Marching toward April

So big news is that my landlady just gave me 80% of what used to be her garden.  She's 85 and going to be away fron mid-June to mid-August.  Apparently her grown sons lived with her for a while in the 90s and made it into a vegetable garden but she's just been doing tomatoes and flowers for a while now.  The soil needs help - I just started in with some manure and am using my coffee-grounds hookups to get myself premium nitrogen input (I've got a bag that will go in as soon as it cools off).  I'm hoping the poo and coffee combo will get this ground back into shape.

To start, some inside seed-bits all cloched up and waiting:

I've got tomatoes, brussels, eggplants, and onions in so far.

Brussels (Long Island Improved, for the record) getting their secondary leaves!

These guys just sprouted today! (they were definitely right on the edge yesterday) they're about to get moved into a brighter spot.

Basils and a Rosemary in the kitchen.

Peony a-comin' - I'm thinking about moving this inside over the weekend...it's supposed to snow, although I've seen plenty of other in-ground peonies coming up in the neighborhood, I worry about my babies.

Spinach Babies!

Chard babies!

New garden spot!  Colleen and I turned the soil at the back part already and you can see the dark area that I've amended.  The trashbag in the right corner is coffee grounds that I'm going to do another amendment with...and probably mulch a little high around the garlic sprouts in preparation for tonight's snow.  They're supposed to be planted out before the frost, but I still worry about them.

Composter all nestled in the shrub line.  You can also see the wire fence that I'm going to use as a trellis for my gherkins.

Light sprinkling of poo.  I have 3 more bags in the car.

Garlic I transplanted yesterday...not terribly gracefully, I must say.

Garden watchers.  I want two others.  I have to find my goose...so maybe I only want one more.

 

 Dirty Garden Sketch.  Really the best kind of map.  It's about 11' by 18' (not totally regular and punctuated by random tiny trees that may or may not do anything).  Starting upper left and moving clockwise there's a watermelon patch, 4 tomatoes and 2 eggplants surrounded by frilly borders of marigolds, the next rectangle is the partly amended part - garlic, bollyhocks and brussels sprouts, lettuce, spinach, onions, carrots, beets, and chard in rows followed by two cuke plants on the trellis fence.  In the upper right is the composter that I plan to partly screen with dwarf sunflowers. The rectangle full of circles is my three sisters area that will be corn, snap peas, and then two mounds of Jenny Lind Melon and three mounds of Luffa.  Next is a spot that I'm going to put two seed bombs that I have no idea what's in them, and then last (beyond the drain pipe) is the pumpkin patch.  There's going to be a row of nasturtiums between the watermelon and the pumpkin.  There's also going to be a row of Titan sunflowers behind the three sisters.

How I threw my back out...or...the garden is done!

I took this picture on Friday-- so a week ago-- and some of you may have seen it already, but this is how my garden looked at that time:


Click for large and legible version.

It feels good to have gotten all the veggies in and I'm so excited about my three-sisters area. I'm sort of following this guide here.

Basically you plant corn and when the corn is 6 inches high, you plant peas or beans which climb up the corn and bind nitrogen into the soil. Then you plant a vine crop like a squash or a melon which shades the roots and helps keep the weeds down. Genius.

So I have corn, sugar snap peas, and then I'm going to do one mound of melon and two mounds of spaghetti squash.

After the week I had-- Monday and Tuesday clearing the ground and fenceline, Wednesday roto-tilling and sifting the soil (with help from Dougie and Anastasia), Thursday hauling three pick up trucks' worth of yard waste and logs by myself (but I got to use the new chainsaw!!), and then Friday planting it all...plus shooting 2 long weddings Friday and Saturday...when I bent down to tie my shoes on Sunday, I couldn't stand back up again. So I've been seeing a muscular therapist and am mending well but still in pain. Damn it. I still haven't learned to pace myself-- I'm either all in or...not.

Also, Anastasia wanted me to share her chicken coop plans:





As always-- click for large and legible.

Where is my machete?

I made some big progress around the yard today:

Before:


After:


It gives me great joy to flip between those pictures. I weeded out the whole corner, dug bricks out of random parts of the peony bed by the driveway (that's another post entirely), shoveled the top layer of dirt (more like dust really) out of it...and then...I took one of those huge Ikea carry-alls and made about 10 trips between our old house (where the composter still was) and new house to fill compost in on top. When I put the plants in, the compost got mixed with the dirt and now I have some pretty healthy looking soil.

While at costco earlier today, I picked up a flat of Astilbe for only $12-- so that's the first row of plants. Then there's a sprinkling of marigold seeds. Above that are two geranium corms and two peruvian daffodil bulbs (one of each of which has just begun sprouting). The big thing in the middle is last year's tiger lilies. I'd been hoping to spread them out, but they overwintered in their pot and I just let them come back up, so they're pretty tangled. On each side of the tiger lilies is a pair of bedding dahlias that were in pots on the deck before. Above that are nasturtium, poppy, and chinese lantern seeds.

I know I got a late start on a lot of this, but moving 6/1 is definitely not ideal.

I also wanted to put my tigridia bulbs in there, but even though they'd been treated just the same as the tiger lilies (which sprang up just wonderfully in April), they were rotten in their pot...

When AVR got home from work, she finished clearing a spot for the composter (I'd started but it was a tangent, I hadn't finished with the corner garden yet).



Then she installed the rain barrel:

It's the same one we had over at 134-- I was worried about how it would last the winter, but couldn't get to it because of the rubble from the house fire. When I went over this morning, it was totally full and the area around it was bone dry. No leaks! I'd like to eventually make a second one and couple them together as it overflowed a lot last summer...and it only cost us under $30 to make, so it wouldn't be a big hardship to do it.

While I was wrapping up work on the corner garden, she was doing some grape vine demoltion.

Before:


A little while later:

There's still work to be done, though.

She also continued to clear branches from over where I'm planning to put the veggie garden.




And then I pruned the peonies and made an arrangement in the house:


I just love love love them.

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.