Fins and Stems

Our yard is not anywhere near something you’d find on HGTV (unless it was Curb Appeal…) and is actually the one on the block that if I cut the grass, they have to cut their grass. Even if they just did it less than a week ago.

I’ve been attempting to slowly retake the yard over the last month or so. Just before Codestock I managed to start to clean up around the mailbox. My thought is that the mailbox is something everyone will notice and know that someone is trying to make the house be more on par with the rest of the neiborhood. I have started to do a decorative border around the flowers with black mulch. I’m trying for a shape to make it easier to keep the edge of the grass from taking over and mown. Next comes some weeding and thinning… and a lot of back-breaking digging……….

Eventually this will all pay off… right?

Gardening with a baby is difficult.

Almost nothing needs to be said after that. I’m a new mom and don’t know how to concentrate on doing a task now that Jas is mobile enough to start getting things into her mouth that used to be forever and away… Gone, the halcyon days of putting her on a blanket and walking away for 10 minutes to find her blissfully in the same spot. If I walk away now, she’ll have grass/bugs/dirt/something poisonous in her mouth and eyes before I’ve finished turning around…

Needless to say, I’m still attempting to garden.

Mother Nature hasn’t helped out any.

Most of the seedlings I managed to get in the ground after the extra long winter bit the dust after too much rain, a late cold snap, more rain, and a windstorm that did a number on anything it could. I lost all but one pitiful tomato plant and it nearly killed off my eggplants (which are blooming now!) and a good number of my herbs and green onions. My lettuce (quite surprisingly) is fine, strong and growing like gangbusters!

I’ve bought a ton of herbs for indoor-outdoor plantings. I’m making a sturdier container filled with strawberry plants (some of which have already produced a good many small & sweet berries my husband has laughed at…) for Jas to learn to garden in when she gets old enough. I’m trying to reclaim my front yard/planting areas with weeding, mowing and replanting. In the older bed will go corn and watermelon. In the planters I’ll try for more veggies.

Gotta go. Another poopie diaper interrupts…

So I’ve managed to grow foodstuffs again this year!

The successes: I’m now getting a steady supply of small cucumbers. At least 3 plants of each variety of tomatoes I planted (beefsteak, roma, and cherry) have survived my neglect and have good sized fruits forming. I have two mature, strong heads of lettuce. The okra plants are pest-free and filling out nicely. My basil is thriving and can be harvested without harm.

Mediocre:I would have gotten a better yield of peas if I’d been more concientious about watering. None of the pepper plants have died and may start flowering soon. The dill I planted is small and can’t be steadily harvested but one is flowering (very pretty). I have no idea whether or not the pumpkin vines that have been steadily blooming and looking real pretty will actually fruit. I’m seeing no evidence of such but I’m not quite sure how to tell which flowers are female and which male…

Almost fail: The eggplants that managed to seed are still hanging on there but I don’t think they’ll do anything at any time. If I can get them to a good size I may try to transplant them to a small container to try and bring indoors at some point towards the end of the season… The kale I planted that was doing so well this spring got eaten back to the stems by some unknown bug. After the liberal application of some organic bug killer and introduction of flowers to attract preadator bugs, they seem to be bouncing back nicely. :D None of the onions, leeks, chives I’ve planted outdoors seem to be doing very well… The parsley I planted doesn’t seem to like being with the strawberries. Nice to know beforehand. No the strawberries aren’t just choking it out because the basil with the more established strawberries is growing like gangbusters and bringing those plants up with it.

Failure: The potatoes I planted are likely all dead now. I neglected to plant things that the neighborhood cats find unattractive and I think they’ve made the soil… well… soiled… So I’ll have to re-ammend that entire plot. Dandelions don’t seem to like to be properly cultivated… I’ve managed to kill a couple that I’ve been trying to grow into salad species… Dissappointing really… Because I only have two heads of lettuce (that keep dying back due to inconsistent watering) and the fact that I delayed seeding my tomatoes til so late, I don’t have the fixings for either salsa or salads quite yet.

To do: Keep up the good watering schedule I’ve started. Till the side-yard garden to see if any of it is salvageable. Seed some more lettuce in a moveable planter to see if I can get a longer produce life and get the salads I want…

…keepin’ on. Yesterday it didn’t feel like I got much of any gardening done. I did do the first coat of paint for my coffee table. I trimmed the hedges along the front yard. I cleaned out the dead leaves around the forsythia (which might not bloom this year) and the roses. That was about all I did outside yesterday.

Today I had to go to work for a half day but still managed to finish painting my coffee table and almost completely finish preparing my above ground planting beds. I don’t know how I’m going to keep from conking out early tonight… My sewing basket calls me…

I’d forgotten that I’d asked Papa to come over today to "help" me make a new coffee table for my reading area (even though I did remember to buy wood for it). So, after he’d finished confirming how everything was going to come together, I started gardening.

