Garden 2013 - Episode 001

Even though I'm going to make this short and even though the photos are not top notch, who has time to take and edit photos anyway. We wanted to get some shots before April was over and the best light was long gone.

This is the long shot and shows the eight rows of four boxes each. There are four more to be built but we're not prioritizing that. All of the boxes have been weeded. Five or six of them were a bleeping 5 inch high carpet of some nasty little thing that detaches from its' roots and then has to be dug. The others responded pretty well to the hula-hoe and an occasional shovel for the errand dandelion or pigweed (that's a guess). We're trying something new this year: mowing rather than weeding the paths. The beds have about a 3 foot drop from the south side, where Ken is standing to take the photo and we have been flummoxed by the erosion during hard rains. This should help that!

The rhubarb bed. Some of the bigger plants need to be split but that's Ken's job.

We think this is the fourth year for the asparagus. It's completely wonderful! We've had three servings due to freezing weather and having to cover the bed. Last year we discovered it doesn't much like being covered so now we just eat whatever is up. Hopefully no more freezes but who knows??

One of our herb beds. The garlic seems very far along for so early. And last but not least, if Blogger will let me add another picture, are the peas. Two boxes of shelling peas, one of snow peas and one of sugar snaps. Two of the boxes needed the chicken wire and we just did that this week.

     

Boxes

My latest work, as in hard work rather than fun work, has been helping to build, install, level and fill these raised garden beds with dirt. Nothing has actually been planted yet although we're getting close. The plan is to have 36 of these beds ready and planted by early June. It seems almost an impossible task but I am determined to get as much done as possible and let the rest go with a minimum of kicking and screaming. These first four beds are now filled with soil and three of them have chicken wire put up for peas, which will be planted as soon as it is dry enough to get into the garden. The eight assembled boxes from the garage are now in the garden but haven't been leveled or filled yet. So that's 12 of the 36. The lumber with the cats will make 12 more.

The last shot is of four cigar boxes I've ripped apart to try something new. It was fun and messy getting all of the paper off of them.

Garden News Part Two

First, I want to explain all of the straw bales in the last post. We had been trying to come up with a compost system for the whole last year and nothing was coming together. I saw a system described in Eliot Coleman's "Four Season Harvest" based on straw bales that end up being part of the compost in a few years. We had priced the bales at $5 at the nurseries and ended up being at the right place at the right time to find a farmer who sold them for $2. We hadn't thought far enough ahead of the situation to realize we only needed half of the bales to start with so ended up with half of them in the garage. That's OK for now because the cats love them. Cats? Cats???? We haven't given a cat the time of day for 40 some years but Ken wanted some barn cats and happened to mention it to the goat folks and pretty soon somebody showed up with cats. I liked them immediately because they matched the dogs in color so we kept them. Juniper tried herding them for a week or two but has resigned herself to their wild ways.

The garlic that we replanted last fall, after learning that garlic pretty much likes to be planted in the fall, was ready to dig last week so Ken dug it up for us and Kei Chi and I braided it three days later. So authentic!! Now we just have to get used to using fresh garlic instead of those handy jars of pre-chopped stuff. The asparagus spouts are getting bigger and bigger and are starting to look like asparagus for gerbils instead of asparagus for crickets. Next year for people we hope. The cucumbers are planted along a chicken wire support and just starting to bloom as I got them in so late. Next year, I'll try something similar for the peas which were going gangbusters until a really hard rain just washed most of them up out of the dirt. The tomatillos we planted for fun and for salsa and they are just pretty, like little lanterns hanging on the plants. Inside the bonnets they are about the size of small cherry tomatoes so I guess they grow until they fill them up. I may put some more photos up on Picasa where I don't have to explain and you don't have to "listen."

My Absolute Last Garden Post (Ho ho)

Well, it seems that most everyone who looks at this blog is looking for news of the veggies. I had no idea. I put some of the middle of the season garden pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/kenandsharonsahl/Gardening101# because I had just run out of things to say. These are the results of two of the best picking days we had (there's 110 pounds of tomatoes in that one shot) and a shot of the freezer and a composited pic of most of what we canned. We also just bought an Excaliber food dryer and are having a good time playing with that. We haven't given up on the solar dryer we had started building - just short on time.

We did learn some valuable garden lessons: two seed packages of beets produce way too many beets, garlic is supposed to be planted in the fall, if peppers aren't ripe and red by now, forget it. Also, either the complete organic fertilizer mix described in Steve Solomon's "Gardening When It Counts" is amazing stuff or Ken and I have had a pretty good run of beginner's luck.

I have now sworn not to get back into the garden because I am FINALLY working on some ornaments. We'll see how long that lasts because my tiny okra dried so well I want to try drying some larger pods. Maybe I can talk Ken into fetching some and cutting them up.

And Even More Garden Pix

These beans are black beans but we also have peas (I know it's too late), limas, green beans and edamame. The pictures were fairly indistinguishable. The little red stemmed ones are beets, already thinned. We built a support for the cucumbers and cornichons. Pretty cool, huh?

And that's the herb garden with the stones around it and yes, there are 6 more tomato plants in it as well as a number of tomato plants in pots on the rim. Wish us luck figuring out what to do with all of them. I should weigh them as we bring them in just for fun.

More Garden Pix

I know, I know, I'm getting sick of pictures of dirt too. But after getting all of the planting done on June 16 which we had started on June 7, it was so exciting to see how quickly stuff started to come up. The seed potatoes had seemed a complete loss since we had stuck them in the basement for a couple of months without opening them to see the instructions that said to plant on arrival or refrigerate. When we got around to opening the box, it was a scene worthy of a science fiction movie. The sprouts were up to nine inches long and completely intertwined with the mesh of the bag. That was about a week before planting was a possibility and I worried over them every day. After we stuck them in really deep holes to keep from breaking the sprouts, I told Ken I would feel blessed to get five plants. Today we have two 20 foot rows almost full of plants.

The cabbages were starts from our friend Doug and the rest of that row is okra. The tiny plants in the unfocused picture are pepper plants. I'm waiting for the second set of leaves so I can thin the three or four down to one. The 24 caged tomatoes are about 400% more than we've ever had before, but apparently not enough for Ken. Check out the picture of the herb garden in the next post. And I'm pretty sure the dirt picture will be the last one of just dirt. I just wanted to show the raised beds I dug by throwing dirt from the paths up there. Ken smoothed and raked them and got them ready to plant.

The Garden Revisted

Gardening can be such hard labor!