A bit of an overview

I just logged in to my blog account to write a little garden update.  At the bottom of my “dashboard” there are some basic stats, and one of the things they include is a list of search terms that led people here.  One of the latest ones is something like “my neighbor’s overgrown mess”.  Ha, yes, I’d probably qualify there.  :)  It’s nice to keep a sense of humor about my yard.

Happy, flowering tomato!

As vegetable garden updates go:  my tomatoes are flowering!  I think this is the earliest I’ve ever seen that happen.  The tomatoes got off to a bit of a rocky start – the plants were the healthiest I’ve had in the last few years – tall, green (no phosphorus deficiency), and really nice sturdy stems.   I spent a week or so hardening them off, and planted them on the holiday weekend.  Overnight, five of them shriveled up and died.  Very weird.  The rest of the plants seem to be doing really well and they’re growing fast.  However, I only replaced a couple of the plants, and somehow I have only 11 tomato plants this year.  That’s half of last year’s count.  I hope they produce vigorously because otherwise I won’t have even close to enough tomatoes.

Cabbage and weeds (I got rid of those today)

The cabbage and broccoli look amazing.  Peas are being eaten daily!  Spinach is doing well, lettuce is growing excruciatingly slowly.  Chard and brussels sprouts are slow, too.  Cukes and carrots are coming along nicely, as are onions.  Garlic looks amazing and I think I’ve only got a few weeks before that gets harvested.  Peppers are the smallest I’ve ever had at this stage of the summer.  I couldn’t find starts that I wanted so I’ll have to be satisfied with what’s out there.  All the beans look fine, potatoes too.  Only problem with the potatoes is that something has been digging in them.  I have never seen this happen and I have no idea who the culprit is.  What have I forgotten?   Pumpkins are good so far.  I did plant melons but they have just barely sprouted!  Blueberries look happy and I think they’ll be incredible next year- for this year I’m lucky they’re growing at all.  Two bushes have quite a few berries on them.

Cukes with protective covering

Our sunflower fort is being uprooted and devoured slowly, but surely.  All the plants on one side are gone.  Hopefully the rest will survive and maybe I can even move one or two this week, when it’s supposed to be a little cooler.

The herb bed is terribly behind schedule, but I put cilantro and basil in with the veggies and those are the important ones.  I may put my parsley plants in the veggie garden too, because the herb bed isn’t going to be ready until the end of the week.

Guess that’s all for now!

Pretty blueberries

Overview of the veggie garden

I added a big project to this years May insanity – adding a few stairs in the herb bed so that we can walk down from the deck to the existing stairs without slipping.  There was a downhill grade that had a slate walkway – pretty, but treacherous.  A friend and I spent four full days digging, leveling, hauling rock, etc to build a couple new stairs.  At the same time, we were moving plants out that had grown around that area and edging a front bed, preparing it for the unearthed plants, moving them, and mulching.  It was a lot of work, probably done at the worst possible time as far as my vegetable garden was concerned.

New front yard garden, with vinca from stair area

All the same, I did get the majority of the vegetables planted or transplanted over Memorial Day weekend.  That itself involved overhauling most of the garden beds, amending them with alfalfa meal and composted cow manure.  They should all be really healthy this year!

Garlic in veggie garden

And if that were not enough, I finally got the enormous garden (previously a vegetable garden on the south side of the yard – there had been five 4×10′ raised beds there plus walkways) tilled and weeded, and it is now the fruit area.  I moved all the blueberries (which were being smothered in the back bed by bishop’s weed) blackberries and about 1/3 of the raspberries moved over there.  That bed has been mulched or covered, and pumpkins and melons have also been planted there.  The remaining raspberries were already flowering and I did not want to decimate them by moving them so late, so I’ll move them in the fall.

New honeysuckle from a friend's garden

And it seems this is the year that my perennial beds will finally look substantially better.  I used freecycle to get rid of many, many, many plants badly in need of thinning (siberian iris, rudbekia, cranesbill, daisies) and much of the remaining stuff has been spread out and neatened up.  The fenceline garden is nearly done – there are 19 sections of fence and two or three are covered by raspberries, and another three or so that need to be weeded.  One still needs to have a lot of rudbekia pulled out and replanted with appropriately spaced plants.  The remaining 12 have been weeded and have plants nicely spaced and look much neater and prettier.  Along that fenceline, I’ve got rudbekia, phlox, daisies, siberian iris, centaurea, bee balm, spider zinnias, lemon mint (in two shady sections) a new honeysuckle plant and the remaining berry plants.  It’s a white fence so all that color will look gorgeous when it’s there!