I cleaned out my in-ground plot from last year and found out that maybe one of the okra plants survived. We shall see if it also survived my mistreatment of it. My "pristine" uncut trio of celery is down to a single, beautiful example. The last frost killed off some of the surviving 2nd year celery. Some of the fallen seed germinated and I have a couple of new seedlings. My remaining carrots are all sending up new greenery and look just as good as before. The rosemary in that area is basically dead and will need to be replaced… I may just transplant some from my garden near the front door.

I cleaned out and refreshed my small strawberry patch planter. They look ready to finish filling out their leaves and should start sending out flowers in about 2 weeks or less.

So, alot of groundwork (*waah waah*) done today. I did do some planting: some Pak Choy (that’s what the package said) seeds from last year, two varieties of potato, and some spinach seeds.

Tonight I do more seedwork indoors. Tomorrow comes the larger portion of getting the above-ground plot completely finished. And probably finishing off my new coffee table with a couple of coats of paint.

I will officially count tomorrow as the first Day of Gardening as it will involve me setting up the planters sans plants with drainage, dirt, and weedcloth and maybe getting a garden hose. If I can’t find my new seed packets by the end of the day tomorrow, I’ll buy more Tuesday or Wednesday… or try last year’s seed… I have no idea the viability of that, though.

Just read about a way to test all your old seeds and may try that tomorrow regardless of if I find the new ones or not.

Not one hour later: Of course I find them. While reading a book in my comfy new cpu chair. I was apparently looking for the wrong color bag. I stretched for a sec and found the seed bag with my foot. Tomorrow will definitely start my gardening for the year. Yay! :D

Today was pretty good.

I’ve done dishes, changed the kitty litter, taken out the trash, and made headway on my garden.

I’ve started some potatoes and set out pots for this year’s major gardening effort and begun the seeds, moving them to the greenhouse area to help in my efforts to remember they exist. Also, I’ve taken stock of my pond (now to be referred to as the "Deadzone") and will start making renovations to that in a couple of weeks when the water temp gets above about 58 degrees. Hypothermia does not become me, I think.

My indoor strawberry pot is growing like gangbusters! :D I shall have chives and purple basil at the very least. maybe the strawberries will catch up as it gets warmer…

So, after buying all my seeds, setting up the seeding pots, organizing all the areas to be planted, taking stock of my garden from last year, and getting everything wetted down for proper planting I’ve done exactly 1 (one) freestyle pot for indoor/outdoor gardening.

Yeah, my motivation is astounding. My one bit of gardening this year is a strawberry pot planted with strawberry roots and seeds for chives and a purple basil. Hopefully most of it will take and I’ll be able to cull into some other planters. Until I get some seedlings in my garage I’ll hold off on getting soil (SAM’s looks like the way to go this year). I’ll also need to buy a new water hose (cheap this time since taking care of the more expensive one didn’t work) and maybe a new hose head if one of the two not in use doesn’t work. I need to see if some of the seedlings can take advantage of my one shallow planter that I still have and then hopefully I’ll have some fruit vines that lived from last year and I’ll repurpose one of my square planters (stupid "cold weather hardy heather" dying) into a fruiting planter for a vine and a couple of struggling bushes.

It keeps freezing over so I can’t transplant or thin out my over-wintered carrots and celery. I’ll be adding potatoes, rhubarb, and asparagus to my multi-year plantings.

There’s alot to do once it gets warm enough to do it and plenty to do now so I’m ready when it does.

It is just warm enough to start my seeds if I do so in my garage. The side door lets in a little natural light and the space doesn’t freeze over at night. Nice even temperature day vs night. I don’t know how well everything will do but I’m hopeful.

AFTER SEARCHING FUTILELY FOR SEEDS:

I can’t find the tomato, cucumber or pomegranate seeds I was saving… I found the pepper seeds but they’re obviously dead…

Looks like I’m back to ground zero. At least I prepared for this possible eventuality.

Last year I got laid off and spent much of the year looking for work. To save money, I actually did what I’d been thinking of doing for years:

I grew my own vegetable garden from seed.

This is no huge revealation in and of itself. Plenty of people of do it and have done it since the beginning of farming. It’s just it’s my first time doing so. The cost savings grew as the year went on, I probably saved close to $500 easy on fresh produce and made my diet much healthier. And of course, I want to make another one this year. Bigger, heathier, easier to maintain. I’m going with a raised series of planting beds this year. Also, I’m trying to heirloom my tomatoes. If I can get the seeds I salvaged from my crop this year to germinate I’ll have plants that produces fruit I know I like the taste of.

What I had last year (that actually produced):

• lettuce (variety)
• tomatoes (cherry, beefsteak, and roma)
• cucumbers (mostly burpless)
• okra
• carrot
• celery
• peppers (banana and several hots)

I also planted eggplant [fail], some pomegranates [should do less failing this year], and strawberries [if this year's crop is bad then it's also a fail].

This year, if I can swing it, I’d like to try again with the eggplant and also do potatoes and some sort of fruit… I’ve some pots that have fruit bushes starting out from last year, but they’re puny. I may also try again to start grape vines. They take a few years to take, but the payoff would be worth it to me.