Roof Update

The tomatoes are finally in!
The peppers didn't do so hot due to the bugs or whatever got hold of them in the greenhouse box, I planted the ones that still had a leaf or two hanging on, added a few fresh seeds and I'm hoping for the best (and a few spare plants from Amy...)
The tomatoes, despite being really leggy, seem healthy enough. The cool thing about tomatoes is that they will grow roots on the stems if you bury them. This means that since I put them in deep enough pots, I was able to pull off the lower leaves and plant them so that just the bushy tops are above ground. Don't try that with most other plants or you will rot the stems in a matter of days!
I am following my mantra this year. I gave them each a handful of food, made sure that there was plenty of dirt in each bucket, and didn't overcrowd. Most pots only have one tomato and a few onions or a little marigold or basil plant. Hopefully this will result in tomatoes that receive enough sunshine, airflow and water and produce the best yield yet!
It's back to watching, waiting and yelling at the little plants to grow faster or face being thrown in the compost pile!!

Getting dirty...

Many a day I get home from work, drop my lunch bag in the sink and head to the back yard for a little fresh air and sunshine. Enjoying the sunshine often leads to seeing some weeds that need pulled, pulling the hose out to water a thirsty plant, trimming off some dead flowers and generally getting dirty. Previously the fact that I am often wearing jewelry and clothes that don't look good with dirt and grass stains would lead to the garden going un-weeded or me standing later at the wash tub, scrubbing dirt from under my nails and off of the cuff of my dress pants. I have since solved this conundrum. It started with my habit of leaving a pair of clogs or flip flops near the door so that I could go out to the compost pile without having to take off my socks or get my feet dirty. My husband like the idea so much that a pair of slip on shoes in his size soon joined mine on the mud rug.
After the laundry room/mud room was renovated I had a row of hooks perfect for leaving a pair of slip on pants and a t-shirt that I didn't care got dirty. Now any time the mood strikes I know there are grubby clothes handy and the garden gets weeded! When I got engaged and had no desire to scrub my ring with a toothbrush every time I came in from the garden, I would leave my ring on the window sill. Not the safest place in the world for a diamond ring in a household with 4 kitties -2 of whom are kleptomaniacs.The solution: this is one of 4 decorative boxes and bowls throughout the house, strategically placed so that when I offhandedly decide to garden, wood work or wash dishes, I have a safe place to deposit my jewelry. I have still occasionally panicked and not remembered where I left my ring, but a search through the depositories always results in its recovery.
After adopting these few little habits, my clothes have never been cleaner and I have never had less panic over losing valuable jewelry. So to borrow LaVar Burton's phrase "But you don't have to take my word for it!" (no idea why that popped into my head! and now I will go to bed singing the Reading Rainbow song...)

first flowers

I love this time of year. It is still cool enough to wear a jacket most mornings. The ice and snow have given us time off for good behavior. The sun is up long enough to wear sunglasses to AND from work. And my garden finally has enough flowers in it again to provide me with a lovely bouquet.
Charlie Cat made sure that they smelled (and tasted) as nice as they looked! Since it is made up of pansies, chive flowers, thyme and geranium, all but the geranium are not only edible, but tasty! (I'm not sure about the geranium. I lost the tag and so am not sure if it is one of the "scented" ones that are good to eat or not)

Here's to a happy gardening season of tasty and beautiful things!

Update

So I believe that my decoys are doing their job. My cabbages look gorgeous!
I actually witnessed a Cabbage white fly into the bed the white noticed the decoy and seemed to fly backwards. It was comical.











So here are my experiments. The first image is my potatoes in a bag. It looks really happy but I won't know until fall if its making potatoes.









This next one is ground cherry. They are the dessert of the tomatillo family. Last year we bought some of the berries and they tasted just like canned pineapple. I really hope these are as good.










Here is Bryan's strawberry patch. We put it in a window box to try to keep the wildlife away. So far so good.

seedlings

The pepper seedlings aren't looking so hot. What ever bugs got in and have been chewing on them sure are doing a good job of it. Hopefully when I put them outside in the next few days to start getting acclimated, they will perk up with the added sunshine. The tomatoes on the other hand are looking great! I don't think I have ever had "seedlings" that are nearly as big as the ones from the nursery. I probably have babied them a bit too much though.... they should really be out getting some fresh air during the day. Carrying them from their greenhouse to the porch each morning is a hassle though!
The forget-me-nots, impatiens, coleuses and spider plants are looking great next to the pansies. I always want to tuck a few more plants in... but this year's motto is "do not overcrowd" so I left nearly as much space as the packet suggests between plants.And now for some garden activism. I think we should have a letter/ email writing campaign for seed sellers to include pictures of what the plants look like at 2 or 3 stages of growth. I went out to weed the lettuce, chard and cabbage beds today and hope that I end up with the proper crops and not beds full of full grown weeds with nary a proper green in sight! Here's to full disclosure! Here's to making gardeners lives' easier!