Part of the fenceline garden

The perennial bed in the back has peony, siberian iris, daisies, coneflower, bee balm, baptisia, mallow, lamb’s ears, catmint, and tickseed, with a gorgeous hydrangea in one corner.  I’m hoping to add some delphinium and butterfly weed but haven’t found any locally just yet.   I also want some light pink cranesbill in the front for some lower growing color.  A large portion of this garden is still seriously in progress but there is a good section in the middle that looks much better than it has for the last 5 years.

Part of the back perennial bed

These peonies are just gorgeous!

Let’s see, I keep remembering cool projects that have fit in here and there – Alec and I planted a “fort garden” which means we edged a six inch strip around the sandbox and planted mammoth sunflowers (and another variety I can’t remember) with morning glories at the entrance.  So they will have a sandbox fortress made out of sunflowers!  Should be really neat when they’re all in.

I also had a lot of evening primrose that I like and want to keep, but want it out of the areas where it’s taking over – so I made two small gardens in front of the back shed where it can grow all it wants because it just abuts grass.  I stuck a couple of irises in there and tossed in some red spider zinnia seeds too, so it will be pretty!

Phew…that’s a lot of gardening.  Feels like it, too.  But I’m really pleased with how things are progressing.  The herb garden still needs a ton of work but it is coming along.  Stay tuned for before/after photos of that when the project is done!

This is getting so long that I’ll make another separate post just about what’s been going on in the vegetable patch!

Flowering peas, with broccoli in front

In the garden, we have peas, lettuce, spinach and garlic.  All the beds have been loosened up and some leaf mulch incorporated.  I need to get some composted manure on most of the gardens.  I could have sworn I’d put leaf and dry grass mulch on all the beds at the end of fall, but from the looks of things, I actually only did this on three beds.  The difference in the quality of dirt and the number of worms is extraordinary.  One sad looking bed had no obvious worms at all.  I will have to pay extra care to this one this year.  As of now I think it’s supposed to have tomatoes in it, and that will not go well without significant improvement.

Inside, we have seeds started for onions, cabbage, broccoli, gentian sage, lemongrass, lemon mint, cilantro, peppers, jalapenos, and tomatoes.  Stevia is in the refrigerator undergoing cold stratification, a process I’ve never tried before.  I have to check dates – it may be time to get that out of the fridge.  I still have a bunch of things (flowers, mainly) that need to get started indoors.

There are also a lot of things that could have been seeded outside already, that I’ve not accomplished yet.  On this list are: garlic chives, more lettuce and spinach, carrots, raab, brussels sprouts, turnips, pac choy, cilantro, chard and chamomile.  Potatoes will be arriving soon and it will be time to take care of those as well.

So, I’ve got my work cut out for me.

And that’s all I’ve got for today, but it’s more than nothing ! :)

Details:  I recorded the last date in May (or in a few warmer years, April) when the low temp was 32 degrees or below, and what that low temperature was. For some reason, I failed to record the actual low if the last frost was in April.  There was one year (2000) when there were no data for the 1st and 2nd of May, so that year may not be totally accurate.

• 2011 May 6 (32)
• 2010 May 13 (30)
• 2009 May 19 (30)
• 2008 May 1 (28)
• 2007 May 14 (32)
• 2006 April 30
• 2005 May 13 (26)
• 2004 May 8 (30)
• 2003 May 4 (30)
• 2002 May 22 (32)
• 2001 May 14 (32)
• 2000 April 27
• 1999 May 14 (32)
• 1998 April 29
• 1997 May 8 (30)
• 1996 May 14 (32)
• 1995 May 7 (30)
• 1994 May 3 (32)
• 1993 April 28
• 1992 May 25 (30)

Conclusions:  In the last ten years, the latest last frost was May 22.  If I go back 20 years, it’s May 25.  Those dates are both anomalies, though, as the average last frost date (for May entries only) is May 11.  The median (including April entries) is May 8!  Still, I don’t think I will plan on direct-seeding or transplanting anything before mid-May, and I may just wait until the third weekend.  I’m not waiting until Memorial Day, though, which is what I’ve done in the past.

Now, to get to work figuring out sowing dates for all the stuff I start inside.  Sometime soon, I’m going to go record all the first frost dates for the fall season, also.  Then I’ll  be able to work out a good season-long planting schedule and not have to ponder this question every year!

