Is this getting just a little snooty, or what? This is a neighbour of mine, who regularly mows his lawn in a 3-piece suit. You should see how he rollerblades. :-)
I wanna read the beginning of the Garden Journal!
I wanna read the latest entry in the Garden Journal!
I wanna read the latest weird recycling tip!
Is this getting just a little snooty, or what? This is a neighbour of mine, who regularly mows his lawn in a 3-piece suit. You should see how he rollerblades. :-)
I grow CLOVER in my grass. It seems to be gaining some acceptance around here, and it's gratifying to see other lawns on the street with large bursts of clover. It also stays green when our watering ban inevitably hits. I am a Carol Rubin convert, too: I truly believe it will be illegal to water your grass before 2015. We have too many people, and too little drinking water to go around to waste it on something as vain as grass. We don't eat it, we don't build with it, we don't wear it. We look at it, and we walk on it, and we poison it to keep it green and free of other green plants. Soapbox: What is WRONG with you sods???
Soapbox Time:
Gardeners, I ask that you consider where your peat moss is coming from. While the moss in peat
bogs does grow back, the other organisms,
plant and animal, do not. Peat moss, in the form we find useful, is also not as "renewable" as you would think. It takes centuries for it to pickle and decay into that fluffy red-brown stuff. As peat bogs are depleted of the peat, they tend to drain or flood, as the "sponge" is no longer there to hold all the water. Poorer water quality, less groundwater, more run-off, more flooding... Do we really want this? The only reason you don't hear about it very much is that, face it, PEAT MOSS just doesn't inspire one to write poetry, paint masterpieces, and no one feels particularly proud when they say: "Hey, my national symbol is PEAT MOSS, man!" It's also difficult to chain yourself to it in protest. Besides, while it's great for potted plants, it draws moisture AWAY from the roots of earth-bound plants. Use composted manure. Now there's a genuinely renewable resource!
I have my best successes with plants native to north-eastern North America. They're no longer damnably difficult to find -- even Home Depot's garden centre has False Solomon's Seal and chelone glabra (White Turtleheads), and wild ginger -- although you probably don't want wild ginger in your garden, as it takes over. Check the Federation of Ontario Naturalists web site, and they have a list of native plant fairs. Even when trying to go native, you have to be careful about where you buy -- many of the plants that are native to the region were likely harvested without regard for their natural environment, doing the conservation effort more harm than good, as a whole. I managed to find some interesting native plants at the Newmarket Eco-Fair in April, 2003. We'll see how quickly they spread. I didn't give them ideal planting sites. My next challenge: growing North American native VEGETABLES.
Potatoes engineered with Bt are obviously a no-no -- Bt has to be one of the most effective organic 'cides on the planet, and growing Bt crops can only accelerate the emergence of Bt-resistant pests, much the same way DDT-resistant pests (e.g. mosquitoes and bed-bugs) developed, the same way penicillin-resistant bacteria evolved in the last 40 years due to overuse. Something to think about. Sure, we don't want pesticide and fungicide sprayed on the corn. But we don't want pests and fungi resistant to our organic controls, either.
To expand my vegetable garden without hurting myself, I ordered a book from Rodale Press called Lasagna Gardening. It has nothing to do with cheese. It promised to teach me how to build a raised bed using compost, grass clippings, newspapers, etc. and NO DIGGING, and be able to plant my seedlings in it the same day. It worked! I planted up one 2X8 foot garden bed between my roses in 2000 (ever gardened when any-minute-now pregnant?), and ate snow peas all summer. When I turned my compost the following spring (April 2nd, 2001) to get a head start on the spring cooking, I dropped the spade into the wintered lasagna garden, just out of curiosity. Did it really become the loamy nirvana the book promised it would?
The earth was black, the newspapers at the bottom were gone, and there were earthworm tunnels all over the place. I just about prostrated myself on it in ecstasy. The bed was friable, luxurious, rich, yummy, and smells sweet. Over the winter I made a line in the snow outlining the half of the back yard I would turn into the food garden. And I didn't have to break my back to create it! I used this technique to build my two expansion beds (covering half the back yard), and the food bank plot at the community garden in July, 2003. As of October, 2004, I have one or two converts to the "no till" concept. 2005 at the community garden was a roaring success! They still think I'm a flake, but I'm a flake gaining credibility. :-)
Here's my deck, as of August 28, 2005. :) Note that the pear tree is bearing loads of pears now. I'm building it using copper-treated wood and Trex composite lumber. Trex is made with recycled plastic shopping bags and wood pulp. Never requires staining or sanding, and to clean it up, just power wash once a year. Ideal, really, for my back yard. Note that the vegetable garden is really, really lush. Note that the birch tree is really, really tall. Note that I have retired the bed under the birch tree. Note that the back yard is currently as cluttered as the front. Under the blue tarp: sonotube concrete forms for when we start digging. Soon... oh, soon... I'll have my rain barrel up on the deck... I'll have my safe walk-out to the back yard in the winter... Oh, soon...
Here's the back yard in March, 2001. Most of my footprints outlining the garden have faded, but Tiger's standing in the centre of the planned garden bed.
Voila the garden in August, 2002. Tomatoes on the right, potatoes on the left. There are other veggies in there somewhere... but they were overgrown ruthlessly, everything but the sunflowers the birds planted over the winter.
