Garden Update - Last Week of May

The garden blew up to a rain forest!

 Doing the weekend maintenance on the veggie garden out back, so humor me with a few pictures of what's coming in...

Beautiful peas!
They get eaten up almost as soon as they're grown

Squash blossoms

Can you see the start of some of the squash...

We picked most of the beets recently,
but left a few in the ground to see if they'd bulk up some.
Looking large, very large

Poppies... Finally some flowers coming in

With any luck, a soon to be blooming zinnia

Mmm... growing roma tomatoes!

Garden Update

Oh goodness, these photos for the garden update are already a week old.  But better late than never, right?  The warm weather and longer days have let us live more of our life outside lately!  In the Warner Parks, soccer fields, backyard, community garden, patios... just not as much time in front of the computer.  So here is a week-belated update on the condition of our crops...

Peas shooting up like weeds!
They trellised themselves! They're so smart!

Large leafy sorrel in front of sweetpeas

roma tomatoes in the back corner, straight onion shoots,
UFO squash (with blooms) towards the right
and beets - almost harvest ready - on the left

CARROTS!!!  They're so beautiful, but we never thinned them.
Could be bad news

Squash on the top right, and all our pepper plants.
The two squares just below the squash have the seeds from our coworker

Tomatoes on the left, squash top right, peppers and onions in the middle

Drum roll please....

 And now ladies and gentlemen... 

for the good stuff!

OUR FIRST TOMATO!

The above are the first tiny green tomatoes from the Roma plant we purchased from Home Depot in March and then babied through the subsequent cold snaps.  Maybe they'll blush up before too long!

THE FIRST PEA!

 Unlike our root crops, where we harvested the whole batch ceremoniously, the first of our peas arrived on it's lonesome.  When we were inspecting the rest of the plot we spotted it and promptly sampled it!

Rawr!  Peas!

 And continued weeding and trellising the crops...

Trellising the tomatoes

Icicle Radishes!! The Harvest

The little baby icicle radishes are ready to harvest.  They are so leafy and green and according to the seed packet... they're ready to go!

Goodbye radish plants

First sneak peak at the harvest

There were some significant size differences between the radishes.  I think with as big and bushy as the greens got, we could have weeded them out more and given them more space.  But there were many of them that were a great radish size.

The bigger and the smaller of the harvest

I love the beautiful white color of the Icicles.  They look so fresh and perky with the greens and white.

I'm not sure I'm that big a fan of the taste of radishes to begin with, but they grow fast and can be started in the cool spring and were a wonderful way to inaugurate ourselves as farmers.  It's a little embarrassing how much joy I got from seeing our little seeds all grown up.  Like magic!!

Peony Love

The Better Homes and Gardens centerfold

Back when it was a little colder and darker I found myself daydreaming over Better Homes and Gardens.  Again.  And thumbing through pictures of gorgeous peonies.  I think this set was in the March 2011 issue.  And my mind wandered to my some-day aspiration of having a cute little home with a front fence with flowers growing around it.  *Sigh* But in the mean time, I can coerce Bill into letting me play in his front yard!  (I tried telling him that the pinks and purples in the photos were actually reds and blues.  I'm not sure he believed me, but he played along well)

The BH&G sketch-up

BH&G provided the pictures and the little sketch-up of species and layout, so all I had to do was convince my man-friend and purchase the plants.  Again discussing if we really needed pink flowers in the front (YES!) 

My sketch-up.  Not as pretty as BH&G

The Species!!!

I measured up the front 40, sketched it all up (not pretty) and put in the order at the church preschool plant sale.  Weeded out a few of the species BH&G suggested and went with these four!

• Pink Sarah Bernhardt Peonies
• White Duchess Peonies
• Silvery Lambs Ears
• Catmint (but when it arrived the tag said "catnip".  Is that the same thing?)

Front row with erosion barrier

Before getting too far digging up the grass, Bill was smart enough to get a barrier to stick along the bottom of the fence.  With the monsoons Tennessee spring weather we've been having lately, he didn't want me tearing apart the front yard, only to have a downpour wash away the good soil through the fence and down the sidewalk.  Tools used: shovel and (*surprise*) rock hammer.

First peony in the ground.  And Bill gets to bugging me pulling out the measuring tape to space the peonies

 Hey hey!  A good shovel and a little bit of time and the peonies went in just fine!

Note the rock hammer

Half done and the peonies are set

Bill had the shovel and after we marked off the spacing, Bill dug the holes with me following behind him filling them with peonies.  I wore gloves because among the buried treasures we found in the front yard were a ballpoint pen, chunks of broken glass, and strange tree roots (no tree).

He-Man Bill and his victim trowel

 The second row - alternating lamb's ear and catmint/nip - required smaller holes.  Bill "The Hulk" was too tough to handle the little trowel needed for the finite digging and promptly broke the trowel.  I unfortunately didn't have the camera handy during the moment when he turned green and his muscles ripped apart his shirt.  Oops.  Well regardless, everything got in the ground.

Here's the current and projected outcome of our front border ;)

Everything In!

Hopeful outcome: flowers and butterflies
and maybe baby bunnies 

*Note: post rain storm, there wasn't a ton of apparent soil loss.  Hopefully the barrier worked!  We may have to throw some mulch on top until the plants bulk up, but maybe not... we'll see.

Flowering Baskets

A couple weeks ago Bill was tied up in a Saturday afternoon exam and my roommates were both working... leaving me to fill my day with just about whatever my little heart desired.  This turned into me being the biggest hot mess at the Home Depot.  And there are A LOT of people at the Home Depot on the west side.  My top secret mission for the day was to create some beautiful hanging baskets for Bill's front porch. 

Lots of flowers at the Depot.  including really pretty plastic buckets of pansies for about $3.99.  I guess they weren't good enough and I really wanted to make my own assortment, so I tracked down the friendly Home Depot associate to tell me which flowers were the best for hanging baskets, and how to make a hanging basket o' flowers.  She informed me that any flowers would do well.  The trick was to pick my favorites and plant them in a basket.  And then make sure they got water and sunshine.  

This sounded too easy.  

But I went for it anyway.  First Instinct: pick up everything pink and orange and take it home with me.  Second Instinct: Since sweet Bill is off working hard for the day, maybe I'll pick Ole Miss colors so he will smile when he gets home.  

Accidentally drop two six-packs of flower-lings in the middle of the Garden Center = Hot Mess

Pick, de-pick, pick new things, put back old things, pick new favorite flowers, sort through and finally make a selection.  

And then over to the side where I could pick out the planters.  Luckily we already had the extra soil left over from making the garden box.  No decision needed there.  

But once I got home, it wasn't too tricky just shoving everything together.  The process in pictures:

Step 1:
Set out the flowers (dianthus, petunia, little red and white ones, and silvery leaf ones)
Start the music

Step 2:
Fill the baskets half-full of dirt

Step 3:
Put in the flowers
Fill with additional dirt if necessary

Step 4:
Water
Hope they grow

Step 5:
Admire the fruits of my labor...

...Stare at the neighbors's tree.  Really pretty...

...And head inside for a shower and a Fat Tire

Weekend Update

The garden box finally has everything in the ground.  It feels like a little sigh of relief to get all the plant babies in their places and started growing.  Several of our plants were ordered from the church as plants instead of just sticking the seeds in the ground. The tomatoes and peppers we got are gorgeous and came from a nursery in Gallatin, just a few miles up the road.  Not to mention that our plant pick-up time coincided with an awesome Wednesday night supper of veggie lasagna and parmesan polenta.  (after trying the polenta, Bill exclaimed, "This is just like fancy-people's cheese grits!"  That boy cracks me up)

Bill hard at work planting peppers

I have a few notes on some of the things we've added to our box, and the progress on some other thing guys:

Tomatoes

• Aside from the generic paste tomato we started with, all our tomatoes are heirlooms.  The tiny plants were still so delicate when we put them in the ground, I hope they'll be hardy enough to yield a bunch of yummy tomatoes

Peppers

• Revolutionary Bell and Sweet Banana - Heirlooms
• Carnival Bell - We tried to start these in seed cups for transplanting, but the drowned in one of Tennessee's recent spontaneous monsoons.  Seeds went straight into the ground.  The package reads like they need to be coddled a little bit, so we'll see if they do anything 
• Jalapeños - Came in a six-pack.  We've got one in the ground, but we're still looking for a trough style planter to stick the rest of them.  If we get all six planted we may have to learn to can or pickle them
• The seed surprise... maybe something's starting to come up.  I can't tell.

Root Things

• We didn't have as many onions and beets as we expected.  The seed cups didn't survive, and we needed the squares for other reasons
• Radishes - should be ready to harvest soon... but we took a sneak peek at one and it didn't look quite ready yet.  Maybe we'll give it another week or so.
• Carrots - seem to be doing well, but they need to be thinned,  with all that delicate greenery, how do you thin the carrots?  Having a hard time differentiating between what greens belong to what carrot.

Greens

• Sorrel - after Em and my cooking class with F. Scott's chef Kevin Ramquist, I was in love with Sorrel, but when I went to cook with it, I couldn't find it around the Kroger.  They did, however, have it at Gardens of Babylon in a six pack!  Into the garden they go!  It's a strange green (or herb?) that has a really fresh lemony flavor yum!

Description reads: French Sorrel - Tender, bright green leaves with lemon flavor.
 Good in salads, soups, & sauces, especially with fish

In the ground!

Peas

• Snow Peas - we planted a second generation of them.  The batch planted in March have already attached themselves to the trellis!  I'm like a proud mama bear!

Squash

• Again, tried some in seed cups, but they didn't work out.  Seeds straight into the ground for this batch
• UFO Squash - Looking good!

Flowers

Bartee Blue Iris

• Sweet peas - Coming up!  May need to trellis some soon
• Zinnias - not impressed so far... we'll see.
• Cosmos - cute... the greens sort of look like carrot greens
• Bartee Blue Iris - Bill's Grandma gave us a variety of Iris that has the family name.  She says it blooms a beautiful shade of blue.  Right now it's sitting in the garden spot while we clear our the patch we're going to stick it into.

Stepping Stones

• It broke my heart a little bit to throw stepping places into the garden, but there was just too many acrobatic stunts involved in getting to the back of the garden (before things were planted) to make it enjoyable getting to the back row.  Steps were a must.  Next time, we'll make sure things are within two squares reach.  

So now we're just looking at tending and maintaining and then HARVESTING (hopefully) from the garden box.  I can't wait!  In the mean time There's work to be done getting the rest of the yard into satisfactory shape.

A shot of the garden - nearly fully planted