I am working on labeling – for the bars of soap I gave out at Christmas time, I used brown paper bags that I cut and hand-labeled with a white pen.  They looked really nice, if you like the handmade, rustic look, like I do!

Now, I’ve got a few customers that I haven’t even met.  My neighbor has been talking up my lotion and several coworkers want to buy it.  I have no idea how much to sell it for!  I had made a spreadsheet to track how much it cost me to make each recipe – so I know how much the soap or lotion costs per ounce, to make.  I’ve even added a line-item for labor, and figured out costs per ounce with that included.  Packaging is a little trickier, since I’ve ordered from a few places and the shipping costs vary so much and I’m not sure how or even if I should pass that on.  For now I have settled on what I think is a fair price, but who knows what the customers will think.I don’t know where this will lead, but if it does take off, I really hope I can make it profitable.  I enjoy the time I spend making healthy body care products, but it would be great to actually be paid for my time and make money for my family, creating something good that people love.

This was flubber, in progress.  It is neon blue (and a more vibrant blue than is evident here!) but glows yellow-ish in the dark.  Very fun!

Here we have glow-in-the-dark neon puffy paint.  Creations are drying as I write, before testing glow-in-the-dark success!

And this would be “galaxy” playdough, made with black and blue food coloring, and purple and iridescent glitter.  Also fun, but seems to turn your hands an interesting reddish-purple color while you knead it.  I’m hoping this last quality disappears when the playdough is room temperature.  We shall see.

We’re managing to have some fun, even without snow.

And it's not even all here yet!

I already had quite a collection of seed leftover from previous years, which should still be viable.  That included tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, carrots, broccoli, raab, turnip, scallion, pac choy, peppers, cucumbers, peas, pumpkins and dry beans.  For herbs, I had lavender and Gentian sage.  I saved seeds from my mammoth sunflowers, cilantro and pole beans, so I don’t need as many of those.  At planting time, I’ll try to find some strawberry plants here to complete my fruit collection.  I may do another sweet potato experiment this year as well.

Despite ordering from four places, I managed to forget a few things.  I don’t think I ever found the hot peppers I wanted.  A friend is sending me some of his ancho chilis, I believe, and maybe I’ll find some serrano plants from a local farmer closer to planting time.

The list of seeds I ended up ordering follows…

From Vermont Bean

• Chamomile
• Stevia
• Nobility onion (yellow)
• Red Zeppelin onion (red)
• Red pontiac potato
• Kennebec potato

From High Mowing

• German Chamomile
• Necoras carrot
• Napoli carrot
• Nautic Brussels sprout
• Palco spinach
• Early Jalapeno
• PMR Delicious 51 Melon
• Green finger cucumber
• Santo cilantro

From Fedco

• Forest green parsley
• Bright lights chard
• Winter density lettuce
• Red sails lettuce
• Sugarsnap peas
• Sweet basil
• Super red 80 Red cabbage
• Empress of India nastertium
• Clarke’s Heavenly blue morning glory
• Inca II Mix African marigold
• Pacific beauty mix Calendula
• White yarrow
• Lemon mint
• Lemongrass

From Seed Savers Exchange

• Hutterite soup beans
• Garlic chives
• Evening sun sunflowers
• Red spider zinnia
• New England asters
• Butterfly weed

I made sure to get open germinated soup beans, so I can save some of those this year.  One of my goals is to save more seeds this year.  I did better last year than in previous years, and I’m hoping to improve in this area even more!

Some of the flowers were chosen by the boys for their “garden fort”.  Jonas always wants sunflowers and pumpkins.  This year Alec wanted beans, peas, extra carrots, and morning glories.

I ordered more herbs to be able to incorporate some of my own plants in the lotions, soaps, lip balm, and whatever other concoctions I make over the course of the year.

As usual, big plans!  We’ll see how it all pans out.

PS A complete list of seed/plant varieties in my garden is included on the Plant List pages on the left of this page!

There is a lot of exciting learning going on – all that comes with a boy that has (finally) become a reader.  He’s always loved to look at books (and actually it’s astonishing what he’s been able to figure out without actual reading), but it’s so exciting that he can read them now.  He takes such pride in reading aloud to us now!  We’ve always read at bedtime – we all curl up in my bed and I read for a good long time.  Now, when I’m done, he’ll say “now I can read to you!” and jumps up to get a book.  It’s wonderful.  And there’s nothing quite like seeing him sitting on his brother’s bed, reading to him.

