4.7.10

I have a second interview today in the late afternoon. I'm very excited about it. I can either get a stomach full of butterflies waiting for my appointment time to arrive, or I can keep my head together with a little gardening. Hmmmm... have you met me?

Started in the front with a few plantings. Put some red onions in with my strawberries. They're supposed to grow really well together. The onions are circled in yellow - they're young and sort of hard to see. I circled one of the strawberry plants in red, just for giggles. The white stuff is DE - helps with pill bugs and other exoskeleton bugs, without inundating my soil with nasty chemicals.

I also tucked these three peppers into their new beds. The red circle is where I'll seed some habaneros.

Got my watermelons planted. "Hokkaido Black", "Desert King", and "Moon and Stars". Right now, these guys are in the back yard. Once the pavers are finished up front, these pots will be moved into their intended places. I needed to get the seedlings growing or risk not getting a crop! I laid a blanket under each pot so that when it's time to move them, we can lift them up more easily, using the blankets. My friend Tina had some trouble with birdies and varmits digging up her watermelon seeds, so I've borrowed my anti-bird cage from my bean bed.






I realised that this big, sharp, wire cage was right in the trajectory of my two goofy Italian Greyhounds when we let them into the backyard. Margo is mostly blind, so I wove some scraps from a paint drop cloth into the wire to help her see it. It's soooo sad when she bonks her little apple head on things. And the wire - ooh, that could give her a nasty cut!

Mom is helping me remember that "goal setting" applies to gardening just as well as any other type of work. I've had 5 rose plants, waiting to be planted, for well over a month. I decided that that would be my task today. This is the "Trashcan Bed", and two roses are destined for this area. I have a climber that will be planted near that trellis, and a bush that will go in one of the trashcans. I'm going to flip the locations of the big tub in the front with the small tub that is near the trellis, too.

Done! I raked out a bunch of dead leaves, pulled a ton of weeds, cut back a dead plant ( will replace later), and switched the locations of the planters. When I did that, I discovered a mini-rose growing in the big tub, so I moved it into the small one. Everything in its place!

This is the weedy can that will soon be home to the "bush" rose. That's it right there, sitting in that tub full of weeds. Waiting.

Taa-daa!

I don't have a "before" picture for this one. It just got put in a spot where I thought it would look good, get enough sun, and not grab the doggies.

This is a trellis in the "Long Back Bed". It's the intended home of the climbing rose sitting there in the bottom right corner of the pic.

Weeded the area and planted the rose. Yay!





The yellow circle shows where the pavers that I'm using in the front yard came from. They have been in storage here for over a year. This "Long Back Bed" is getting widened this year, and storing the pavers here has helped kill off the grasses and weeds where I'm going to be digging more bed. The red arrow shows the line of pavers that used to be the front of the bed. The green arrow shows that I've moved the pavers up to the NEW front of the bed. Hiya, Hippo!

Another trellis in the "Long Back Bed".

Weeded and planted. This picture has weird lighting because the skies were darkening, getting ready to rain. It had been treatening all morning! But I wanted to get these goals accomplished!! And I did just that. As I was cleaning up my messes and picking up my tools, it started to drizzle. By the time I was out of the shower, we were getting a nice, gentle rain! I didn't water my plants in, but I'm not so sure the rain will be enough. I'll check them after my interview and water if they didn't get enough.

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.