garden update

There isn't quite enough going on outside yet to have a weekly garden update, but here is what is going on so far:
I'm trying out row covers to help get the cabbage and chard started. I don't think I watered under the plastic enough because the plants are slow to catch. I will soon be switching up the plastic in favor of row cover fabric to keep the hottest of the sun, and those crazy bugs that Amy mentioned, off my greens anyway, so I will have to wait for fall to try the plastic again.
I brought the birdbath top out of storage, cleaned it and filled it up. This year I am trying one of the floaty things that is supposed to keep the water clear and algae from forming on the dish insides. So far, so good.
The little bit of green visible in the lower leftt corner are the bulbs, chives, garlic and rose bush. A few purple hyacinths showed their colors. I am still working out the best times and ways to feed the bulbs so that the flowers come out full and happy. They looked a little better this year, so I will have to check my notes from last year, and hopefully improve again next year.
The trellis is strung up and waiting for the peas to decide to grow. I did another "spiderweb" but this year I used jute twine instead of bright orange acrylic yarn. I'm still finding bits of the blasted stuff in my compost bin.
The pots in the tiered corner herb/mum pots were rearranged. Again, I am trying not to crowd things in hopes that better airflow and more space will allow for larger, healthier plants.
In front of the far right fence I have erected a trellis from 8' tall plastic/metal stakes wired together to form a frame and more jute twine. That location will soon become home to my fuzz-less kiwis that are due to arrive in 2 weeks. Hopefully next summer I will be able to pick apples, kiwis, and if I'm ambitious, strawberries!
Lastly, the grass. Since the yard was a weed bed when we moved in 5 years ago, we used a little RoundUp to get the mess under control. Once the toxicity left the ground and we got rid of all the weeds and debris, we scattered grass seed more as erosion control than as a lush lawn. Tilling in compost and properly planting seed or even laying sod is in the long term plan for the yard, which will also involve building a permanent tiered structure of some kind for the herbs and include a small fountain or pond with a trickle of water. Since that day is still a ways off, grass seed with some mulch and a little sprinkle of long release fertilizer will hopefully at least give me something other than weeds and mud to scrunch my toes in this summer.

creating a garden

As I surveyed my garden recently, I contemplated locations for new perennials, where I should dedicate space for a bulb garden, and other ways to arrange the space, it occurred to me how many of the plants were given to me by other people. As house warming gifts my mom gave me the butterfly bush and the apple trees and Amy's mom gave me a piece of her peony that had been gracing her garden for ages. A long time neighbor of my parents sent along a few of the bearded irises that she divided from the patch I used to be able to look out of my bedroom window at, and another friend's dad sent along some of his irises that he divided. I also plant some of the marigold seeds that originally came from a mother's day project way back in second grade. My mom has been saving seeds from and planting them year after year, I have faithfully planted them, often end up with plants, but somehow my seeds never work, seed saving is another task I have yet to figure out.

This year I am hoping to obtain a cutting off of a neighbor's hydrangea and I am trying to get some forsythias to take root (as much as I love the bright yellow, they may end up being bonsai-ed, not sure where I would put a full size forsythia- but never say never!) In years to come I am sure that I will obtain other bulbs, cuttings and divisions, and will pass along more than a few to other gardeners.

I'm telling you all of this for two reasons: one, I am a sentimental fool, and love to look around my garden and see little bits of friendship from all of the people who have given me plants and two, dividing plants is a necessary part of gardening.

Plants getting root bound in their pots; carrying so many baby suckers that they are trailing on the floor; bulbs, rhizomes and root stocks getting so big and crowded that the plant can't get enough nutrients to bloom correctly, all of these are reasons to divide. Each type of plant has its own set of rules about how and when to divide it, any good garden book should be able to guide you. But what to do with all of the "baby" plants when you do divide?! (yes, there were 6!!! plants in a 6" pot!) Passing them along to friends, especially those that you know are starting a new garden, looking to expand their garden, or want to add more perennials instead of annuals, are good places to start. If they are newbies, you may even get lucky and they will accidentally kill it and in a few years you can pass more along when it is time to divide again. There are groups out there (like the seed saving group that Amy is now part of) who not only trade seeds, but also divisions of plants. It sure keeps the cost down if you can find somebody with the kinds of plants that you want, and somebody else probably wants the kinds of plants that you have. Guerrilla gardening is another way... only a few of the irises that I dropped along the train wall seemed to take this year, but that means I can try again 2 years from now when they need divided again! Just be careful not to introduce invasive non-natives such as bamboo or honeysuckle- in the right- controlled- location they are great, but they can cause destruction of the habitat rather than enhancement.
If you can't find somebody who wants them, another option is always the compost pile. Now when it comes to things like the peony and irises that came from someone else's lovingly cared for garden, and especially because they were given to me when I was starting my own garden, I try extra hard to find someone to pass the starts on to. Sometimes though, it isn't practical. Many plants, such as thyme, mint and oregano crowd themselves out of their pots so fast that I am chopping a chunk of the plant out every year and adding fresh soil. Often times someone will need more herbs and will take them (speaking of... does anybody need oregano, mint or thyme for this year? I thought I had divided them in the fall, but the roots still seem kind of tight, so I will gladly pull a start off for you if you need them) but just as often, everybody else I know will have a bumper crop of herbs, that's where the compost pile comes in. Even though it is "throwing a plant away" I like to remind myself that once decomposed, it will add nutrients back to my garden so that other plants will be big and healthy. If a flower start is extra tenacious and lives through being thrown in the compost bin, I take it as a sign, replant the start somewhere else in my garden or a pot and enjoy the beauty of the flowers. One of these is going on my desk at the office, the other 5 are getting added to my shade garden in the alley as soon as the temperatures go up just a bit higher.