Tentative Garden Schedule

Happy New Year! I mentioned a few days ago that I was working on a schedule of garden tasks so I will be more likely to achieve said goals. I am nothing if not goal and deadline oriented.

Anyway, what follows is a TENTATIVE schedule of garden to-do's. Many of these (particularly the ones that involve some kind of construction or soil work) are weather dependent, but this at least gives some sort of structure to what might otherwise seem like an overwhelming task of getting the garden started for the year.

December 30:

*Construction - attach lattice to fence for trellis

January 1:

Plan  garden layout

Cutoff top of one barrel. Drill holes in sides and bottom to use as compost bin

January 2:

*Seed starting - lettuce, basil, perilla

Wash pots with bleach and water first

January 4:

Cut top out of other barrel, install spigot and figure out how to attach screen or landscape fabric over top to keep out leaves and bugs. Store in shed till warmer weather.

January 17-18:

*Seed starting - verbena, celery

February 7-8:

*Seed starting - scarlet poppy, jalapeño, bell peppers

February 21-22:

*Seed starting - tomatoes, cauliflower, Iceland poppy

March 7-8:

Till in-ground garden. Make sure to add compost and organic fertilizer!

March 9:

Amend soil in raised beds with compost and organic fertilizer 

March 11:

Attach gutter to back of shed with a downspout that will pour into the rain barrel.

Level ground under downspout and set up rain barrel on concrete blocks.

March 14-15:

*Seed starting - squash, 

*Direct sow - peas, turnips, spinach, Cleome, zinnia, cosmos, portacula, hyssop

March 28-29:

*Direct sow - Swiss chard, mustard greens, carrots,

April 4-5:

*Seed starting - 

*Direct Sow - bachelor's button, borage, beets

April 18-19:

*Direct sow- sunflower, hollyhocks, marigolds

May 2-3:

*Direct sow - pumpkin, cucumber

May 16-17:

*Direct sow - beans

Garden notes and plans for this year

Hi everyone! I've been pretty quiet the past year or so (graduate school is a jealous mistress), but I thought I would share a few thoughts I had from last year's garden as well as some plans/goals I have for this year.

I have to say that last year's garden was pretty disappointing, and it was my own fault. I failed to amend my soil in my raised beds from the year before, and realized too late that there were not enough nutrients in the soil to support healthy plant growth. Also, most of my seed starts failed because I did not water them consistently. I blame this partially on my school schedule (leave about 7am, return after dark), but really, I could have watered the seedlings in the dark when I got home each night. Also, once I did get plants in the ground, I was gone for two weeks mid-July (for a good reason! I was singing opera!) and my non-gardening husband didn't really keep track of watering. The whole fiasco made me wonder...does anyone else have years where their schedule blows up in their faces and their gardens suffer for it, or am I the only one?

I got a few green beans, a few carrots, no tomatoes, no squashes. I did get plenty of jalapenos and LOTS of onions. Go figure.

This year, I am determined, will be different.

I have been reading some interesting books on gardening and composting and am starting my plan early. I'm also making the beginnings of a task schedule to keep myself motivated, and to have the tasks of planting, building, etc. divided into what I hope will be small enough bits to tackle between my school work. That said, the following is a list of plans/goals for my garden this year, in no particular order:

• Amend the soil in the raised beds with good compost (from my compost pile, and additional purchased compost as needed) and a good organic fertilizer. Whether I purchase this fertilizer in a ready-to-use form, or mix it myself is yet to be determined.
• Till and amend the soil between the retaining wall and the fence for an in-ground garden.
• Attach some sort of trellis to the fence for taller plants in the in-ground garden.
• Add an additional compost bin. I've only got one right now, and I would like to let the materials that are in there break down without adding more for a while. Ideally, I'd add two more, but I'm not sure the hubby will let me get away with that!
• Attach a gutter to the back of the shed and set up my rain barrels.
• Start seedlings on time and water them regularly!

There are some big goals on this list, but I think that if I make a schedule and start early (particularly with building the structures, which don't require that it be warm outside), I can accomplish all of these things. I'll be back in a few days with a schedule once I get it worked out!

State of the Vegetable Garden, May 2013

Whew! I know I haven't written about gardening lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been toiling away! So here's a post to catch you all up. Warning: it's long!

The seeds I had leftover from last year, and the ones that I ordered have all been started, and I've got some of the seedlings planted in the garden boxes. Sadly, not all of them yet though!

Just in the past couple days, the garden has seen great improvement! I spent a good bit of the day planting herbs (sage and basil) in pots to put around the retaining wall

The rhubarb was already there, but I have plans to make strawberry rhubarb pie next weekend!

And my ever-helpful buddy Patrick came over to help me build another garden box, so now I have three, and we have plans to build another one on Monday! We were going to build both yesterday, but ran out of light by the time we got the first one finished.

Oh! and may I introduce my newest garden helper? Meet Betsy Lou.

She is a sweet, young (only a year and a half) rescue. I have been fostering dogs for an East Nashville rescue called East C.A.N. and was fostering Betsy for them, but the hubs and I talked, and we decided she's home :-) Seger loves having a little sister (even if she is MUCH bigger than him...she's 70 lbs!!) and the two of them spend lots of time in the backyard running and playing.

Ok....back to gardening....I harvested my first crop of peas yesterday. Those are going gangbusters. They've actually grown taller than the trellis.

 You can see where I've planted some lettuce. It's not very big yet, and it looks like it maybe got dog smashed....*sigh*

These are the lemon tree tomatoes (not all of them....there are more planted elsewhere, and still to be planted!). 

These (to the left) are trionfo violetto beans. Even their stalks are purple! I can't wait to see what they look like as they get a little bigger.

These (to the right) are a variety of onion sent home with me by Patrick. I guess they grow onions at the top of the plant as well as growing them as a root. My mom says they might be Egyptian walking onions....anyone know for sure?

Bonus shot of the garden box layout. I think the fourth one is going to end up on the far end of the line. Eventually I'd like to have a total of eight, but we'll see what happens!

The blueberry bush has gotten a lot bigger, and is already putting on berries. Hopefully I'll have a good crop this year.

In the retaining wall bed, I planted various herbs and flowers that are coming up. There's dill....

....and sage....

...and nasturtiums....

....and I think these might be asiatic lilies. Not sure yet. I kept pulling them last year because I thought they were weeds, but I'm pretty sure someone actually put these here on purpose haha.

 The tea rose is putting on buds. The ones in front have already finished their first round of blooms and are getting ready for a second. Doesn't this one look like it's ready to burst open?

Oh, and I keep waiting and waiting for the garlic to be ready to pull. I thought it was supposed to be ready in the spring, but I also know you aren't supposed to pull it till the leaves die, so I guess I'll keep waiting....

I dug up this spot just this morning to plant the faerie watermelon, and a few sunflowers. I have a lot more digging to do to plant all those sunflower seeds though!

 My lemon balm has come back with a vengeance! I'm seeing more cocktails in my future....maybe a jelly? Anyone have any ideas??

This mint was, I think, accidentally passed along to me by my voice teacher and his wife. They gave me a bunch of flowers to put in my flower beds out front, but I'm not sure if this was supposed to be in there or not! It looks a little sad right now....probably because it's a clump of dirt sitting on dry leaves (need to fix that), but knowing how hardy mint is, I think it'll be alright until I can get my hands on some more potting soil.

Oh, and here are the first of my container tomatoes. I need to prop it up with something....hmmmm....

Kudos to you if you seriously just read all that. How is your garden looking? Did you plant anything super neato/unusual this year?

Fall Plantings

Whew! It's been a busy month! The hubs is getting ready to deploy, so it's been a whirlwind of traveling to see family, hosting family who are visiting us, and various other social events. They haven't left much time for thinking (or sleeping), much less blogging! Hopefully things will quiet down here soon. Oh well....onward.

I mentioned some time ago (back in August) that I had planted my fall crops. Well, some have been more successful than others, but here is the latest update.

My lettuce and green onions got trampled by a visiting dog when they were still seedlings, so they died. Boo. I have plans to put a few more seeds in the ground this week, but wanted to wait until all off the visiting dogs were gone before I did so.

On the flip side, my green beans are doing fantastic. In fact, they have nearly taken up the entire raised bed where the onions and lettuce was, so maybe it's a good thing they died.

And they're also starting to put out beans. Maybe I'll even have enough to can this year!

Also, my turnips seem to be doing quite well. Anyone know how to tell when a turnip is ready to be harvested?? One of them is even showing its white root above ground. I'm looking forward to some tasty turnip greens this fall.

 

The broccoli and cauliflower are coming up nicely.

Broccoli

Cauliflower

 

The peas I'm not so sure about. They got much bigger much faster in the spring. Maybe it's the difference between fall and spring plantings?

So what have you all been up to lately? Anyone do some good fall planting?

Fall Seed Planting

Now that I've got my garden boxes built, it's time for fall plantings! Following the planting calendar for my area (zone 6), I got my fall planting in the ground just a few days ago. Here's my planting list for this go-round:

1. Looseleaf lettuce. This is a cut-and-come-again salad mix, so I should be able to get several rounds of harvest from this. I also held back some seeds so I can do successive plantings. The next one will be in about two weeks.
2. Green beans (Blue Lake 274, Bush Type). These are left over from the ones I planted back in the spring. Only problem in the spring was that I planted them too early, and they froze. Shame on me for not following the directions on the seed packet!
3. Peas. These are the same bush habit Sugar Lace peas I planted in the spring as well. I actually had good luck with these this spring....hopefully I'll get some more delicious sweet peas!
4. Cauliflower. This Cheddar Hybrid is actually orange! Park Seed says it has 25 times the beta carotene of regular cauliflower. This is an experiment, so we'll see how it goes, and whether I will choose to plant it again.
5. Broccoli Packman Hybrid
6. Turnips White Lady Hybrid
7. Onions Parade. These are actually green onions.

I've also got some garlic on order as well as a packet of mustard green seeds I need to dig up. I think they got buried in my seed basket during the move, and over-looked when I started pulling things out for planting.

For flowers, I have a packet of columbine seeds, some tulip and daffodil bulbs, and a peony (which I have not received yet, but should in the next month or so).

Anyone else got big plans for their fall garden?

Building New Raised Beds

I've been planning to put in some raised beds for flowers and vegetables since we moved in last month. I have to admit, I've been procrastinating, but finally, they are in and ready for planting!

There are a couple things that make putting in raised beds in this yard a little more complicated than at the old place. We discovered the soil in our yard is extremely rocky and hard to dig (we discovered this when we went to plant the hydrangea and had to invest in a pickaxe), plus our yard is sloped, so I either have to dig out a level spot (lots of work!), or build the bed in such a way as to accommodate the slope (which seems like it could get complicated).

After much deliberation, I decided that digging would be the way to go. I figured that I'd have to dig out the ground under the beds a little bit anyway, so I might as well create a level spot while I'm at it. Plus, after redoing our fire pit, I was pretty confident that I could do the whole leveling thing.

All the same, I wanted as level a spot as possible to begin with. Here's the spot I chose (before I started digging).

 

I decided to start with two 4'x4' boxes. I figure I can always add more later if I need the extra space. After conferring with the very helpful guy at Home Depot, I also decided to use pressure treated pine for the construction. I considered cedar boards, since they are rot resistant without all the chemicals of pressure treated wood, but they are significantly more expensive. Plus, I would have needed to stain/seal them, which puts back all the chemicals I was thinking to avoid by using cedar.

Four 2x10x8's (each cut in half to make 4' sections), a couple of galvanized corner brackets, and some decking screws later, I was home with my materials...which sat there for the better part of a week while I hemmed and hawed about all the digging I was going to have to do.

Saturday came, and I got up the nerve to start digging after I mowed the lawn (I was already sweaty and gross, might as well keep going, right?).

I got the first bed dug and quasi-level before realizing it was really going to take an extra set of hands to get the boxes built.

So I called in reinforcements (thanks Pat!) and Sunday morning, the boxes were built and put in the ground in no time! Here's the end result...

As you can probably see, I still need to add a little dirt to the one on the left. Here's a close up on that one...

You can see where I put the little bit of mushroom compost I had leftover from planting peppers in the retaining wall bed when I ran out of garden soil. I mixed the topsoil I had dug out with garden soil, but underestimated how much garden soil I was going to need. Oh well....good thing Home Depot is close by!

So what do you think? Just in time for some fall planting, right? Speaking of which, I picked up a few seeds that I'll be planting this week!

I'm Feeling Rosy

Remember those scraggly rose bushes in the back yard retaining wall bed? They looked like this when we moved in...

Pretty pathetic, right?

Well, I trimmed them back a couple weeks ago, just to see what happened. I figured if I killed them, oh well...I can always put something else there in its place. So I got out my pruning shears and started cutting...just removing the brown, dead stuff and stems that seemed strangely out of place. I also mulched with a little mushroom compost.

It seems my efforts have paid off! I started noticing new growth almost right away. Here's what they look like today...

There's definitely still room for improvement, but baby steps, right? I think I'm actually going to have to figure out something to do with the larger one (maybe a trellis?). It's starting to arch overhead rather precariously. I have no idea what kind of roses these are. If anyone happens to know, an ID would be very much appreciated!

Do you grow roses in your garden? What do you do to care for them?

Oh! and in other news (though still on the rose theme), one of my students gave us a  lovely housewarming gift. And how appropriate is it that her name is Rosie?

Introducing....A Blank Slate (Part II)

Man is it hot here! I don't know what the weather is like where you are, but we've been breaking records left and right here in Nashville - and since we haven't had rain in over a month now, things are looking pretty brown and crunchy outside. I've been out early in the mornings watering before it gets so hot that any water will evaporate before it can do any good.

But enough about the weather. Here is my new back yard!

The previous owner graded the lawn to run into the creek on the other side of the fence so the house, and in doing so, created this retaining wall that makes a nice patio space. We're planning to use something like cobblestones to eventually pave in this space. You can see (kind of) where someone had dumped a bunch of gravel to try to create a patio space, but the weeds have taken over since it was last taken care of.

You can see where all my plants were pretty unceremoniously dumped when we were hurriedly moving everything in. I've spread them out a little since then.

Here, you can see I was in a hurry to get at least some of my vegetables in the ground. The retaining wall has a pretty handy built in bed, so I've been gradually planting the veggies I started back in February, adding mushroom compost to the soil as I go to give things a little boost.

I do have to figure out what to do with the two scraggly rose bushes in the retaining wall. Any suggestions??

We do have a pretty awesome deck....

...That's built right up to this gigantic hackberry tree. It will probably eventually come down. You can't tell from the picture, but it (and one other tree back here) hangs over the house, and the other tree is even closer to the house than this one!

We also have (actually, that's a had now...I'll do a post on it soon) a gigormous fire pit. Seriously, this thing is like 7 feet in diameter. The previous owners could have roasted pigs in this baby.

The only problem is that the border is just random rocks piled up in a circle, and if you so much as tap them, the go rolling away (maybe a bit of a safety hazard if there's actually a fire going).

Just beyond the firepit, we'll put a toolshed and a compost bin.

And here is where (I think) I'm going to put some raised beds.

So there you have it....my new backyard!

Update from the Vegetable Garden

Garden update part three...it's been a few days now since I took these pictures and the weather has cooled of a LOT. There was a frost advisory last night and another for tonight. Here's hoping everything pulls through! I've brought a few things inside, but that's not possible for everything. That said, I present the veggie garden.

Look at those peas! They're climbing the tomato cages nicely, and if you look beyond, you can see the green beans I planted a couple weeks ago. It always amazes me how fast those puppies grow!

The first planting of lettuce is coming along nicely. I'm seeing salad in my near future!

And here is the beginnings of the second planting of lettuce. Last year I (unwisely) planted all my lettuce seeds at once and we were completely overrun. This year, I am trying successive plantings so I only get as much as I can eat at any given time.

If you look closely, you can see where the blueberry has been doing its pollinating thing. I'm really looking forward to some homegrown blueberries!

You can see how my seedlings are coming along. I put some of my tomatoes in larger containers to see if they'll grow larger root systems before I transplant them. I also wanted to be able to keep them in the greenhouse for a little while longer since we're getting some cooler weather.