Intercropping - Carrots Love Tomatoes!

I've been reading the book Carrots Love Tomaotes by the late Louise Riotte - its a great book on companion planting and also a really helpful general garden reference.  Most people know that marigolds (as I overheard at the garden center yesterday) - "keep something bad away from your tomatoes...or something."  But most people don't know that there are plenty of other plants that will protect each other - for example mint planted among cabbage will repel the cabbage butterfly, cucumbers "are offensive to raccoons" so are good to plant with corn to keep them away and corn seems to protect cucumbers from wilt, if you plant garlic in a circle around fruit trees it will protect them from borers.  Did you know any of that?  I didn't.  The book is an excellent reference and her writing style is old-fashioned but cheeky.  This book should be on any gardener's shelf.
 
So, with Louise as my guide, I'm trying to do a little more intercropping than I have in the past - while some parts of my garden are just rows of stuff (with consideration about what is to each side), others are (or are going to be) more of a blend.  The three-sisters area (which I'm repeating from last year) is an example of this, but this year I'm doing a different take on a tomato patch.

I had just watered it before this picture was taken, so it gives a better visual.  To break it down - there's a big square, segmented into 4 smaller squares. The big square is marigolds around the border (I just put some full grown ones in as markers, but there are others seeded along  the sides) and also intersecting the large square and basil at every corner and at the intersection in the middle.  Each smaller square will be a tomato plant in the center, an onion at each corner, and one or two Paris Market carrots (I've just ordered them from Seed Savers (dot) org) at the North/South/East/West points on the smaller squares.

This is what a Paris Market carrot looks like:

Isn't that fun?  I'm so excited about them.

These are some of my more-developed seedlings having some outside time.  Three corn plants and two luffas (which are for the aforementioned 3-sisters area), a cucumber, an eggplant, and two tomato plants.

I'm sure that my neighbors will be happy when this is gone.  There are a few bigger (purchased - I'm impatient) tomato plants, a stevia, some extra basil and some trays of corn, watermelon, jenny lind melon, and pumpkin seeds that just went in yesterday.  On the sides are pots of morning glory that are staying there and hopefully swallowing up the railing.

And speaking of things that I impulsively bought at the garden center yesterday - lime tree!  With limes!  Anyone have a good name for a lime tree?

Out in the garden-proper - the broccoli is starting to make food!

The lettuce is starting to look like salad!

Beets are really starting to do their thing!

And it won't be long before my Titans will be knee-high!

Shots from a double barrel.

Over the Winter, my rain barrel was neglected and wound up damaged.  I rescued it and then rebuilt it - bigger, bolder, waterier.  As I am not a plumber, there was much to be learned about hosing and connections....caulk, PVC glue, some other stuff.  The guy at the home depot gave me a few pieces that you can't buy individually as they are part of weird kits like a water heater draining kit.  Exciting!

I also had to patch a sizable hole where the original water-spout came out...which involved two chinese-takeout-soup-lids, some pvc glue and some caulk.  I did a pretty good job, but it has a tiny drippy leak there.  It still holds water really well, although if it ever winds up empty again, I'll recaulk it and see if I can't get it to stop.

This is after I finished it - pre-rain.  I still need to patch the old lid and cut the new one.  I want to make sure that mosquitos have a hard time.  I've also just read that garlic oil kills mosquito larvae, so I'm thinking I might press a couple of cloves of garlic into them every now and then to try to stave off the little bugs.  Maybe it'll work?

I use a cut off OJ container for drip-catching - it gets to be about 1/3 full on dry days and I just dump it on a nearby morning glory while I'm filling the big can from the spout.

Gertie, however, decided that it was nicer to drink drips than her sink water and got her head stuck in it last week:

What a goon!

In other news:  Cherry Blossoms and Solar-Powered Lanterns are go:

The big one doesn't get as much sun on the sensor as the little ones do, so it goes out by around 10 or 11, but the little ones stay lit most of the night.  I also have some free-standing solar path lights scattered around.  I feel good about the ambiance... :)

Just so there are some plant pics in the mix:

My luffa has sprouted.  This is actually about a week old, so it has a full set of secondary leaves now.  I so hope that they're productive.  I want to make some luffa soap slices with herbs from the garden and my little gourds.

My lettuce continues to be adorable.

My spinach on the other hand is bolting already.  :(  I'm thinking of ordering a different variety for my succession plantings becuase these have dissapointed me the last two years in a row.

Little by little...

A few days ago, the flowering plum out front burst open!  All weekend-long there were bees everywhere doing their pollinating-best.  Gertie, of course, was doing her best to eat them.  Luckily, she was unsuccessful.

The forsythia are open too:

They're actually on their way out, I think.

There's a cherry in the patio area that's really thinking of joining them, but it hasn't happened yet - I'm guessing that the next warm day after all this rain, we'll get cherry blossoms too.

I'm looking for a good hummingbird feeder and some solar lanterns to hang from it - I'm feeling festive right now.  Spring!

