Garden Pictures

Joy and Tomatoes Cometh in the Morning

Today, the day of the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, I sit surrounded by gardening catalogs. They started coming in the mail last week, and now gorgeous pictures of ripe tomatoes and a drawing of a tee-pee full of beans and blossoms are on my lap.

There is something so hopeful about the act of winter garden planning. Outside, my tomato plants from last season still stand in their cages all brown and withered. The grass has stopped growing, and my perennial flowers sport dead puffs of seeds. And yet, in the midst of all this winter, I am thinking of spring. I am imagining the taste of yellow pear tomatoes and debating how many hot and how many sweet peppers I will want.

It is something essentially optimistic about the gardener's certainty that winter will end, that darkness will be replaced by days of almost endless sun, and that warm soil will be ready for planting. We dream of tomatoes, believing that the world won't end; the sun will not go supernova; nuclear war won't annihilate everyone. Spring will come, just as it did last year, just as it always has. Humans will be the same lovers of tomatoes that we have been for years.

It makes me think of Easter, which is weird at Christmas time. I think of the resurrection myth and of the belief that, after dark times and grief, warmth and happiness will return. I think of Anne Shirley and the night she realized she loved Gilbert and that he may die; when she knows that he will live, she quotes Psalm 30, "Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning." I think of Boethius's wheel and his certainty that bad fortune will give way to good, turning through cycles, just like the seasons.

And here I sit, acting out the human hope for resurrection and rebirth and a change for the better in our fortunes, with my seed catalogs.

Gardening Update

Hey everybody! It's time for a gardening update!

Most things are kind of pitiful right now because of the extreme heat. I am getting loads of peppers and herbs, but my tomatoes and flowers are kind of slow. I get a few grape tomatoes most days, but I have to wait for slightly cooler weather for them to pick back up. It happens every year, and I know if I watered more and moved the tomatoes into partial shade, it would be better. But I am too lazy.

So, in this lull, I am planning my fall garden. Fall gardens are awesome because the ground is warm when the seeds are sprouting, but the weather turns cooler when the plants are growing. Lettuces, beets, turnips, carrots, and all kinds of greens do better in the fall than in the spring.

Since our first frost date is Oct 25, most of the guides say to plant in late August. I usually wait a bit longer than that because it stays so hot here on into September. I'll probably plant in the week or two after Labor Day weekend. I have waited as late as mid October, though.

Here's what I'm gonna plant:

beets
carrots
radishes
spinach
several varieties of lettuce
arugula
either snap or snow peas (maybe both)
broccoli (which will be an experiment as I have never grown it before)
cabbage

In our mild climate, some of my veggies last all winter. But I am usually gardened out by Christmas and let it all go.

I'll post some pictures as soon as I get things in the ground.

I am also going to add a lot of flowers this fall. Fall is a great time to plant perennials because the roots have all winter to grow deep and strong and because you don't have to water as much as in the spring and summer.

We are thinking of selling our house (when we can get it fixed up enough), and I am going to really do up the flowers and shrubs just in case we can manage that by the spring or summer of next year.

I'm going to plant Shasta daisies, some ornamental grasses, lots of spring blooming bulbs like daffodils and tulips, and whatever other things I impulsively buy at the garden store. I might also get some hydrangeas to spice up the shady back part of the house, and if I do, I'll mix in ferns and hosta.

I have to move my daylilies because Aaron and Livy step on them and ride bikes over them all the time. I thought, but clearly I was wrong, that people would use the walk to get to the front door. Since they are not going to use the walk, my daylilies will have to go. I will plant more this fall, since my mom always gives me a bunch.

I also want more of the fence to be covered with vines. I have a Carolina jessamine that looks really good, but it has taken several years for it to take off. I also have morning glories on part of the fence, but those don't get going early enough for me. I want a spring blooming vine that will look good next year. Any suggestions? I'm gonna plant whatever I choose all over to cover the chainlink fence.

Ideally, I would like to plant some more shrubs around the yard, but since I need them to look good next year, I would have to buy them already really large. That may be too expensive. We'll see.

I can't wait until we are in a house where we will be staying for a long time. (Brendan would say I will never be in such a house because I can't stay put, and that may be true. But I only have to BELIEVE I will be in a house for a long time. It doesn't have to actually happen.) Then I will plant fruit trees, berry vines, asparagus, and garlic.

This garden update has been brought to you by the GA heat (which has kept me indoors for a lot of days) and by the letter Y (which stands for yum, the flavor of homegrown spinach) and by the number 3 (which is how many times too big my garden always is in proportion to my needs).