One hard and fast rule about gardening in a neighbourhood filled with basketball hoops, hockey nets, and children: plant nothing expensive! The easiest way to do this is by trawling through the neighbourhood in the spring and fall, when serious gardeners are cleaning up their gardens and dividing their perennials. Chat with the people you see gardening, even if they're total strangers. Questions about unusual-looking plants are usually answered, and if you chat with me, you're bound to take home something in a baggie or even potted up in a yogurt container. Seeds are plentiful in the fall, and can easily be stashed in an envelope. Most gardeners take requests for plant cuttings as a compliment. Gardeners are happy to share, if you're polite. It's the people who remove themselves from their gardens, who hire "landscapers", who resent such intrusion. You will rarely see these people in their front yards, however.
Toads. You should hear the frogs and toads sing at night! Not a summer goes by wherein a toad does not hop across my patio to see whether the grass really is greener on the other side. Toads are our friends, and should be encouraged in the garden with upended flower pots, patches of tall grass, well-mulched beds, and ZERO PESTICIDE USE.
Borage. Very hardy in Southern Ontario. Delicious blue flowers have a slightly sweet flavor and very subtle scent. (I'm starting to see pink and lavender flowers, as well, probably due to lack of diversity in pollinators.) You can eat the leaves, too, but get 'em young, unless you like chewing on pincushions. They cook down to a rather unappealing mush. You will plant this stuff only once. You will never need to plant it again. I used to float the blue, star-shaped flowers in Coke. Now I float them in iced tea.
Dragon's Blood sedum: I bought it before we moved into the house, while still a 15th-floor apartment dweller. It's nice to be able to bring something from my previous residence to my current. It's also something of a tradition, although my branch of the family hasn't really adhered to it as much as our less mobile branches. It's now a carpet of pink flowers around my front patio, in June.
Here's my pink turtleheads (chelone obliqua, native to southeastern U.S., not Ontario) at last! Wish I could find more stuff like that for my garden. They take care of themselves, and can even stand up to basketball practice. I'll put up a picture of the white turtleheads (chelone glabra) when they get established, and start to bloom. Glabra is native to Ontario, Quebec, and northeastern U.S..
Check out the pictures of some things in my 2001 garden.
"> Hey, check out my kitchen farm, in 2002!
See two intruders in my garden in 2003, and my new composter.
See a 2004 visitor. I'm hoping I can scare this one off.
Some garden evolutions -- as of the end of April, 1999. The pictures are quite large, about 100K each. There wasn't a hedge in the yard yet, so these pictures were already out of date at the time of development.
May 22nd, 1999: Ow. Dug another hole. Ow. Actually, it wasn't so bad in the back yard as it was in the front: I dug up only two brick fragments and a few small stones -- and nothing else but clay. Into the 3'X3' round hole went a new birch tree. The most fun part was actually pulling the tree out of the Beetle. :-D What better way to entertain your neighbour than to pull a seemingly endless plant from the arse of a subcompact car? Surprisingly, the tree fit very well, occupying diagonally the back of the boot, the whole of the back seat, and the passenger side of the front. I forgot to buy the stakes and wire, however -- back to the nursery tomorrow!
May 23rd, 1999: I ordered a pile of triple mix and had it dumped in my driveway. I share the driveway with my neighbour, as I also share a wall with them. They wanted (rightly) to know what all that yummy black stuff was for, and how long it would sit there. It took a while. I forgot how many bricks there are under my lawn. After prying out about 20 bricks' worth of fragments, I gave up and filled the hole. One cubic yard of soil is A LOT. I fear I may have some left over! My garbage collectors are going to curse me again, too, for all that clay on the curb...
May 31st, 1999: Well, it all worked out. The rain came a day after the soil was dumped in my driveway. I got sick, and Tiger got sick, the next day -- still raining. By Friday, the mound of dirt was still there, and it didn't look like anything would happen with the garden, being too sick to dig and all. My husband, having just installed the garage door opener, wanted to park his car in the garage. He said he would dig the rest of my garden for me. I couldn't watch -- I'm a back-seat driver at best, and when someone else is working in MY garden because I CAN'T...
June 8th, 1999: My grandmother died today, and as part of a sort of exercise in ritual therapy, I bought two rose bushes and planted them. The idea was to bring a piece of her life into my garden. She loved roses. I would have planted lemons, as that's how I best remember her -- for all those lemon trees and ultra-fresh lemonade -- but lemons just don't stand a chance in Canada. I have no idea what kind of roses they are, since I got them from the nursery's "Anonymous Wagon". I don't even know if they're climbers or shrubs or ground-huggers! [GRIN] I had hoped to build raised beds for them, just to avoid digging, but we couldn't afford cedar wood, and I refuse to put more pressure-treated stuff in my yard, so I only just finished digging and mounding at 11:30pm. I wonder if one of my neighbours will have called the police about my "suspicious digging". They probably thought I had another Geranium construction site supervisor buried in my yard... ;-)
February 27th, 2000: Well, we broke weather records this year. We had snow piled 2 feet high on the lawn from all the shoveling we had to do, but one week of 10C eliminated EVERYTHING. Lawns and gardens look ugly. Clover stays green even when it's frozen, so I still have the only green lawn in the neighbourhood. My bulbs also peeked through the surface in December, just before we got all our snow, and they don't look badly damaged now that the snow is gone again.
