I worry sometimes when I hear about declining bee populations....especially in the city...I worry that I'll have to hand pollinate my veggies. But then I see them:
Someday I'd love to have some bees of my own. I'd give them plenty of fuel.
Bees
Big Show
Today I got a big show from some of my one-day bloom plants. There are almost 20 Morning Glory flowers and 3 Tigridia.
This is one of AVR's favorite spots in the upper garden. It's one of my moonflower plants in an old ceramic skull of hers.
Inside Out
I was asked to post a photo of the inside of the rain barrel, so here it is:
Getting low.
This is a 10 day old Titan sunflower planted out back. It's already 3 inches tall.
Seed Saving
I've been saving Pansy seeds from all over the place. It's fun:
I'll have my first round of Morning Glory seeds soon.
Wildflowers
AVR has two "pots" of flowers out back. They have two wildflower mixes in them. As they have been blooming, I've been trying to identify them. Here are some of the ones I've gotten so far:
Plains Coreopsis
Cornflower
Painted Daisy
Scarlet Flax
I don't know what these are:
(these look like the same thing)
Building a Raised Bed on the Concrete
Now that the gf is on-board with the garden project, she wants more crops. So over the weekend she built me a raised bed over a disused area of pavement in the back. The initial plan was for it to have three tiers, but we put 600 pounds of soil, rocks, sand, and lumber in the car...which was about as much as the little civic could take. And the soil we got was just about exactly enough to fill the first tier.
So now the plan is to garden on one level this year and next year we can dig in some compost, get a little more soil, and kick it up a notch.
Anyway, wanna see how we did it?
First we went to the lumber yard and got some planks. I spent some time chit chatting with the guys who worked there and definitely used my cute-girl powers for awesome...aka picked up some discounts.
We came home with 52 feet of 2x8s ( [2] 8 foot lengths, [8] 4 foot lengths, and [2] 2 foot lengths-- and also a scrap 4 foot piece, so really 56 feet) and a bunch of screws. That cost around $40, I think.
Then we went to home depot and got 2 cubic feet of gravel, a cubic foot of sand, 10 cubic feet of garden soil, and 5 cubic feet of organic veggie soil. If the car could have held more, we would have gotten more. I think 2ish more ft3 of soil would fill it up a little better, but it's fine as it is.
Here you can see all the boards for the first tier screwed together. Beyond the back left corner is my rose bush and behind the frame I have some sunflowers planted, but they're babies still.
This is AVR smoothing the rocks out. I helped put them in, I promise.
Then we put sand all into it.
Afterwards we added soil in layers like a cake. 4 bags of topsoil, 4 bags of organic veggie soil, 4 bags of topsoil, 1 bag of veggie soil, and then the remaining two bags of topsoil.
Then we put in the plants and watered it all. This bed has taragon, dill, basil, squash, and punkins.
Our DIY Rain Barrel
It's been a few weeks and I'm not sure where the receipt from home depot went-- but it cost under $30 and took about 15 minutes to make (and then had to cure overnight).
It's just a trashcan with a lid, a brass faucet, some caulk, a drain pipe extender, and a length of hose. Since we put it in (a few weeks ago) I haven't had to use tap water once. The drawbacks of it are-- it's on the first floor and 2/3 of my watering is on the 2nd floor, it's only 30 gallons, so it's overflowed a few times (which is really no big deal, but if it were bigger, then we could store more), and the flow from the hose is really slow. We're not sure how safe the water coming out of it is....but we figure that the water from the tap is coming through ancient pipes...so it's probably about 6 of one, half dozen of another. It's also not like we're drinking the rain water, we're just watering with it.
Compost I Have Loved and Chickens I Would Like
My partner-- I generally refer to her in my other blog as AVR because she has a long name-- when we first met was a firm Bostonite. Although she is an ex-Mainer, she does not own it. Or did not. The deck that I garden on was a place to put trash when she was too lazy to take it all the way out. It was covered in beer cans that another roommate (and her alcolholic bff) left there...and broken furniture from the house.
Then I started the garden.
Then I pushed until she let me get a compost bin. The compost bin was subsidized by the city. Most urban areas do it-- $100 bin for $25. Sold.
Our back yard is paved but for a 6 inch swath where the stockade fence has drifted away from the macadam. As there was nowhere to anchor the compost bin to, I laid some bricks on the rim. They work just fine.
Anyway, AVR started getting into composting and the garden and now she secretly reads about urban homesteading and wants to keep chickens....just a pair of hens for eggs. We were chatting about it sleepily the other night and decided they'd be named Adelaide and Five. Then I discovered Eglu:
Seriously-- looks like an iMac and chickens live in it.
I am now on board with chickens. Somerville permits them, too.
We like to think that we are drifting from the grid. Dream house will have a wind turbine, a big garden, and chickens out back...and oh the compost.
Photo Post
Here are some of my garden shots:
Views from some 3rd floor windows:
My sunflowers are budding.
View down the long rail, I hope the railing gets swallowed up in vines by the end of July.
Mound of dahlia.
My blooming lavender.
Unruly garlic tops.
A sunny photo of my bushy cypress.
My Black Velvet Nasturtiums look more scarlet than chocolate brown.
The marigolds are big but haven't budded yet.
One of my bigger moonflowers. One of the vines has started to inch its way up my homemade tomato trellis.
Baby Sugar Baby
Scarlet Magic Tassels. They're super neat looking.
The brocs are also pretty big but budless.
This is the beet that came out of the ground today. I'll post that photo tomorrow.
The tigridia in action. You can see my Grandpa Ott's MG in the background of the first one.
Here's a close on some of Grandpa:
I need a macro lens.
Most recent photo- 7/5 - tomatoes flowered for the first time.
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