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:

Closure.

Last year's garden ended in me having to leave it. I have no idea how/if the harvest came out, but here are some phone pictures from before I had to leave:

This is the Mexican Sweet Gherkin (started indoor from seed) as of 7/28/09:

In flower on 8/23:                                                             In fruit on 9/3:

Boston Pickling Cucumbers (bought as a plant from Home Depot) on 8/11:

Tassels on the corn in my 3-sisters area on 8/23:

Amish Paste Tomatoes on 9/3:

Ripe Beets on 9/3:

Going Gangbusters on 9/3:

Tassels on the corn! All sorts of stuff going crazy through the screen on an upstairs window.

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.

Another big day.

So this afternoon after finishing the wedding I was working on and an engagement set I'd promised, I set to work on what I knew was going to be a big day. I was keeping an eye on the weather and this had promised to be the nicest day this week...and luckily I'd done enough weeding to make it work.

I ran out, rented a pick-up truck, and then hopped on over to Home Depot and rented a rototiller!!

When I got home, Dougie (who knew I'd left on said mission) had decided to attack the killer bamboo patch.

Arial view:



You can see where I cleared the ground over the past few days...and Dougie's butt.

Anastasia realized that there was more concrete than I'd thought and so moved some cinder blocks and dug that out a bit-- more room for the grill! (No pic tonight).

Apparently Dougie had used a rototiller before, so I let him get down with his bad self in that department:



Then Anastasia and I team-worked it up shoveling the loosened dirt through a screen and sifting out the roots and rock. (And giving me Michelle Obama arms)





Also making the piggy piggy greedy magpies happy:




They're so bold! At one point one sat right on the handle of the tiller while I was only about an arms length away. I also took both of the above pics with a wide-angle lens (aka, I was not far away). At one point one of them grabbed a big fat worm or grub and danced around for a full minute with it before it flew off! I has the foods now!!

Also in our tilling adventures we found:
-A license plate (too rusty to read)
-A radiator
-A buried pet cat or dog (at least 20 years buried, it was all tiny bones, sorry Fluffy)
-A leggo dog (unrelated)
-2 wrenches (same set)
-A hockey puck, a golf ball, a tennis ball, a baseball
-A sharp tooth (like a canine) at least an inch long.
-Lots and lots of chicken bones and oyster shells
-Several cans (no lables)
-A milk jug
-A hershey's syrup container
-Lots of metal bits (a hook, an old bike pedal (?), screws, nails)
-Lots of broken teracotta, bricks, roofing slates, etc.

We also found a brick wall that runs perpendicular to the fence adjoining the cement slab... The current theory is that there must have been an out-building of some kind there when a property was subdivided and it got taken down all but the slab which is now under part of a raised bed over here and must be below the neighbors' yards (which are about 4 feet higher than ours) too.



Tomorrow, I plant things! And bundle sticks! And try to find patio furniture and a portable dishwasher before I need to return the truck at 4!

Garden Demolition Continues Apace

I am to the point in my garden demolition where I'm really feeling that it's time to go get a rototiller and go to town so I can get my veggies in. It's exciting but for the fact that I also have to rent a truck to accomplish this.

This is the area where the garden will be:


but more recently:







I found this 2' (ish) by 3' (ish) hunk of patio when I was clearing out that daylily patch-- bet you didn't see that coming-- I certainly didn't.



It's got a heads up penny pressed into the cement. I tried to read the date on it but it was so covered in dirt (and oxidized) and it was dark when I got it all clear, but I think it dates our patio at 1960. I'll look again in the light tomorrow.

Anastasia thinks it's a great spot to put the grill once the area above and beyond it is cleared out more, but that's much lower on my priority list.

Getting into that area of the yard felt very garden-archeologic-- found an arc of bricks that paralleled the shape of that huge daylily patch (but smaller by about 2 feet) where I assume they were once planted ornamentally - boy have they taken over! I also found some parsley growing at the edge of the raised cinder-block bed (under the strawberry, creeper, grapevine, and knotwood that have taken over) as well as something that looks like a cottage rose, although it's not in bloom.

So my next big to-dos are:
-Till cleared garden bed.
-Line the edges with logs from the log pile and add some fill to make it a bit higher.
-Get my veggies in and then some!
-Take away the rest of the log pile (see appendix A)
-Clean up the other side of the fence and weed the cement.
-Find a table and some chairs so we can enjoy it!

Other house/garden tasks include:
-Pull everything out of the raised cinder block bed (where the evil bamboo stand is)
-Try to kill the evil bamboo.
-Weed the bed beside the driveway so that the peonies can actually do their thing next year.
-Pull everything that's coming up through cement.
-Put hostas in the bare spot in the front bed (move them from other parts of the yard)
-Try to train the ivy to grow up the house (I think it deserves it)
-Dig up all the mini-quinces that have dropped and spread around.
-Sprinkle some grass seed around.
-Convince the landlady to remove the 50 gallons of gas (ongoing project)
-Also convince her to mend the hole in the front step.

Does that sound ambitious?

I also think I want to get a wisteria and let it eat the porch. This house, to me, deserves to be swallowed up in vegetation in a prettier way than it has been.

Appendix A:

Just call me Paula Bunyon.

Yesterday I cleared space for my veggie garden. The clearing is about half done-- and then after that I have to pick some logs out of the log pile to make a surround for it and then cultivate the soil a little and probably add a little more in on top of it. There are some pretty exciting before and afters on this one:





and...


You can see the stump sticking out in both pictures...just for reference of what you're looking at.


Still have to clear the ground over here....but at least I feel like the light will get in now.

There was so much shade back there that there were tons of snails just chillin' even in broad daylight. I've been rehoming them into the compost bin. Yummy food for you in there, snailies!

It took about three hours and I feel like I pulled down about 10 miles of Creeper and overgrown and possibly diseased grape vine. There were also some morning glories and strawberry in part that I cleared down, but they were so tangled in the mess that there was really no way to be selective.

There was also a pile of logs and a radiator buried in the undergrowth which I moved to another part of the yard where there was already a different log pile started:



That's a really shady part where I am not confident that much will grow, it's where I'd eventually like to put the chicken coop. (If my chicken plans succeed).

There's also a tree bit...that's growing out of the stump. I want to take it down. It's making shade and it just doesn't belong there....it's pushing the fence all out of shape too. It was full of grape vine until yesterday:


I found a rusty hack saw in the basement, but it wasn't doing the job.


This morning Anastasia went and got an axe....but about 15 minutes into the job...




The blade flew over the fence. I'm planning to go get it, but I have to run an errand first. SO that's all for now!

Salad (Greens) Days

On Monday, our neighbor Tiny stopped by as I was in the garden cutting chard. I said-- come by for dinner, we have all this food. I was all proud of my big pile of leafy greens:







...and then I put it in the saute pan and it basically disappeared. Oops:



At least we had other food...ha. I was still a little embarrassed to put about a serving and a half of chard on the table...but I grew it darn it.

And then Tuesday was our first CSA delivery:



A different kind of embarrassment...the kind that basically doesn't fit into the fridge. I wish that they'd been over for dinner that night.

For those who can't pick that all out, its: red leaf lettuce, pak choy, spinach, romaine, pea tendrils, and chickory.

So Tuesday I made a Crazy Pizza (it involves apples and lots of spinach) and tonight we had Chicken Caesar Salads. I want to do a stir-fry with some of the pak choy and pea tendrils tomorrow...maybe.

I don't know how we're going to eat all of this in a week. I mean there are 4 of us, but that's a lot of leaves. I'm looking forward to the days when there's a little more variety in what comes off the truck.