This year I'm doing the cherry tomatoes again, along with cukes and melons. I got two baseball-sized watermelons off my plant -- really sweet, and no seeds! The muskmelon that appeared on the other melon vine didn't have anything edible inside -- it was all rind. I don't think I'll try corn in the front yard again, although definitely I'll do it in the back. Hope springs eternal, after all, and I want to see how well my plants do using the Lasagna garden technique. The front will pretty much be dedicated to interesting vegetable foliage and flowers. The back I hope will help feed us all. I'm already drawing plans up to incorporate the new garden bed into the rose beds. It isn't easy being green -- warm weather makes you itch to get outside and muck about, but the ground's too soggy to work with!
July 7th, 2000 Looks like that "too soggy" part still holds true. Lots of farmers in Southern Ontario are either ruined or in hock up to the gills because of the hugely wet summer we've had -- a total reversal from last year, I add. The weather has suited me just fine, however: no need for AC even though I'm 10 days away from Baby Day. My tulips finished early (again), and because I haven't had the energy or a real inclination to stoop for hours on end, I have bald spots in my front garden. The borage seeded itself (again). The pansies are popping up in the lawn, and the same neighbour who gave me my pansies gave me a clump of ferns and a day lily. These things spread like weeds. We'll see how they compete with clover. It'll be nice to have some ferns adding interest to the barren shade between my house and my neighbor's. The clover is now a beautiful and fragrant carpet of leaves and blooms. We also have discovered raccoons -- in the usual manner. The buggers took up residence on a neighbour's roof and just this past garbage day decided to snack. We thought they were actually stuck on the roof, but yesterday I saw one emerge over the peak of B.'s roof, scale down the drainpipe HEAD FIRST, and amble over to the flowerpot wagon on his front porch. The town won't do anything, so if we want to get rid of them, we have to pay an animal control agency to relocate or destroy them. It's hard to feel sorry for the roadkills you see everywhere when they've strewn your sometimes embarrassingly personal refuse across the street. :-)
Click here to see how some of the people on my street have dressed up their yards!
Click right here to see the latest stuff in my garden.
Garden Update, October 15th, 2000: I grew root vegetables and tomatoes in my front yard this year of the Dragon. The beets did amazingly well -- and were delicious, according to my clover-hating neighbours. I'll take their word for it: I tried them, and decided that I hadn't changed my mind since childhood. My tomatoes were SUPPOSED to be cherry tomatoes, but someone must have switched tags at the garden store. I have no idea what kind of monsters I grew, but they weren't cherry! They weren't even ROUND! They looked more like pumpkins. They tasted good, though. Last year's onions returned. I let them go to seed (now I know what an onion flower looks like), and will see how the plant looks from germination to setting bulbs. I also let my garlic go to seed -- the seed heads are really cool, and the stem curls like a Laa-Laa antenna (Teletubbies reference to those child-free people). The seeds are a lot bigger than I thought they'd be.
The lemon balm and borage are officially weeds in my garden. I learned from my naturopath that my weeds, however, are galactagogues! (They help bring in or increase mother's milk supply.) Borage leaf tea: ick. I'll stick with raspberry leaf. My red clover tea: ick. I prefer stinging nettle. Lemon balm tea: yum, even though it's not really a galactagogue. It helps mask the flavor of the borage, though.
The most remarkable thing to happen to us this year was discovering a wasp nest in the composter. All pest control companies use chemical means to kill the wasps -- not acceptable for stuff I'm going to spread on my veggies! A beekeeper told me wasps can't fly in the dark, and late evening would be the best time to break apart the nest and try to destroy the queen (sounds like a bad movie, doesn't it?). Well, I asked my neighbours on all sides of my fences to please not use their back lights while my husband and I were up to our elbows in a wasps' nest, and I'm not sure if we found the nest -- but we did find trash bags, including some poopy disposable diapers from when the grandmas were helping out with a newborn Dragon Boy. So we threw everything into a garbage bin and flooded it, hoping we'd nailed the wasps, and now I have to decide what to do with the diaper-contaminated compost. Possibly just spread it on the back lawn since we hardly ever use it, but more likely I'll have to toss it.
In any case, I've learned a couple of things about wasps from this experience:
Another gardening setback: my birch tree is infested with leafminers. My mom said she used to paint a band around the tree trunk to get rid of them, but she couldn't remember what she used. I checked with a nursery: she used CyGon. It's one of the nastiest pesticides out there, and isn't even "out there" anymore (2004). I've looked and looked for organic methods to control and/or eliminate leafminers, without success: everyone says I should prune off the infested part. For me, that meant cutting down the tree.
Garden Update, April 3rd, 2001 I'm getting to the point of no return, it seems. I MUST DIG! I had my new backyard garden already planned by the middle of February... A paper garden doesn't keep the urge at bay after the first bare patch of lawn appears through all the snow. The whole street is getting a little winter-weary: I've seen some of my neighbors imitate me by shoveling snow from the snowdrifts back onto the driveway so it will melt! Our crocuses and snowdrops are up and in bloom. I found a lonesome snowdrop in the dead grass between the houses. I wonder how it got there, and even more, how it SURVIVED. There is next to no light between the houses.
I ordered a bunch of seeds from Terra Edibles and from McFayden's. If I can germinate them (I have never had much luck with seeds), this year's garden will be magnificent. I saved some seeds from last year's snow peas, and this year I'm planting corn, two types of tomatoes, potatoes, lots of beans, peas, sunflowers, saskatoon berries... I'm getting hungry. Only one seed has actually germinated in the starter pots, however. I'm sure this is my fault... but I have only the one northern window to work with! There's nothing else I can do, short of dropping $80 for grow lights.
The most useful book I've bought about gardening is called "Lasagna Gardening". You can order it through Rodale Press. Chances are there's a little card for it in any Organic Gardening magazine. The basic idea is to layer your various organic materials on hand, and then push seeds and seedlings into it, and let time take care of the rest. The second-most useful book I bought was the Rodale Book of Composting.
Update May 5th, 2001: Let's see. A lot can happen to my garden when I'm not fit-to-burst pregnant. :-) I ordered a cubic yard of soil for the veggie garden in the back because I just couldn't get enough good compost out of my composter this spring. The nursery dumped it in the driveway two doors up. Needless to say, neither I nor the owner of said driveway was impressed. I did get my cubic yard dumped in my own driveway, but they didn't pick up the mistaken cubic yard, so Neighbour got free triple mix. As it was, I had just enough for my garden in the back. I forgot to ask my husband to spare the newspapers from that week's collection, so I lost a whole two weeks' worth of garden foundation, and ended up scavenging far and wide throughout the whole town, trying to get ahead of the recycling truck. I ended up bumming the weekend editions of various newspapers from my neighbours.
We bought another composter, and I have planted my Saskatoon berries where the leftmost bin used to be. I also rescued a pear tree from a neighbour's yard renovation. It sits in the top right corner of the garden. To make room for the new composter, I had to muck out the old one and move it slightly to the right. No sign of the wasps' nest, thank goodness! Now I have a "collector" and a "cooker". That should speed things up mightily. I also rescued a bunch of wood scraps from a neighbour who made cabinets and furniture in his garage, so I have plenty of stakes for my tomatoes and beans and peas.
I set cardboard boxes on the new garden beds, and planted my potatoes in there. I'll have to be a little vigilant about watering, but I won't have to dig for spuds! (That's the theory, anyway.) My "ground cherries" (a tomato relative) and yellow Brandywine tomatoes have sprouted and are off to a vigorous start, as have my Matucana sweet peas. Everything else has to be sown in the ground. Quite frankly, I'm champing at the bit, especially with the record-breaking high temperatures this year.
I didn't do much of anything in the front. Something weird and wonderful is growing under my crabapple tree, and I know I planted it there, but I can't remember what it is. :-) I bought $16 worth of pansies and dropped them in the ground at the very end of April so there wouldn't be any bare spots for the cats to poop in, and everything is greening up beautifully. Half my tulips and most of my daffies are done... tsk. I brought my eucomis bulb in for the winter, and just replanted it last week. My liatris came back very eagerly. Now it's time to put the tender herbs I've got in my kitchen back outside during the day. (They have even survived Dragon Boy's appetite!)
Garden Update, May 29th, 2001 Well, things have sprouted. I lost one tomato seedling to damping off AFTER I planted it outside. Everything else kind of said: "Eek! Sunlight! Oh, wait, this tastes good..." and is now growing like my kids. My husband and I have pounded stakes and lattices into the ground (love those sledge hammers!), my corn and beans and peas have sprouted, but only 2 of 24 sunflower seeds planted have made it to the true-leaf stage of germination. Time to buy some Swanson pot pies and hang the aluminum tins on the fence. !@$%%^@#$% cheery birds... I planted more sunflower seeds, but I couldn't find the 14' variety, so I have to settle for 12' sunflowers. I've also discovered DIY alfalfa sprouts. The seed packet was $3.00, and I'm not even halfway through it after 4 plantings in a wide-mouth jar. You have to try this. It's great for the kid who wants to see something grow two days after it's been "planted", and by the time the kid loses interest, it's ready to harvest.
I lost a rose bush this year -- wuss. I will eventually dig it out and replace it with something hardy, perhaps my saskatoon martins currently planted in a cardboard box nearby...
Garden Update, July 7th, 2001: Just ate my first potatoes. One of the cardboard boxes split at a corner, and I saw this fiendishly tempting flash of red as the plant did a striptease as the box flapped in the wind... I'm really glad I used the cardboard boxes. I could scrabble UNDER the plant without disturbing it too much, and the 8 potatoes I got were utterly gorgeous! (I take my excitement where I can.) I wiped them clean under running water and ate the smallest one raw. YUM! Boiled the rest of them al dente, dolloped a pat of butter on top, and served with beef and broccoli. It is SO worth the effort! The hardest part about organic homegrown potatoes? Wrapping the cardboard box around the hill again, tying it into place, and topping it up with compost while trying not to step on anything else in the garden!
Garden Update, January 3rd, 2002: I just got my McFayden seed catalog today. ARGH! I don't know how I'll be able to sit still until March, when I start most of my seeds! I also finally scanned and arranged in HTML format a few photos of some things in last year's garden, in case anyone is interested. Enjoy.
Garden Update, March 27th, 2002: I got my McFayden and Terra Edibles seed catalog orders about 4 weeks ago, just the seed packets, anyway. I promptly went out and bought another fluorescent light fixture, two plant-spectrum tubes, and strong-armed my husband into putting it up on the ceiling over my kitchen shelves. Tiger and Dragon Boy love making peat pucks expand in trays of water, and with a couple of seed spoons, I have achieved amateur gardening nirvana: NINETY PERCENT SEED GERMINATION! Currently hugging the ceiling are my Jolly Jester marigolds, two kinds of tomatoes, lots of basil, lots of chives, cilantro, parsely, and fennel. I know most of those herbs are perennials, but any edible perennial I buy tends to get devoured into oblivion before it gets established. I don't know where I'm going to shoehorn everything in, I wasn't expecting results THIS good. There's stuff that hasn't arrived yet because it is dormant, not seed stock. This year: three different kinds of spuds on one side of the garden, and three different kinds of tomatoes on the other! Three different kinds of carrots! Three different kinds of peas! CORN! Zucchini! Also in the works are a honeyball bush to attract the humming birds I've seen in my neighbour's yard, more sunflowers, and hopefully a harvest from the saskatoon berries I planted last year.
The funniest thing happened to me at the garden centre the other week, too: I found a packet of "alternative lawn" seeds, aka WHITE CLOVER! They were charging $4 for 20 grams of seeds! I had to go to a livestock FEED STORE to get my white clover seeds last year, and couldn't order it in increments of less than half a pound! And half a pound of white clover seeds cost me $5! I couldn't stop laughing until I found a hapless employee to wave the envelope at and say: "Are you KIDDING?" The sad thing was, they didn't get the joke.
Garden Update, April 6th, 2002: Well, seed pucks are rehydrated, seeds are planted, and seedlings are growing. I've got nowhere to put the darned things until the ground thaws and the snow stops surprising us. Here's my new GROWLIGHT! Much better than simply using the north-facing window. Of course, now that the seedlings are all pushing roots out the bottom of the pucks, I have to pot them up until next month, which means I have just done myself out of the top shelf for them. I put six of my marigolds in pots, and put the pots into an old cat-cage (not a kennel with solid plastic walls), and put that under the table, thinking I could foil the kids and the cats. Not so. The cats can reach in and pull the delectable salads into reach. Still, drinking too much Coke has its advantages: I unfolded one of the 12-can boxes and closed the cage off on 3 sides. We'll see if the red cardboard helps them grow better, too, like red mulch under tomatoes.
Garden Update, July 15th, 2002: I got a little help from the birds this year in planting the garden. About 20 or so sunflowers sprang up in the middle of the tomato bed, and I pulled them like weeds. I ended up with 10 knee-high sunflowers, and with carrot seedlings and squash seedlings, and peas, and corn, and radishes, and stuff, I didn't want to disturb them. I managed to pull and transplant four of them along the fence, where I had them growing last year. The transplants are unhappy, and are still sulking at knee-height. The ones I left alone are almost twice as tall as I am, partially shading the tomatoes in the heat of the day. I've just taken to hacking off the broad leaves to keep the shade from getting too deep.
All my potato boxes in the other bed are happy and overflowing. The honeyball bush is still a bit of a stick with some leaves on it, but hopefully next year it will flourish. I think I'll stick to just one kind of potato next year. Having 3 kinds is neat, but I crowded the boxes, and I don't think I'm going to get that great a harvest. They also shaded the lettuce, so it's a bit leggy. I planted some of my many chives, bought some green pepper seedlings, accidentally spilled a packet of tomato seeds, and planted some REALLY old coriander seeds. I got two successful plants out of those, and my scissors can't keep up with them. The beets didn't make it. I planted more carrots to take the place of the radishes, ran out of onions (darn it!), and the corn and squash and beans are starting to get out of control. I dropped some of the half-finished compost all over the place, and the corn seems to like it. Maybe this year, they'll grow higher than my waist! Maybe I'll even beat the raccoons to the cobs... Maybe the cobs will have more than ten kernels each... I love gardening.
My snow peas are just about finished, and the Lincolns and Homesteaders haven't caught up yet. I also planted some hyssop beside my pear tree (still only one pear, and it's in the same place as last year's pear! What is this: Our Tree of the Perpetual Pear?), and another beside the new neighbour's honeysuckle vine... and I tried my best to give away all those chives that wouldn't stop germinating because I couldn't bear to just throw them in the composter! So I have about 5 chive plants growing in my front and back yard (that I know about), some parsley that survived its initial transplant shock when I thought it was dead, a couple of sweet peas that just germinated last week because they didn't like the soil I planted them in, and holy cow, garlic sprouting in my lawn! I'm not sure how THAT happened.
Garden Update, September 1st, 2002, Harvest Results: We're sick of tomatoes. The yellow pear variety took off while we were away on vacation. Green Zebra is really cool, and tastes really good, but they're all coming ripe at the same time, too. Brookpact didn't do too well in the spring, and the younger seedlings I planted after hardening off the other two kinds were overtaken, so I have very few red tomatoes in my garden. Often, we have "stoplight salsa" at supper: the red, yellow, and green tomatoes diced and mixed up in a salad bowl. Now I have no more neighbours who will accept my tomatoes. I will somehow have to limit myself to just four or five seedlings next spring... but they can be so FRAGILE!
The onions grew fantastically -- regular, grocery-store-sized onions! Normally, I get golf-balls with greens. The garlic is thick, and I've tried digging some of it out, but I can't seem to get a good-sized bulb. Must be crowded. We'll see about next year. I got two peppers off the plants I bought from a nursery and put in the tomato and potato beds: one was a green pepper, as expected, and the other looks a lot like a yellow chili. I'm almost afraid to try it. All eight plants got lost in the tangle of tomato and potato vegetation. Oh well. I don't think I'll do as many boxes of potatoes next year; I've come to the conclusion that we just don't eat that many potatoes, and I'm not quite up to storing them through the winter yet. I have the cold cellar for that purpose, but it's being used as a storage tomb. I mean, room. It's also tough to get to from the garden. The carrots were really yummy, and this year, I sowed three successions, so I haven't run out yet. Most of the later carrots got overtaken by the rogue tomatoes, so they're a lot smaller than they should be. On the other hand, they're also a lot sweeter. As usual with the Oxheart carrot variety, I didn't save one from last year to get seed this year. I have to buy the seeds again from Terra Edibles.
The birds planted sunflowers for me, and the tomatoes just love the midday shade! This is a good companion for tomatoes, methinks. The birds are coming back to reap their rewards, and I'm very happy to leave them to it. I also have zillions of giant mosquitoes (the kind that don't bite, but are freaky-looking), bajillions of little mosquitoes (the kind that bite, but don't think I'm tasty, thank goodness -- must be my caustic personality), and honkin' big spiders I occasionally have to evict so I can get through their webs to my tomatoes. Yikes.
My beans finished earlier than I expected, and I didn't get as many off them as I thought I would, given I treated the seed with nitrogen-fixing bacteria before planting them. I guess the drought did them in. The corn didn't do too badly, either: by not planting them near the fence, the raccoons didn't find them, and I got to keep all thirty of my pitifully tiny cobs of sweet Luther Hill kernels. A lot better than last year's harvest of TEN, including the ones the raccoons took. I got two squash off my climbing Tatume -- really good in homemade "stoplight minestrone", and there's one more Eat All growing under the last few stalks of corn.
All we've taken from the produce section at the grocery this summer are apples, bananas, watermelon (too finicky for my gardening habits), and the occasional celery and broccoli. I think we managed to better than break even this year, by growing instead of buying. Funny... the bank account doesn't seem to reflect that. Must be the rising cost of water and electricity. Still, now that the initial purchases of grow-light fixture and topsoil have been made, I think we can completely eliminate those expenses next year. And start building REAL trellises for the tomatoes, so they don't keep falling all over each other!
Garden Update, January 31st, 2003: Yes. Updating in January. I couldn't stand it anymore. The seed catalogs arrived, as they always do, too early to place an order, because then the seeds arrive too early to start, and I had to plant something. I went to various gardening places, and finally found someone who has those expanding peat pucks in stock. Everyone else said: "They've been ordered, but they're not in stock yet." Ha. I'm going to fill all my dirt and clover needs at the Farm and Equine Supplies place from now on! (Bag Balm, anyone?) Anyway. I also found some ONION seeds. Yes, SEEDS. And the packet says to start them in February. Woo-hoo! So we have eight pucks going of onion seeds, to see if we can actually get some bulbs out of them by mid-summer. This should be interesting. And we tried something weird with empty toilet paper rolls: I plugged one end with a wad of wet newspaper, filled the tube with potting soil, and planted.... CARROTS! The idea is to get a long root from seed in the roll, and get the roll transplanted to the ground before it bursts. I'm hoping for mature carrots in June, as opposed to August, or September. Carrots always take a long time. My Tiger and Dragon Boy liked pulping the Sports section in a bowl of water, and spooning dirt into the tubes, but I had to take over the actual sowing of the seeds, as I'm actually a little serious about getting real carrots this way, without having to thin the seedlings. Anyway. The growing season has begun! If the carrot trick actually works, no kindergarten teacher will ever see another toilet paper roll from my house again!
Garden Update, June 13th, 2003: Well, I have two gardens now, so I can be forgiven for not updating much of anything around here now. I took up a plot in the community garden, and have encountered some interesting challenges, not the least of which are human. I planted corn in the part of the garden that not only abuts the wood-chip path (wood sucks nitrogen out of the soil for decomposition, and corn also sucks nitrogen out of the soil to grow, so you see the problem here). I then had to compensate for the high nitrogen demand on the soil. I did what any self-respecting gardener would do: planted beans right next to the corn, added a couple of squash seeds (the Three Sisters), and scratched liberal amounts of used coffee grounds into the soil. I don't drink coffee, but there are three coffee shops all within walking distance of my house... so I set up a couple of buckets at the nearest Tim Horton's, and got a daily grind of two FULL buckets to spread on my garden. There was so much, I offered to get it for the other gardeners, and had a waiting list going. Halfway into the second week, though, the owner of the Tim Horton's put a stop to the environmentally friendly movement, without explanation. No one could tell me why: unsightly? unsanitary? did he just object to giving stuff away, free of charge? did he have friends at the Michigan landfill site who wanted those coffee grounds and filters? Oh well. The employees were just as baffled as I was, especially since they were all so helpful and enthusiastic about it, once I explained that the grounds were going to the community garden, and the food coming from the community garden was distributed to the local food banks, which are perennially short on fresh vegetables.
The next challenge was weeding. There's a gardening "how-to" seminar tomorrow, and no-till gardening methods are going to be part of it. Yet I can't get anyone at the community garden to do an experiment in no-till methods over the winter -- because no-till means you DON'T DISTURB THE SOIL IN THE SPRING OR THE FALL WITH A GIANT METAL BLADE. Every spring the garden is tilled. Every fall, the garden is tilled. That's not "no till". The person in charge isn't willing to experiment, or let me lead the experiment. Oh well. Maybe next year.
Assuming I get anything from the garden this year.
Rabbits, I expected. Haven't had a problem with them yet. Deer, I could see as a possibility. No deer yet. Woodchucks, none. Gophers, none. Stray dogs and cats, none. Insects, only what I have expected, and everything is planted next to its complement in pest deterrents and soil requirements. There's minimal damage.
But those ducks. We aren't anywhere near a water source. I didn't think we were close enough to the river to entice ducks over. I found a pair of them GRAZING ON MY BEAN SEEDLINGS, barely slowing down as they waddled like two lawn mowers up the row! With much cursing and hollering, I scared them off, and discovered I had only EIGHT BEAN SEEDLINGS LEFT! In the entire garden! They didn't touch anything else. If they'd touched the corn seedlings, there would have been a barbecue on the weekend! >:( I had to jury-rig a row cover over what was left, using the contents of the nearest garbage can, but I also have to go back tomorrow and figure out something a little more permanent, and before the clear plastic cooks my beans!
You just go right ahead and feed those ducks. Because the next time I see them in MY garden... BLAM!
Garden Update, September 9th, 2003: Well, the corn in the community garden is higher than my head. I must say I'm right proud. No modesty. They told me corn wouldn't do well there at all. :D Here's a picture:
This was taken July 14th, 2003. The corn now is half again as tall as I am, or twice as tall as that orange fence you see in the background. The ears are plump, sweet, and a milky white. The variety I planted is an heirloom from Seeds of Change: Stowell sweet corn. My potatoes are about ready there, my tomatoes are later than the ones in my back yard because it's a lot windier and colder on the top of the hill, I've had 3 sugar pie pumpkins off the vines already, mice devoured all my carrots, my snow peas didn't really produce all that well, but I didn't inoculate them. I replaced some of my green beans with purple beans, and yellow beans -- not a bad harvest off those, either, but I didn't pick them as diligently as I should have, so I didn't get as many tender pods as I could have. My bok choy fizzled, the daikon radishes (or lo bok in Chinese) are about half as thick as my wrist, so I'll call that crop a mitigated success. I have curled parsely out the ears, onions the size of softballs, hot peppers, sweet peppers, but no red peppers. Lots of fun, that garden.
Harvest Update, September 22nd, 2003: See the back yard garden, as of August, 2003. I haven't managed to get the camera to the community garden to get an updated photo. I expect it's all overgrown, and I hope I still have SOME corn standing, after Hurricane Isabel blew herself out in the area. That little piece of wood in the lower right corner is my rescued wooden-crate composter. I've had more and better dirt out of that thing than from all my other composting efforts combined. The pear tree gave me FIVE PEARS! Thanks, neighbours, for planting that pear tree in your back yard! Dragon Boy grabbed the smallest one off early, so I actually harvested four of them. I gave one to the neighbours who pollinated with me, and put the others in a paper bag to ripen. Window-breaking pears will ripen in paper bags. I ate my first one on Saturday, and it was DIVINE. Oh, the organic pear! Oh, the homegrown organic pear! Oh, oh, OH! Ahem. Pardon me. I've got two more pears going in that paper bag, and I'm finding the wait just a little trying.
The bed on the left is my carrot and onion bed, with some heirloom green peppers. I don't think I'll be planting Jimmy Nardello green peppers again. They were small, thin-skinned, and shaped like hot banana peppers. They didn't taste all that great, either. Either two of last year's Oxheart carrots didn't flower or, more likely, the umbels got pulled off. I am guarding the third Oxheart umbel like a dragon. Carrots flower in their second year, and they're just so darned good to eat that I have a very difficult time leaving them in the ground over the winter. The idea is to never have to buy carrot seeds again. We'll see how next year's Oxhearts turn out before I make that decision. The onions in my back yard didn't do well at all. I think it was because they were shaded by the birch tree, and the soil wasn't rich enough, not with all that competition from the tree's root system and the carrots. Still, they taste great, even if they're smaller than golf balls.
The tomatoes... I actually had a manageable number of tomatoes this year. Everything seemed to be late, of course. (Of course.) Chadwick Cherry is definitely a keeper. The Yellow Pears reseeded themselves, as did the ground cherries. My Big Rainbows met all expectations, taste- and care-wise. I had to go up to gardeners in the community garden to let them know that their own Big Rainbows were already ripe, and would rot if they didn't pick them right away. They were waiting for the tomatoes to turn either red or yellow -- Big Rainbows are so named for a reason. You slice the thing open, and you indeed get streaks of pink, yellow, and red inside! I got a few decent Red Brookpacts (aka "Amish Paste"), but the Yellow Brandywines either didn't pollinate very well, or are just butt-ugly. I won't be doing those ones again.
The potatoes were amazing. I didn't get enough to store, and I think I'm going to keep doing them in the boxes instead of the ground -- I split them up this year to see which method gave more spuds. The box potatoes were a little scabby because the boxes dry out very quickly, but the groundlings were more difficult to dig out, more invasive to plant, and generally more susceptible to rot. The boxies didn't really get a chance to dry out the way they did last year, either, as we didn't have a drought.
