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?

More Fall Plantings

The rest of my fall planting order has arrived! Woo hoo! Here's what I've got:

Moon River Peony
California Hard Neck Garlic
Naturalizing Daffodils
Apricot Beauty Tulips

With that, and the fall season, comes some to-do's:

1. Find spots for and plant my new goodies!
2. Plant bulbs given to me by my voice teacher and his wife (I have a giant tray full of bulbs! Mostly daffodil...they think)
3. Plant more green onions, lettuce and mustard greens
4. Clean out pots. I have some iris and daylilies in containers from the apartment that I have been waiting to plant in the ground. Others are just past their prime and are looking scraggly or need to be brought inside before it gets too cold.
5. Stir compost and add leaves as they fall and are raked up

What does your fall clean-up/to-do list look like?

Now Accepting Volunteers

I have my very first volunteer!....Volunteer plant, that is.

I have a tomato that has randomly sprouted from one of my flower pots. It even has tiny tomatoes on it! Take a look.

 

Have you ever had volunteer plants in your garden? Were they welcome, or did you feel like they ruined your "master garden plan"? What kinds of plants have you had volunteer themselves?

More Pass-Along Plants

I've mentioned before how much I love pass along plants not only as a way to get plants for your garden on the cheap, but as a way to keep your beds from getting over-crowded.

A few months ago, my voice teacher and his wife dug up about half the plants in their garden while they were clearing space for workers to build them a new retaining wall. They new we were in the process of buying a house, so they said they would keep the plants they weren't going to put back in pots for us until we had a place to put them. Very sweet of them!

So a couple of weeks ago, I went and picked up all the plants that were waiting for us. There were several forsythia bushes, a red bud, some shasta daisies, rudbeckia and flox and some ornamental grass (meant for borders). I spent a couple hours the next day placing, planting and watering all those plants. Fortunately, the soil was easy to dig (unlike in the back yard), so getting everything in the ground wasn't too hard. Here's what it looks like now:

Left Bed

Right Bed

I still have some filling in to do. These beds are quite large. I also need to put some newspaper down to kill the weeds and grass, and then mulch on top of it to give the beds some definition.

I noticed today my rudbeckia is starting to bloom!

And my flox! Huzzah!

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!

Steals and Deals

Oh the beauty of yard sales!! Our neighbors had one last weekend and I noticed they had a bunch of flower pots out for sale. I asked how much for all of them (there were about 15 of them)....are you ready for this??.... $5!!

I'm thinking they would have been $30 or more had I bought them at the store, so yay! Here's a few of them. Seger is checking them out to make sure they're gonna work alright.