10.10.09

Playing catch up on the blog. It’s late January, 2010, and I’m filling in captions and notes for draft entries for months past. Cheers!

Trying out brassicas! These are ALL from seed. Turnips in the bottom right corner. Kale just above it, some onions to the left of the turnips. Kohlrabi to the left of the onions. I forget the rest - probably some endive and broccoli.

I FINALLY got a brain and covered the central path in tarps to kill off the weeds. Oh, man, what a relief. Fingers crossed that I can get this paved in late winter/early spring 2010.





As I dig out topsoil to lay paths in the front yard, I've been moving that soil to the new bed in the back yard. Less grass = less to mow. But more flower beds = more places where the doggies get yelled at if they go and pee. There's a balance in there somewhere, I just KNOW it. The cardboard is not merely recycled, but it has been recycled TWICE. Yep. One of the work groups in my cubicle farm went to the local big box hardware store and asked for large appliance boxes. They used them to create a haunted pirate ship for Halloween. After scaring the bejeebers out of coworkers' kiddos, they gave me the cardboard, and now it's acting as a weed preventative. Yay!

Another angle. Man, just LOOK at that gorgeous fence! LOVE it.

Yep. Cardboard on soil.

So many bouquets!! This one has lemon basil in it for extra fragrance.

09.07.09

Playing catch up on the blog. It’s late January, 2010, and I’m filling in captions and notes for draft entries for months past. Cheers!

Redoing the cantaloupe patch - getting it set up for fall crops...

I pulled this chicken wire off of the ground where I had had the cantaloupe patch. I originally laid it to deter stray cats from using my carefully cultivated beds as a litter box. The chicken wire doesn't hurt them, but they don't like walking on it. It had pretty good success, actually. That is, when it wasn't covered (and thus softened) by mulch or plants.

I layed a layer of black plastic trash bags ( just cut them along a seam and tacked them down with "earth staples" made out of coat hangers). Added mulch over this, then put the chicken wire back into place.

Kitties, pee elsewhere!!

Took some time to thoroughly weed the flower portion of this bed as well.

Getting ready to prep a couple of mounds for artichokes. Artichokes are related to thistles, which many view as weeds. They don't need rich soil or lots of care. Having never grown them before, my theory is that I can get a couple of plants going well enough that vining plants (like winter squash) can grow around them without choking them out. Fingers crossed.

Mounds of soil for the artichokes.

Running the soaker hose. See those four little white sticks along the length of soaker in the middle of the pic? At the edge of the chicken wire/mulch line, there? Those are marking 4 kinds of squash I'm trying to grow. A mini white pumpkin, a mini orange pumpkin, acorn squash, and snake gourds.

Ran the soaker all through the bed. Yay, soaker hoses!!!

Each artichoke mound got a loop of soaker hose, then a good layer of mulch.

Artichoke marker, to be replaced with a hand-stamped metal one in due time.

My squash markers, again.

Um, see? See?!

My reading tells me that each artichoke plant will grow int a big, 3'-5' bush, with the blooms/chokes growing on stalks. I can't wait to see how they do. I'm hoping the artichokes will get established enough that the squash and gourd vines can grow around them and not kill them. We'll see...





Freshly weeded and mulched. Looks soooo nice.

This bed, the one between the sidewalk and the street, is overcome! There is this insidious grass-like weed crisscrossing it. And I need to rethink the positioning of some of my key plants. People love to park in front of this and then just step out into it, so I think some rose bushes are in order.

Chard and lettuces doing well.

09.03.09

Playing catch up on the blog. It’s late January, 2010, and I’m filling in captions and notes for draft entries for months past. Cheers!

The cantaloupe bed at its finest. There were three producing plants, all intertwined together. I think two were the same kind, and the third was different, but I'll be darned if I can't remember what I planted. Hoping it's in my notes!

It was time to pull out the cantaloupe vines and try to get some squash going for fall. I kept wanting to take the vines out, but each time I looked, there were several more well established baby melons visible and I just couldn't bring myself to do it! Note to self: The last few weeks of cantaloupes weren't very tasty. Once the quality starts to diminish, pull them out, work in compost, and start new crops. Don't be so sentimental. (It's hard, I know, I KNOW!)

All cleaned up, with just a few left for Trent to devour. I like cantaloupe plenty, but he ADORED these. That was pretty cool. And since the watermelons were all for me, it worked out just fine. When I asked Trent if I should grow cantaloupes again in 2010, the response was a firm, "Hellz Ya".


You can't read the marker, but this was a pumpkin plant, started from seed. It took over the bed that one of the watermelon plants had been in.

08.23.09

Playing catch up on the blog. It's late January, 2010, and I'm filling in captions and notes for draft entries from months past. Cheers!

Not much going on here. I had pulled out the watermelon vines because they had stopped producing. Was working on weeding and cleaning up the beds this weekend, I think.

I had to pull out a lot of the zinnias because they got some kind of powdery mildew. I let it get away from me. Need to be more vigilant!




I pulled out those two tomato vines that weren't giving me anything. That's about it...

08.15.09 - Etcetera...

Playing catch up on the blog. It's late January, 2010, and I'm filling in captions and notes for draft entries from months past. Sorry!






The basil took this planter OVER! Note to self - plant fewer varieties of basil - only really liked the Genovese, Sweet Globe, Lemon, and Lime for pesto. The Purple Opal was pretty for bouquets...

This was a gnarly huge turnip that I let grow for much too long. By the time I harvested it, it was woody and dry and grainy. Lesson learned...






There had been a huge bush of yellow pear tomatoes growing on the left hand side of this bed. I found that I didn't really care for their flavor or texture so when the bush slowed production, I pulled it out.

The bleeding hearts finally started to grow here. That's the glossy, smaller leafed-plantlet in the middle of this tangle of cantaloupe vines. It took them (the bleeding hearts) forEVER to take off!

I call this image, "Cantaloupe in a sling". Provocative, no?

An intruder did this work. Might have been a "fuzzy lizard", or a 'possum. I had seen a couple in the back yard around this time.

Look, Ma! The bleeding hearts are growing!

More melons! Yaaaaaaay MELONS!

This was the far tastier variety of cantaloupe. Bummer that I don't remember if I planted it from seed or a start from a nursery. Bummer squared that I don't remember the name of the variety. I'll check my notes, but I'm not holding my breath.

Through the looking glass, er, fence... See that little strip of scalloped cedar edging? I had tried to amend the soil between the fence and that edging with peat and cotton burr compost and agricultural sulphur and other acidifiers so that I could grow some blueberry bushes. See that little smudge of brown, just to the right of the central fence post, about 5 grid sections off the ground? That is a dead leaf, hanging desperately to the twiggy remains of my Tifblue blueberry plant. Oh, the horror! I'll be trying one more time in spring 2010 to do blueberries, but this time I'll container plant them. Fingers crossed.

There's another sad little twig. That one was an Austin blueberry. And look! Mr. Burpee. And weeds. Oh, god, the weeds.

Stray basils, oregano, mint, and a tigerella 'mater, planted alongside the driveway. I didn't waste space, my friends!!

This was a "stray" yellow pear tomato. I didn't water this plant as much, and the 'maters tended to sun-dry right on the vine. I actually loved eating those! Maybe I'll plant them again in the future and reserve them for drying.

Shrivelly goodness!

Wow. Looks a mess, but don't mothers love even the ugliest of babies? The vine trailing the box on the left is a watermelon vine. I got 6 nice watermelons this summer, and I am addicted. They were amazing. I'm going to try some smaller varieties in 2010. They'll ripen faster, and they'll be easier to cut up and put in the 'fridge. Trent doesn't eat them, so it's just me! Woe is me, WOE!

In the center of the back of this path, you can see how my yellow pear cherry tomato bush spread it's wings.

Tidy little dianthus, planted between the fence and the property line. Hey, it's MY property, so I'm going to plant it!!

Eh, same as above. Oh, and you can just see the stakes holding one of my Brazos blackberries, just to the left of the fence post on the right. There's a Navajo blackberry in the corner of the fence, on the far left.

That viney bit creeping toward the corner of the fence is one of the watermelon vines. I had a lot of flowers, a lot fewer melons start, and precious few melons ripen. I might try hand pollinating in 2010 to get more fertilized fruits. I'll also be more careful to water only the plant base as I think I may have lost some baby melons to over-aggressive watering. Man, the 6 I harvested were unbelievable.

The "pond". Kidding. This is where the crepe myrtle lost its battle. You can see the little volunteers all around the edge. I had to keep after those all summer. I cut them off, dug them up, and poured boiling water on them. We've had several good cold snaps since then (remember, it's now Jan 2010 as I write these captions) so I'm crossing my fingers that the tree has given up the ghost finally.

Tangle of watermelon vines. I'm a little camera happy. Edit, Erica, edit!!

One day the weedy expanse between my raised beds will be beautiful paths. The narrower, east-to-west paths will be large bark mulch. That means I'll be pulling up the nicely done pavers in the bottom left hand corner of this picture. The wider, north-to-south paths will be hardscaped. My thought process is that having the nice dark mulch between the planting beds will be cooler and help retain water. The hard pavers will be easier to walk on but will also retain/reflect more heat than the mulch. Getting there. Hopefully I can do it in late winter and early spring 2010.

In these shopping bags are the heads of the Giant Amaranthus I grew. I was hoping to shake out the grain and eat it, but maybe I harvested them too late. When I tried shaking them out, I got very, very little - anything. Some seed, some chaff, some twigs, some ants. I need to do more homework on what I'm supposed to do to harvest this grain, and how much I should expect out of two big brushy plant tops. It was fun though! And beautiful! Such a deep red.

See? So pretty!

Faded glory. This tallest stalks of this plant came above my jawline in its prime. I'm 5'8". Much of the vibrant color had drained and the plant was drooping inelegantly by the time I snapped this pic.

Chard is going gangbusters. The cage behind it protects my strawberries from birds. And the weeds to the left, eh, do weedly things.

On the left is my sun gold cherry tomato. Talk about sugar sweet. Those were addictive. They're definitely going to be part of the garden in 2010. I had cut the bush back a bit here because production was slowing down. I had planned to rip the bush out on this day, but just couldn't bring myself to do it. There are a couple of other 'maters along the back of this bed, but neither produced worth mentioning. They were late season varieties and I wonder if they even got pollinated? Not sure. I was noticing fewer bees and butterflies around the garden by this time, and we were in full drought mode.

LOVED having these long stemmed zinnias for cutting. I had bouquets all summer. The purple ones did much better than the chartreuse. In 2010, I'll plant them in the bed between the sidewalk and the street. I want this one for more food production. I'm less worried about people helping themselves to my cutting flowers, so I'll be ok with them in the "sidewalk" bed.

This evening primrose was lovely! It just grew and grew until one day it was over my head. Then it sent out flower stalks. I clued in at the last minute that they were night blooming (eh, hence the name!) and was able to enjoy them. They'll get planted in the "sidewalk" bed in 2010 as well.