The corn didn't do well at all, even with the raccoon content to snack on my composter. Forget corn next year. It did amazingly in the community garden -- so yeah! Corn there! And coffee grounds! The beans did okay; the nitrogen inoculant really did make a difference. Either that, or they got enough water this year. I grew lo bok radishes -- those foot long white roots you see in Asian groceries -- but didn't get much in the way of diameter and length. Must be more radish than I can handle. ;) The bok choy didn't do well at all, but I let it go to seed, and maybe next year. Yeah.
I grew sweet peas galore -- what heaven to walk beside those on the way to the composter! And something called "Scarlet Cardinal Climber". I didn't get a good picture of the bright red flower, though: it's shaped like a trumpet, and was supposed to attract hummingbirds. I didn't see any. I didn't get many flowers off it, although the "splayed-fingers" leaves were pretty enough -- but the neighbours on the other side of the fence were enchanted with it! I guess they got all the blooms. Oh well. :) The birds planted all my sunflowers. And they're reaping their rewards, too. Mostly starlings and redwing blackbirds, but they argue animatedly, and they drive the cats nuts!
I'm going to retire the carrot garden bed and plant a lawn over it, as the birch tree doesn't seem to like the cultivation under it. And I really love my birch tree. That means when I muck out the composter this year, I'll be moving it to where the snow peas were (behind the birch tree and against the fence), and extending the right-hand bed to the fence. (A la lasagna.) The kids need more space to play, anyway. I'm thinking about a small swingset. So yes, the profile of the yard is going to once again change radically.
Garden Update, December 17th, 2003: Yeah, a garden update in December again. I just wanted to say my composter has yet to freeze solid, thanks to the larger volume of stuff in there, and a more ready access to "browns" (leaves, branches, my decrepit rattan chair I used as a pea trellis this past summer). Of course, I've already started whirling the kitchen scraps through the garden blender, just to help things along. :) And I've found a rather... potent compost accelerant. I'll let you in on the secret next spring, especially if it's been a roaring success!
Garden Update, January 24th, 2004: Seed porn arrived even earlier than usual: the first week of January! ARGH! (Oops, that's "seed catalogs" to non-catalog-orderers.) All those pretty pictures with juicy cukes and tender tomatoes, and huge melons! Oh, the melons! I just don't have the right zones for the melons! And having saved a bunch of seeds from the harvest last year, I just didn't have to buy nearly as much... darn it. No new tomatoes, no new beans, no new corn... And I decided it wasn't worth ordering potatoes and onions online, as I'd have to pay an additional shipping charge, and I'd have way too many for my needs... I didn't want "Purple Viking" potatoes, anyway. :-( I'll just purchase the perishables in the garden centre. I got lots of heirloom seeds, though, except for the peppers... and now I have to wait. Pray for me.
Garden Update, June 27, 2005: Wow-ee. Too long, too long. And I haven't even been sewing that much, or gardening! Well, here. Have some pics and lots of words about what's new in my home garden.
I've taken up my plot at the community garden again, all planted up, and growing fast. I will be pretty darned busy with building a new, permanent, NICE LOOKING 3-bin composting system. Pictures, eventually. I don't usually bring valuables with me to the garden, like cameras and music players. Anyway, my garden is genuinely no-till! The town dropped off a huge donation (big dump truck, not independent landscaper's dump truck) of compost. A lot of wood, but that's better than the clay we got in the ground. We still haven't finished the pile off, although it's a mere molehill, when it used to be a mountain. The kids don't wanna come help anymore, darn it, now that their hill is gone. Not even the promise of a Happy Meal and a hose-off at the water park can tempt them. *sigh* It doesn't seem to be growing as fast as last year... but maybe that's just because last year had a wet spring. (Cold and wet, but water means growth.) With any luck, I'll get some squash. The watermelons are really taking their time, though. I don't think I'll get anything off them. The muskmelon... I'll hold my breath, but I'm not getting excited. I built a bamboo stake hut in the middle as a bean pole, however. We'll see what that looks like by the end of next month, when the Chinese long bean starts climbing. I fenced it off near the bottom, and so far, the woodchuck/gopher/duck/rabbit/small chewing thing has taken over easier pickings. My beans are surviving. I planted Black Valentine (thanks, Loamy!). Tomatoes are Black Pear, Beaute Blanche, Chadwick Cherry, Green Velvet, Purple Cherokee... Only one red variety, this year. We had problems with theft, last year. I also got Blue Russian potatoes! The kind that mash up like Play-Doh! :-D
Oh, and 8 pears ripening up this year, up from last year's 5.
Blah, blah, blah, that's enough.
See good gardening in Australia.
This is an utterly fantastic page. My page can
only dream of looking like this page. (The grass is
greener...)
Terry Yockey's got great pictures and good cold-weather advice. Listen well.
Where to get edibles and rarities. (And tomatoes!)
Richters Herbs.
They have a pretty good online selection for both home
and business growing. But if you want lemon balm,
don't buy it: just come to my garden and I'll pull out
a few stalks at the root for you. :-)
More garden stuff. Check out the forums, and look for the Compost Carols!
Organic Gardening Magazine by Rodale Press. (Personally, I liked it better when Mike McGrath was the editor, but that's just because seeing someone spanking a weed tickles my fancy.)
Interesting things to do with common toss-away
or blue-box doo-dads:
