New beginnings

I'm going to step back from the big patio plans and the electricity drama for a post that spans last year and this year--with lots of pictures--to talk about our garden and some baby trees. Last year, we really delved into gardening (probably because our spring...summer...fall...etc. suddenly opened up when all our plans got canceled). I'd already paid a small donation to the Arbor Day Foundation for something like 12 baby trees and we'd already ordered some vegetable seeds and started them in the house. So we were already set for something sort of resembling success.

We planned what would go where. We learned pretty quickly that squash gets way to big to put in the middle and that "container" tomato plants are too tiny and did not make sense for our big garden, We had great luck with snap peas, cherry tomatoes (a red variety--I forget which one specifically), and (diva) cucumbers. The squash was a mixed bag (they seemed to stay small, likely because they got so cramped, but they were still tasty and quite easy to sneak into a few smoothies), as were the radishes (we must have planted them too close because most never got very big). The  "midnight snack" cherry tomatoes were fine but no one really liked the taste. The eggplants, peppers, container variety of tomatoes, and carrots failed. Not sure why, but none of those were anything we really cared about enough to try again.

Now as to the trees--they arrived about a month later than they were supposed to thanks to COVID. When they finally arrived, 12 bare-root sticks that had a paint dot on them to identify what was what, we honestly had no idea where to put them. But they had to go in the ground. 

So we put some around the lawn after clearing a little space in the grass and we put a few in the garden. And I knew, just KNEW, I'd have no idea what was what or where. And thus: a map. Each kind of tree got a code and the new ones were outlined in pink.

Within even a few weeks, thanks to nibbling birds or squirrels and other misfortunes, most were broken in two. We even found one in the garden completely dug up (thanks a lot, fence). It didn't look great. And now, fast forward a year and we have two hawthorns left. But we'll get to that later.

Meanwhile, back to the garden. This year, we tried something new, after we realized how much we did NOT like to go outside to water in July and August while the mosquitoes feasted on us. Irrigation!

Armed with some hoses and spikes, as well as a fancy timer (see: not wanting to go outside to water), we installed a system through the yard and into the garden to keep the veggies happy.

It obviously worked. Our garden went from this:

To this:

Of course I have to show you some of the results, too:

See the one purple bean. Yeah that was the only one...

When the season was ending, we even attempted to grow a late fall garden, mapped out here (we like maps, apparently). We hauled in the irrigation system though, figuring it would get a lot less brittle if we kept it in the shed all winter.

                        

How did it go? Well here's the funny thing. Nothing really seemed to happen--maybe we planted it too late and there wasn't enough sun. One of the broccolis, which we started from tiny plants and not seeds, did eventually develop a head, but it was so tiny it was literally a single piece I would normally cut my broccoli head into. So we ignored it. Until today.

Yesterday, I headed into the garden to start clearing it out for this year. And to my surprise, there was enough broccoli and kale to harvest. The broccoli was just starting to bolt but we decided to give both a try. And sautéd with some olive oil and garlic, this was our delicious side dish tonight at dinner:

Having cleared out the last of the fall harvest as well as all the weeds and what roots I could find, I roto-tilled the soil and added two wheelbarrow's full of compost. So here we are, ready to go for another year.

                                                    

I decided to create a better plan for our growing zone than just "put them in the ground" or "start them in the house, then plant them in the ground." The seed company (Burpee this year--last year it was a brand I can't remember) says what time to plant for which zone, so I might as well use that information. I labeled each packet and put them back in order, so I could remember what happens when. It looked like we'll plant a few early birds in about a week, do another batch in mid-April, and then another batch in early-to-mid-May.

                                           

Here's a close-up of what I jotted down:  

I started the tomatoes earlier this month in pots on the window sill and added a bit more light in the blue/purple spectrum to help them stop leaning toward the window. I started some snap peas as well, more as an experiment to see which do better when we put them outside next week--the seeds or the plants. And upon finally mapping out this plan, I'm realizing I need to start the herbs indoors ASAP and just need to dye some Easter eggs to get some empty cartons for start pots.

Back to those trees, from earlier in the post. I planted 12 last May and a mere 2 remain. This Hawthorn, smack in the middle of the lawn and another in the garden.

Though the stick was about 18'' high, the leaves were all only at the bottom. It turned out that the rest of the stick was so brittle and dead that it snapped just above the leaves while I was working in the garden.

So there's a 5'' Hawthorn in there now that I managed to not rototill. Though it obviously isn't going to live in the garden forever, it's so tiny that we'll leave it there at least another year to see if it can get bigger and stronger before we put it anywhere else.

'Tis the Season

It's spring, so that means we're out in the yard every chance we get. The really awful bugs haven't come out yet and it's lovely and not too humid. So of course we garden.

This year, we have the addition of the vegetable garden to get ready (mostly by Grandma but with a little physical labor from D). The walls went up last fall and so Grandma got to work rototilling the ground and getting it ready for planting.

To our surprise, she also put down a landscaping cloth, to help keep the weeds out. Nothing I've ever used on a vegetable garden before, but she's the expert. We'll see how it turns out.

At the same time that she was getting the plot cleared, we got 3 cubic yards of compost, both to fill the garden and to help with other areas around the yard. After D brought 13 wheelbarrow's worth of compost to the garden (there's that physical labor part I mentioned), it was ready for planting all the seedlings that had been growing in our picture window for the last month.

We have two little additions to our garden to keep watch over it and make sure that the animals keep out. They'll probably be pretty dingy and sun-bleached by the end of the season but for now they're looking chipper and ready for action.

With the vegetables planted, it's time to move onto other things. The weeds have truly taken over our flower beds. To the point where we aren't even sure where to begin on removing them. We're starting with the front flower beds, since those are the ones most visible to the neighbors (and also the less weedy, so they seem more manageable). Remember when liriope was our only problem? Seems like there's a new intrusive weed every year.

At the rate we're going, I'd say I have maybe 3 more good weekends of outdoor time before retreating indoors. And we probably only have about 6 month's worth of gardening that needs doing. Hm....that doesn't quite work out, does it?

Veggies (Eventually)

This year we decided to try our hand at a little vegetable and herb gardening. Back in April, we sowed some seeds into one of those Burpee growing kits and crossed our fingers. There was basil, cilantro, parsley, scallions, and tomatoes.

Right off the bat, I wasn't impressed. I watered everything to the exact specifications and put the pots somewhere dark and under their little biodegradable cellophane greenhouse. It must have been too humid or something though because when I checked to see if there were any sprouts, I saw that everything was totally covered in mold! It was so nasty! Because there were some sprouts too, we decided that the pots had lived in the dark long enough and we moved them to our picture window where they would get lots of sun (and have to compete with the cats for real estate--the cats were not too happy to have to share). The mold didn't go away completely but it got a lot better (you can still see the white fuzz the white spots on the pots):

Fast forward about 4-5 weeks. The scallions never really took off but we did end up doing pretty well with the tomatoes. I didn't have the heart to throw out all the ones that I had thinned from the original pots, so whenever I could (i.e. when I didn't break a root too badly when pulling it up), I repotted those too. We gathered all the flower pots we could for temporary transplant. We moved them into a protected outdoor space (our breezeway) for a little over a week so they could acclimate to the outdoors.

Finally it was time to pot them in their permanent homes. Looks pretty pathetic, eh? It was hard to decide how much space to give them because I knew that if they survived, they would grow pretty high. But they all looked so lonely in there. A last minute addition was some white cucumbers that Burpee sent for free with our blueberry order (that's another story...). We planted them directly into the big pots without germinating them indoors.

Sometime in June, a switch got flipped and these guys started growing what seemed like several inches a day. Here they are on June 12. They got so big that we had to tie them to stakes to keep them from tipping over and snapping:

Here they are two weeks later on June 26. They had grown at least 6-8 inches!

The cucumbers in particular took off like crazy. They didn't have the head start that the tomatoes did and check them out--equally huge. And with giant prickly cucumber leaves and tendrils.

We still didn't see any flowering until about July 4th weekend. The plants by then were so tall that they have overgrown their 6-foot high stakes. We tried pruning back but I wasn't sure if we were supposed to prune veggie plants so mostly I just hoped for the best. I had expected them to stay pretty dwarfed in their tiny pots. Of course now I'm reading that the tomatoes we bought (Sweet 100) actually often grow up to 7 feet tall. Yikes! It got so bad that yesterday we took all the stakes and tied them together in the center, because the weight of the plants cause the stakes to lean very badly. They looked like they wouldn't be able to take it much longer.

But the good news is that we're getting close to harvest! The cukes are tiny (about 3 inches) but getting there.

We're nowhere near the 100-yield for our tomato plants, but we have our first delicious few of the summer this morning with breakfast.

The basil has been going so well that we had to make a double batch of pesto just to keep up (no complaints there...) and the parsley has grown at least adequately enough to save us from having to buy it a couple of times to use in some recipes. The scallions never really took off at all and we don't have a single successful plant (bunch?) so now we know they may not be worth the space and effort next year. 

As for our decisions on where and how to garden, having them in containers has made it much easier to make sure they are getting enough water (much easier to water a few pots than an in-ground garden). I think it has stopped the hordes of bunnies in our yard from being able to decimate them, as well. And being in the front of the house where all the sun is probably accelerated their growth. The only negative is that they got a lot bigger than expected, so they have become a bit of an eyesore in our front yard (and are way too big to move now). I never expected them to cover most of our front window. 

I think the cats like being able to hang out in the window and feel like they're in a forest though...