Soon, I’ll be back with a post that has my 2012 seed list.  I’ve added things and removed a few, too.  And somehow, my favorite soup beans were left off the order.  I spent a morning putting beans in jars (well, jar) and realizing that something like 100 square feet of garden produced about one pint of beans, and really, I don’t know how I can conclude this is reasonable use of valuable garden space.  My only excuse is that this is a bean I’ve never seen in a store or co-op, and it is my very favorite soup bean.  It’s the Hutterite soup bean – small, greenish white and so lovely.  Creamy in soup.  So, the question is, do I order them or leave the order as is?  I don’t know.  I don’t even know if the beans I grew last year were open pollinated or not, so saving some of this pint may not solve the issue for me.  Ah well, time will tell.

Now, back to the marble game in the other room.  I can’t recommend this little project enough – one of our answers to no snow in the yard is fun, active games in the house.  Magnetic darts, trampoline, foosball, ping pong, and marbles keep us all sane when there’s no snow to play in in the yard.  I made the marble mat with a piece of leftover flannel from Alec’s Halloween costume.  Very simple – make a large circle on it, an ‘x’ in the center, and lines for guides to position the marbles for “Ringer”.  A 44″ wide piece of fabric was large enough for a 40″ diameter circle, which is a great playing size.

That’s all for now!  Think snow!

In the last two days, I’ve picked over twenty pounds of tomatoes, and today I dried some (one 10×15″ cookie tray) and made seven quarts of tomato puree with the rest.  Seven quarts!  I’d already dried a few trays (enough to fill a large yogurt container), made a bunch of paste (frozen in ice cube trays) and made two pints of tomato sauce, and there are a lot of unripe tomatoes still left on the plants.  Even with early blight, I’m having a very good tomato harvest, and I’m pretty thrilled with it.

I am hoping to make more sauce with the remaining tomatoes, and actually try my hand at water-bath canning.  I’m freezing the puree I made, just because I didn’t have time to deal with the learning curve of canning today.  I have always been a little scared of canning, but I think I’m ready to try.

It’s a good feeling, putting this wonderful harvest up for our family to enjoy this winter.

I think the best idea I had this year was to have a bed full of flowers.  It started because when I had the compost delivered, the hydraulic fluid from the delivery guy’s lift pump leaked heavily into the garden.  I could not locate it once the pile was finished, but I knew the general area.  I did not want to plant anything we’d eat in that part of the garden, so I decided to just plant flowers.  Well, next year flowers are going in every garden.  There is a row of sunflowers at the back of the garden, on the northern-most edge.  They are wonderful!  The full bed is one of the southern beds but not on the edge.  At first I didn’t want to give up the real estate for flowers, especially when I have enormous flower beds (that I already can’t keep up with) in other parts of the yard.  But it was a great decision, and I love seeing the flowers in with the vegetables.  I do need to add nasturtiums and marigolds next year to help with some of the insect population, but at the very least, the flowers are bringing a lot more birds to the garden and I think they’re doing some insect control for me!  Sometimes I’ll be working somewhere else and see movement in the garden, but it’s not a boy (though that does happen, too!) and then I’ll see a couple of birds fly out.  Makes me happy.

Another thing that makes me inexplicably happy is to see bean vines climbing up the sunflowers.  I have no explanation for this (the happiness, not the vining!).  It gave me a small pang of regret when I took down the pea plants to get ready to plant more for the fall, because that was a big wall of green.  I don’t mind that the carefully measured paths through the beds are totally invisible – there is green covering virtually every surface, and honestly, most of it is good stuff, not weeds.  Though there are weeds, for sure.  That straw I put down should probably  have been called hay.  There are some awful weeds in it.  But I can’t see them now!  I tried to take some photos from inside the garden, to give you an idea of what it is like to be inside, but they don’t really tell the whole story.  Still, you’ll get some idea.

There was once a path through here

Notice the windchimes?  This was another little project I finally did this year – the chimes are made from the keys of a cute xylophone the boys had when they were smaller.  The base of the xylophone broke, but I just didn’t want to throw away the keys.  I figured I’d never get to it, but thought it would be fun to have windchimes in the garden, and one rainy day, I finally remembered to do it!  I’m trying to add a little character to the garden, little by little, as I go.

Lastly, because this post is getting awfully lengthy, here are a few photos of a couple things I love in the garden right now…

Beauty. Yes, cabbages can be beautiful.

Soon we will have our first blackberries!

Lovely little sugar pumpkin

I love these

That’s all for now!  I really need to write a post about progress in my perennial beds.  Huge progress!  Soon, hopefully.  Thanks for reading.