Spring Garden Progress

Now that folks in the northeast have stopped Ark building long enough to get outside, it seems like a good time for a spring garden veggie update.

Potatoes-in-Bucket are going along swimmingly (literally, considering all the rain this week). So far the bucket potatoes are twice as big as the trenched ground potatoes. However, the mulched potatoes in the tree line are barely sprouting, probably due to excessive weeds and minimal sun.

In the middle of the potatoes in this picture is my whiskey barrel of mint, which I've been growing with almost purposeful neglect for 8 years now. I usually keep three types - chocolate mint, spearmint, and peppermint. Mohitos, anyone?

Speaking of herbs, most everything coming up now is perennial, although I'm starting to see some volunteer seedlings from last year's basil, parsley and cilantro. The big guy on the left is tarragon, with golden thyme next to it.

Here we have chives, Greek oregano and hot & spicy oregano in front, with some chamomile and a strugglig sprig of stevia in the back. I planted the stevia this year, and also had to replace my rosemary, which never seems to overwinter for me. My sage also died after lasting a few years. I'm hoping to get a common sage along with a pineapple sage, which is gorgeous as a huge ornamental plant. If you see that variety out, you should get it and put it someplace in full sun with lots of room - and wait for the show.

Moving along to the veg, this bed is badly in need of thinning, with spinach and some out of control turnips. And lots of grass clippings because the lawn was just mowed!

Next up is the bed where half the work was done for me in the fall. The greens furthest away is a variety of arugula called rocket, or wild arugula. I had arugula in this bed last year and let it go to seed, and the seeds went everywhere. All done! The seeds germinated when they were good and ready, and I didn't have to do anything (although I also now have an arugula lawn and arugula pathways). In front of that, I broadcast some mesculun mix a few weeks ago, and that's coming up nicely too. Both those crops are the kind you can cut and inch above the soil line, and the plants will regrow. Sow it once, and you can have salad for the whole spring and some of the summer. On either side of both crops is my slowly plodding along peas. I'm not sure how much they appreciated that week of 90 degree weather we just had, so we'll have to see how much they wind up producing this year.

The second half of this bed consists of my wall-o-waters housing early tomatoes, peppers and eggplant. The only way to get summer crops started in the ground in spring is with some type of greehouse style protection. In between, I planed a row of carrots and a row of radishes. You can just barely see one of the tomatoes peeking out over the top. Hopefully the combination of putting an early fruiting variety in the wall-o-water means fresh garden tomatoes in June!

STRAWBERRIES! This will be year 3 for my strawberry bed. Last year we were buried in strawberries for all of June. It's worth losing a bunch of space to a strawberry patch, but they need to be contained somehow or they will run right over you. Even then, it's like keeping puppies in a box. Good luck!

Early morning dew on a strawberry leaf.

This shot is of my perennial bed, which is my asparagus patch, and horseradish in buried containers. We're also in year three of the asparagus, but I feel like it should be producing better at this point. Asparagus takes a few years to really establish, so maybe I'm just jumping the gun. The horseradish are in buckets because that's another crop that will take over (underground) if left unmanaged. In back is a cover crop of rye which I have yet to till under and let decompose - the purpose of a cover crop. Hmm, not sure when I'll be getting to that one.

Onions, shallots and garlic and doing just fine.

And last but not least, the Earth Boxes are housing a variety of lettuces. It looks like the endive and lettuce are ok, but the radicchio and mache are not so hot. For more details on the Earth Box, check my blog entry from 7/29/08.

That's all the news for now. In just a few weeks - TOMATO TIME!

Joyce's Mother's Day Heist, Pt 2: reprinted from 5/12/08 entry

Once again, if you did not read JMDH part I, here's the quick story. I mailed both my mother's and grandmother's gifts for Mother's Day in the same package. Each gift was clearly labeled as to who got what, but they weren't wrapped. I assumed my mother would give my grandmother her gift. My mom emailed me to thank me, and the following madness ensued.

Email #1:

From: Joyce
To: Laura

Thank you for the card and ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS candy. I told
Grandma you sent her candy when we talked last night. I will bring it
to her the next time I go for a visit.



Email #2:
From: Laura
To: Joyce

i'm glad you liked the candy. does grandma like chocolate covered cherries? i always remember eating them at her house, but i don't remember if she liked them. i remember she liked maple though, but the cherries took up the budget.



Email #3:

From: Joyce
To: Laura


I must confess, I ate the cherries bec. carmel is not one of my
favorites. Hopefully, it is one of hers!!!
Love you, J.


Email #4:

From: Laura
To: Joyce

sorry, i couldn't remember besides the pretzels what you like. doesn't grandma have dentures? i don't think she can eat carmels if she does. i hope you didn't eat ALL the cherries on her, and if you did, you'd better tell her that they were meant for her! if neither of you can eat the carmels save them for me.




Email #5:

From: Joyce
To: Laura

I didn't eat all of the cherries since I only got them yesterday and
decided to ration myself to one a day bec. they are soooo good and it
would be nice to let that great flavor linger for a few weeks. What a
great treat!!! I will give grandma the caramels and the pretzels and
ask her if she wants them, if not then you can have them and I can pick
up something else from Gertrude Hawks for her.


Email #6: this is where I foolishly cc my dad, thinking he can help

From: Laura
To: Joyce
CC: Jim

JOYCE ANN, YOU SHARE THOSE CHERRIES!!!! i mean it! the pretzels and the carmels were supposed to be for you, as the placement of the cards clearly indicated. if you want to barter with grandma who gets what, that's fine, but you'd better let her have some of those cherries if she wants them. boy, that'll teach me to send multiple gifts in one box. you are a crafty crafty little woman.

i am alerting dad by cc so he can enforce the fairness of this trade mission.




Email #7A: my dad responds to me, but does not cc my mom

To: Laura
From: Jim

I am a little confused here. I assume your mother received some food that
she is hiding and/or hoarding. This is the first I'm hearing about it. You
should know by now she doesn't share when it comes to delicious treats. She
has always hidden food in the bedroom when she doesn't want to share. Your
grandma is on her own, your mother never did listen to me anyway. I guess
we will be seeing you in a few weeks. Take care.



Email #7B: my mom responds to me, having not seen my dad's email to me


Why are you telling on me? Your father never even saw the candy bec.
it's hidden in my bedroom. Boy, I can't believe you are doing this. I
DON'T WANT TO SHARE THE CHERRIES!!! This is just awful.


Email #8:

From: Laura
To: Joyce

you just made me laugh right out loud. i KNEW you were probably hiding them in your room. you're lucky grandma doesn't have email, or i'd tell her too. in fact, if i had uncle walter's email with me at work i'd tell him so he can tell grandma, just in case you knock dad off in his sleep before he has a chance to talk. uh oh, now i realize i put dad's life in jeopardy. well, hopefully all those years of private investigator shows will give him some tips on survival.



Email #9:

From: Joyce
To: Laura

I hate to tell you this but your father is not going to do anything to
help you because a long time ago he HAD to live with you but now he HAS
to live with me. Because, I'm the one who puts a smile on his face (it
has to do with sex) he will not upset the applecart and my dear, whether
you realize it or NOT you are living in another state. On the serious
side, I did not eat another choc. cherry so there is only one missing
from the box. BUT I still haven't decided if I am going to give them to
grandma yet and you CAN'T make me. If I decide to act like a grown-up
then she will get to taste a few but if not, they will remain hidden in
the bedroom and she can struggle with the caramels. You just gave me an
idea. Now that you know my hiding spot, I may have to look for another
one!
J.




Email #10:

From: Laura
To: Joyce

re: dad smiling - gross. i did not need to know that.
re: chocolates - on second thought, i'd better not reproduce because i hear insanity skips a generation and i'll probably just have the luck of birthing some child who will some day stab me in the back and steal my mother's day gift.


Happy Mother's Day to all you honorable women out there, who will one day be thrown under the bus by your own spawn!

I LOVE MY NEW MULCH!

There's really nothing of value to say here. I just love my newly mulched beds at the front of my house!

I was kind of going for a Japanese feel to our plant choices when we first landscaped this area. It was inspired by the two gangly rhododendron that refused to come out of the ground, even when lassoed with chains and pulled by a truck. Since we had to give up moving them, I decided they had a bonsai flair about them, so I surrounded them with low growing complementary plants with silver and burgandy colors to them, like Japanese Barberry, Blue Star Junipers, and a Cutleaf Japanese Maple tree.

I REALLY wanted an authentic stone lantern to finish the look, but hey - you can't be $30 at Bed, Bath and Beyond for a fake one. It's even got a solar powered light in there! The grass is blue sedge, and the burgandy creeper in front of it is called Voodoo Stonecrop.

This is my show-stopper spring perennial flower on the front walkway called "Helleborus" or Lenten Rose. Everybody loves these guys and they are so easy to grow. They are a perennial evergreen for part to full shade areas, and the prickly leaves make them deer resistant. In my zone 6, they start blooming in March and are in full swing by April. Eventually the flowers fade to a pretty dusky green color.

The purpose of this bed is to hide the various septic pump equipment, like the lid to the tank and weird pipes and stuff. I made this my pink and blue bed, although it's too early in spring to really know that at this point. The main features are the three hydrangeas in the middle, along with some dicentra ("bleeding hearts"), astillbe, spirea, columbine and some grasses. This bed actually looks better now, since Tom, my official workhorse, has since edged all around it.












These are baby astillbe, which look kind of like furry snakes - surrounded, of course, by my gorgeous mulch.








Last but not least is my 173 Brunswick Pike memorial bed, replicating the garden I had in my very first house either by flat out stealing the original plants (it was a long 9 months before that thing sold) or finding the exact same plants already in place at the new pad. And just like at my old house, I still can't get anything but weeds to grow up that damn trellis. When this bed grows up more, it will have lots of shade friendly plants, since I seemed to have absolutely no sun where I used to live. Some good shade perennials here are lungwort, Jacob's ladder and dead nettle.

And now for the final tie-in .... doesn't my mulch look great?!?!?

Potato Woes

I forgot to mention potatoes in my spring garden line-up, which is not surprising. Potatoes and I have a sordid history. One of us in this relationship is just not giving 100%, and for my part, I'm blaming the potatoes. Even with my best efforts, my potatoes tend to not live up to their potential. The potatoes, I imagine, would likely complain about my lack of consistent watering and general laissez-faire gardening style. Still, I'm not giving up just yet. Homegrown fresh potatoes are out of this world, and completely unlike anything you can get at the grocery store. So in 2009, I'm attempting three different planting methods that I haven't tried before.

1.) Trenching

This is the method I got from the handout at Agway where I bought my potato starts. Apparently potatoes don't appreciate being plopped into dense, clay-like soil and just left there. The proper way to treat them is to build up the soil around the plant at the stem, giving new potatoes room to form. In my raised bed, I dug two trenches about two feet apart, and planted potato starts around a foot apart in the row. As the sprouts grow, I'll pull down the dirt from the sides of the trench to keep the plants covered. Hopefully this will improve crop yields.

2.) Mulching

I knew there were other methods of growing potatoes, so some quick internet research resulted in a great page from Irish Eyes Garden Seeds. This page has complete start to finish potato growing tips, including two alternative planting methods. Mulching is when you prep the planting bed like you normally would, but instead of trenching, the potatoes get placed on or just below the soil. Mulch, like straw or shredded leaves, gets placed on top 6 to 10 inches deep. Continue to replenish as the stem grows, and harvest normally.

I don't have a picture of this method, but I don't have high hopes for it either. The only room I had left for them was out of the fence perimeter and solidly into the wilder parts of my yard - groundhog/mole/vole territory. Also, because it's not within reach of the hose, these guys are going to be subject to the watering schedule of mother nature herself. So, uh, yeah. Good luck out there potatoes!

3.) Cage/Garbage Can Method

The above link at Irish Eyes Garden Seeds calls it the cage method, and this eHow article talks about growing potatoes in a garbage can. Either way, this is a great method if you have space constriction, are growing vegetables in containers, or have problems in the past with diseases in your soil. As a member of the Solanaceae (Nightshade) family, potatoes are prone to the same diseases as peppers, tomatoes, and eggplant. To avoid passing these diseases through the soil from one year to the next, you should not plant potatoes (or any other family member) in the same spot for three years in a row. If you have a small garden, crop rotation by these standards is pretty much impossible unless you are using containers.

Since my potatoes religiously die back early from some kind of disease and have a low crop yield, I'm overly excited about this method. I took the hints from the Irish Eyes Garden Seeds article about planting in containers 18" across and at least 2 or 3 feet tall. I put finished compost in a layer at the bottom, and put dried chopped leaves on top. The trick here is to keep the pots watered well, which is not my strong suit. Wish me luck - and greater attention to detail.

OK, I have so many entries in my head to write, but I really ought to be taking advantage of this coolish morning to get some work done. See ya!