In veggie news:

 It's seedling city.  I have 8 sprouted tomatoes, a bunch of onions and my full complement of brussels sprouts.  I have seen neither sprout or stem of the eggplant...and I just put the squash and the cukes in, so it'll be a week or so before they poke their heads out.

This is my flower  (etc) row - a peony (it's a pretty recent addition, so it's not sprouted too high yet), the mint which is not out at all, recently seeded morning glories, some new little poppy-lings, a bushy little lavender, a dormant rose bush, the other peony, and some container-ed salad greens.

I'm really excited about the poppies- they didn't come in last year.

They're obviously all too close together, but when they're bigger and can take it, I'm going to transplant some of them out into the garden.

This is the larger of the two peonies:

I'm really looking forward to being able to cut these and put them all over the house.  They're my favorite favorites and the double-white is super classy looking.  These are festiva maxima (they apparently have a bit of a fuschia tip on some of the center petals).

Next up, spinaches:

Left one is container spinach, right one is ground growing.  You can see the plum flower petals on the ground there.

The container chard is just thinking about putting up true leaves and there are a few tiny in-ground sproutlings, but not as impressive as the spinach yet.

I've never grown head lettuce, but it's really starting to look like lettuce- I think it's really cute!

The garlic I transplanted is feeling cheerful:

I also put some impulse-bought brocolli in, I've never had luck with it from seed:

I also have beets and carrots coming up:

The carrot seeds were from a few years ago, so I put a lot in just to make sure...I'm clearly going to have to think the heck out of them.

This is the overall shot right now...obviously it's more dirt than plants..and the soil really needs to be ammended, I'm starting, but it's going to be a long process.  After this rain, I'm hoping to get a bunch of maure turned in...it's just a lot easier when the ground is wet.  I may also make the starbucks rounds for a new set of grounds.

Oh - and of course, the rain has brought a bunch of new sprouts out - the strawberry popped up today.  I'm hoping for some preliminary morning glory action - there are some volunteers from pervious years grown in the chink between the fence and the sidewalk that Rita (the landlady) says come back every year, but they're dwindling.  I've seeded a bunch into pots here and there and will probably be less picky about getting all the seed off the plant so that she can have some fresh blood for her fence.

2010 Beginings

It's been in the 50s and 60s in Boston this week and so I decided to start in on gardening, also it was my birthday yesterday and there's no better way to celebrate birthdays than by doing something you love and I love gardening.

Today I started my Brussels Sprouts inside...I love a good vintage casserole dish mini-greenhouse.

(L-R) Seeds for the above, and Spinach and Chard which just got started outside.  I also started some Great Lakes Lettuce from a Buzzy Seed Starter kit.  I love that salad greens are cold hearty.

My front stoop/porch area has a pretty intricate railing set-up, so I'm going to put in three-ish different kinds of Morning Glories.  The Grandpa Otts have always come up beautifully, I just got Scarlett O'Hara yesterday, and I have seed-saved MGs from previous years that could be any combo of Grandpa/Celestial Mix or might just be Grandpa.  I have a whole bag of these and if anyone wants Morning Glory Seeds, let me know.

Flowers that may or may not go in depending on pot/"yard" space.  I've never gotten moonflowers to come up, but I'm going to try again.

Tomatoes....I'll probably do 1-2 of each plant type....and this year rather than pot marigolds in their own pots around the tomatoes, I might just put them in the very edges of the tomato pots.  I'm trying a new kind of mari, they're called French Vanilla.  I think that they're going to make the tomato plants look like giant Caprese salads.

I've had a topsy turvy for years and it's g one unused, I think this year I'm going to try to topsy-turvy these eggplants.  We'll see how it goes.

I'm going to do another root-veggies container...cheap plastic container, drill holes in the bottom, pour a bunch of dirt in it and then root it up.

So...so far:

Near to far:
Two years ago's rosemary that came up a little last year, we'll see.  Garlic (needs the cold to divide)!  Ladybird Poppies (like to be chilly before they sprout)!  A peony...yes in a container...we'll see how that goes.  Somewhat hidden in a tiny pot is the Great Lakes lettuce.  Next is a strawberry pot with home-depot bulbs in it.  I've never done strawberries...another we'll see.  Spinach in the long green container that I'm going to try to be good about succession planting.  Rainbow Chard in the second long green container. 

Left to Right:
A little Jade cutting that I started when we moved to our new place.  Rosemary (another Buzzy Grow Kit) and Basil (more of the same).

I also have had my name on the wait-list for the community garden on the Somerville Bikeway since May of '08.  I'd give myself a 75% chance that my name will come up this year (average wait time is about 2 years)...if it does then I'm going to do 3-sisters again:

Depending on pot/yard space and/or community garden plot, I also want to do these again:

I also have these two seed bombs that my friend Flo (who died in Haiti) made with some kids at a school in NH (they were brought to his memorial by the teacher for whom he led the class.  I have no idea what's in them (although I can see squash seeds in there) so I'm going to hold onto them until I have some space to account for a squash vine, which is not now.  I also like having them on my desk and look at them and think of him.

PS. I'm serious about Morning Glories: