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Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Smells like summer

I finished my spring planting over the weekend. The first step was to finish assembling the new bean towers for the pole beans.

Tops on
Strung up
I planted four types of beans, but I'm most excited about the scarlet runners. The orange flowers are the real reason I planted them, but if I get to eat them, too, that'll be a bonus.

I also planted out my basil seedlings.


They had gotten so fragrant the past week or so that every time I watered them, I thought about pesto. Such a summer smell.

The rest of the garden is doing well. The cabbage plants are huge.


The potatoes are growing very fast, and I'm having a hard time keeping them covered with straw. It seems to slide off of them rather quickly. I guess I just need to pack it in there better.


They look pretty covered there, but they are already sticking out.

Even the peas are doing well. Much better than last year.


Now I just need to water, weed and be patient.

The garden May 26th


Wednesday, May 21, 2014

100th post

It took me a little over a year to get to 100 posts. That's not a great pace, but at least I stuck with it long enough to make it to 100. I read a lot of blogs, and I'm very impressed with people who post every day, but that's not me. I'm not that disciplined, and I don't really have that much to say.

Last weekend, I got my peppers and tomatoes planted. Three red and three green bell peppers:


Two Amish Paste tomatoes:



Two Arkansas Travelers, two Early Girls, and one Sweet Baby Girl:


It's the same mix I planted last year, less the Pink Caspian that didn't grow anyway. I used the paper that the plants were packed with as mulch. After I mowed, I covered the paper with some grass clippings.

The only things left to plant are beans and my basil and rosemary seedlings. The new bean towers are half ready.

Step 1
Step 2
After I set them up, I realized they took up a lot more room than I had allotted on the garden plan, so the peppers weren't going to fit where I'd planned to put them. The upside to my complete garlic failure was that I had someplace to put the peppers. Gotta love the silver lining when you see it.

The garden - May 17th

Friday, May 16, 2014

Oh sheet

The garden May 16th
We had a frost warning last night, and I was nervous so I covered the peas, potatoes, carrots, beets, and zinnias. When I picked the sheets up this morning, they were all covered with frost. We're under a frost advisory again tonight, so I might have to cover everything again.

This better be the end of the cold. I've got tomatoes and peppers to plant.

Sunday, May 11, 2014

Weekend

The garden May 10th
About all I did in the garden this weekend was plant flowers in my cinder blocks.


Dark purple salvia
Cream-colored marigolds
I haven't planted anything in the bed itself yet. When the basil seedlings are ready to go outside, I think I'm going to put them here. Before I do that, however, I need to figure out how I'm going to keep Scout out of the bed.

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Epic failure

Maybe I'm being a little dramatic, but look at my garlic:


What? You don't see it? Yeah, me neither. 

It sprouted after I planted it last fall, and I covered it with a few inches of mulch for the winter. When I pulled back the mulch earlier this spring, I saw a couple sprouts. Now, there's nothing. I don't exactly know what happened to it, but I have a couple theories: (1) a bastard squirrel dug it up or (2) the extremely cold winter did it in.

Guess it's a good thing I still have a bunch of last year's garlic in the freezer. I'll try again this fall, but for now I think I'm going to use the space for something else.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Again - *sigh*

Saturday morning before I'd even gotten dressed, D looked outside and saw our dog Scout giving the composter a serious once over. Before long, we saw this:


And then she figured it out, and we saw this:


What was she after? This:


A rabbit nest with seven very new babies. Knowing that she would not leave it alone once she learned how to get to it, I let her finish the job. One by one she retrieved and squeezed the babies, and I disposed of them, except for the ones she swallowed when I wasn't looking. Yes, it sucks, but they had no chance of making it out of that composter alive.

Scout was rather proud of herself, and I had to thank her for helping protect the garden from hungry rabbits. She's not much of a guard dog, but she's a very good garden dog.

Resting on her laurels

Friday, May 2, 2014

Albino

I started some dianthus seeds a couple weeks ago. One of them sprouted an albino seedling.


Albino on the right
For a couple days, it looked just like the others, only completely white. The day after I took these photos, it shriveled up and died.

I know the pictures aren't great, but it's kind of hard to take a picture of a tiny seedling, when you're not smart enough to raise the light fixture high enough to hold the camera under it.