyard and make a real garden. He said, "go for it". When I waivered about making it very big, he said, "make it as big as you can". So, last fall we fenced off 300 square feet. I covered the whole area with a layer of cardboard (conveniently generated by our kitchen remodel), added some compost and dead leaves, and let it sit all winter.

It's spring now. I'm ready to start growing things. I've ordered seeds and plants. I spread three cubic yards of compost over the whole garden the other day, and I took a picture of it. That's when I realized that I wanted to share my progress with family and friends, and I wanted to document it for myself.

Being a blog junkie, this is where I ended up. I'm no writer and I'm no photographer, but the world has plenty of those already. I play in the dirt, and I'm going to tell you about it.

The garden April 7th