Fixtures

We've got two new fixtures in the garden that will add to our happiness.

Say hello to

GARDEN HAMMOCK!!!!!

and

Cucumber and melon headboard!
I trashpicked this thing a few months ago, figuring it would come in handy. This weekend rebby planted it firmly in a hill of dirt, and today I planted cucumbers and watermelons around it. Should be fun to watch the vining action!

Volunteers

Ok, so I'm bummed about the fact that I don't get to grow all the heirloom tomatoes I planned on this year. However, Mother Nature has instead gifted me with the ultimate wait and see game.....at least TEN volunteer tomato plants, of various sizes. They all look pretty healthy and they appear to be a few different varieties judging from the leaves. As long as they are not ALL black cherries I'll be happy! FYI, none of them are from the box where we grew tomatoes last year--they're all from compost. And none of the blighted tomatoes went into the compost, so I feel pretty safe that these guys are highly adapted, disease free tomato plants that really want to grow in my garden. :)


We've also got what looks like hundreds of volunteer marigolds throughout the garden. Most of them are coming up at the side of the house where we had them planted last year, but some are definitely coming from compost. I am again going to trust nature that the marigolds are popping up in the spot they need to fill to protect my plants from bugs. I am a hippie gardener.


Some more of those volunteer tomatoes. The pea plants also have two volunteer POTATOES growing on either side of them! This seems surreal to me, but I went ahead and hilled them up today.

Let's Talk Salad

Here's a close up of my lovely, succulent, delicious iron rich spinach. Most of it is Bloomsdale, with some Viroflav thrown in as well (I can't tell if the two varieties are distinct or not.)


This is the spinach bed, which also has a few bunching onions left from last year, a volunteer squash(probably/hopefully butternut), the chiogga beets, some flat of egypt beets, and some carrots.


So, here's what the salad box looks like at this stage of the game. I think it is a)getting regularly munched by the groundhog we didn't manage to trap(Oh! I have to tell that story too!) and b) not getting quite enough sun.


Do you know about purslane? It's considered a weed in North America, but it's a delicious one. It's also extrodinarily high in Omega 3 fatty acids which are very important and normally only found in fish. Anyhow, I'm growing it in my garden and it is gorgeous and succulent.


This is a new small bed we made by flipping the top off the old small bed(since we didn't fill it all the way with dirt) Since my salad greens aren't doing so well by the house, I planted a bunch of lettuces, salad mix, and arugula in here today. I also transplanted four volunteer tomato plants (more on those in a minute!) to this box.


Here's the state of daikon nation as of this afternoon. I planted a bunch of breakfast radishes here too, and they don't seem to be getting munched on yet.


The carrots are looking good! I've got three quadrants planted with carrots--some look stronger than others. I don't see any carrot shoulders forming yet but it might still be early for that.

Checkin In On the Peas

these guys have the most beautiful flowers, and their pods are so snappy and delicious! I basically munch on them the whole time I'm in the garden. Judging from the flowers I'm going to have to do a stir fry pretty soon.


Here's some shelling peas starting to plump up. I can't wait to pull the first pod and look at the little critters!


Don't they look impressive?


Another view of the lovely lavender to pink snow pea blossoms.

More Good News

Things in the world of beets are looking really good. I've got a "gourmet blend" of beets in one patch, flat of egypt beets in another, and Chiogga (the stripey ones) in another.

Here's a close up of a chiogga beet doing the damn thing!

And the chiogga beet greens, which closely resemble chard.

In the wonderful world of potatoes, we're going gangbusters. These beauties are, from left to right: Swedish Fingerlings, Caribe(purple), Butte(russets) and Red Cloud(red waxy) The russets are ready for their second tire already! But I don't feel up to hauling a bunch of wet dirt today. Hopefully this weekend.

Here you can see the yukon golds are ready for a hilling, and the white onion sets I planted out with them are bulking up. The next time I have a couple free hours when I am feeling good and there is no sign of rain I plan to get in some red onion sets and a few more rows of potatoes.

And Now the Good News!

Daisies! They seem to have sprung up from the wildflower mix I sowed last year.
My pale pink roses continue to bloom.
This amarylis, which I thought I had killed, came back with a vengeance!

First the Bad News

It's been a long time since I've posted here, and that's mostly because gardening took a turn for the tragic and I just didn't feel up to talking about it. And then, once I had sort of gotten over it, May got busy with catering and a delicious weekend in Cleveland and another bout of allergies-turned-sinus infection-turned bronchitis.
But today, I am on the mend. I'm ready to come clean about the failures, celebrate the successes, and fully cop to the fact that you can plan a garden all you want, but in the end it's gonna be what it wants to be. And that's ok with me.
So....remember all those gorgeous photos of healthy little seedlings, and all those gorgeous photos of the tomatoes and peppers and eggplants and onions and broccolis and cabbages they were going to grow up to be? Well....they're dead. Every single one of them. It could have been the late cold snap, it could have been too much or too little water, too much or too little light, bad juju....I don't know. But one day everything was fine, and the next more than half of the babies were completely flat, yellow, and shriveled. I could have worked harder to save the remainder, I suppose---but once you've had a shock like that it is hard to recover. That represented a lot of time and attention and love and planning and hope and dreams down the toilet. I was pretty damn crestfallen.
I wish I had taken the bull by the horns and just started a whole new batch, but I didn't and now it is mostly too late. I can still start some fall crucifers in a few months, and that will be great. But my awesome variety of heirloom tomatoes and peppers and eggplants are just not going to be this year. Hopefully I can get a few of the varieties I wanted from Garden Dreams, but it may be too late for that too. I had to work all Memorial Day Weekend and missed their big seedling sale. Sigh.
So that's the bad news. Now we'll move on to the good news, and the life lesson....