Today's Harvest

Clockwise from bottom left: two varieties of grape tomatoes, baby carrots, oregano, thyme, onion (red and yellow), potatoes

All about to go in pot of stew along with grassfed beef and homemade stock!

Yard Tour June 12, 2010

If you are not a member of my family, you may not know about the yard tour. It is a time honored Freeman tradition. When your car pulls into the driveway of one of our houses, you get out and walk immediately to the garden. No you may not take your suitcases in the house; they'll keep just fine where they are in the trunk. No, you may not rest a minute out of the heat. Yes, I guess if you have to go to the bathroom, go ahead, but for Pete's sake, hurry up. The very first most important thing you do is take a yard tour. (I am exaggerating a little, but not too much.)

Basically, the owner of the house walks with you through all the flower and vegetable gardens directing your attention to all his favorite plants (which means every single plant), and you hear the story of where the plant came from, it's growing history, how it is the best or worst it has ever been this year, and what the gardener plans to do with the plant in the future. If you are lucky, the gardener sees a plant that needs dividing and digs you some right then and there. No need to change clothes. Every Freeman worth his salt can dig up a daylily or two without any dirt getting on his pants.

Since most of you have never been to my house (and a few of you who have been to my house have not been subjected to this delightful ritual cause I know you don't care a lick about plants), I thought I'd give you a virtual yard tour. I did not photograph every plant because there is not an SD card in the universe that big. But I took pictures of the highlights, focusing mainly on my veggies cause I love them third only to Aaron and Livy, and you'll just have to visit to see the rest.

Before we start, if you want to see what everything looked like the last time I posted, here's the link. This was in the beginning of April. (Wow, I should really blog about my garden more regularly!)

So, first stop, back deck. This is one of my grape tomatoes. I've gotten to eat a handful so far. My larger tomatoes aren't much to look at yet. May need to fertilize those slackers!


Down in my back yard. These are my potatoes, which are looking straggly. That's okay, cause it's time to eat them. I dug one pot like this already. I didn't get a ton of potatoes, but I got enough to cut up and surround a roast chicken. I left these other pots a while longer, so hopefully I'll get more potatoes or at least larger.



Here's my bush beans. Fairly newly planted.


Red onions. Mature, but I am just leaving them in the ground until I need them. We ate a ton of them as spring onions, but now the greens are tough and falling over. The bulbs are big enough now to be real onions, but they do keep getting a little bigger.


Yellow onions too.


Here's a bag of herbs. Basil, thyme, and oregano. The oregano in particular has been going crazy.


Here's a close up of the lettuce mix I planted this spring. It's been prolific and good, very spicy and different flavored, but I am getting kind of sick of it. Soon, it may go into the compost. I'll have to plant another mix or maybe some mild single lettuces in the fall.


Here are my two bags of lettuce a little farther back.


Ace peppers. You can kind of only see 2, but there are 4 plants here. They are all covered with peppers. This may be my best pepper year ever. When I see the ginormous peppers, it is hard not to pick them right now and make them into stuffed peppers, but I really like them better when they turn red, so I am trying to be patient.


Now, on to the front yard, where there is a long flower bed next to the house. Here you see my orange coneflowers and my hollyhocks blooming in front of a large rosemary bush. The rosemary has a funny shape that looks pretty good when flowers are in front of it. But in winter, it looks like it belongs in the freak show for plants. It's my fault cause I hit it with the lawn mower all the time. :)



Here are some of my daylilies. I've had SO MANY blooms this year, tons every day. They finally really settled into this spot I think.


This is Aaron's favorite, purple phlox. I have another little patch of it further down the flowerbed, too.


So I hope you enjoyed this yard tour. I hope to be able to give you one in person someday, as well.

Recent Gardening Tasks

Since I know you guys are dying to know how my gardening is going, I thought I'd tell you and post some pictures. Here's a list of the tasks Livy and I have accomplished recently:

• We mowed the grass for the first time this spring. This might sound easy, but that is because you don't know my policy about spring "weeds." I don't mow them until they are finished blooming. See, I hate yards. Grass is stupid. So I let mine go to weeds. And weeds are a pain and have to be mowed just like grass, but at least they bloom with pretty tiny flowers. So, I let the weeds bloom, and we enjoy the smells and the sight of that carpet of flowers. Then I mow for the first time, and it takes like 6 hours. Yuck.


• We weeded around the daylilies and the dahlias and the lilac bush and the Carolina Jessamine vine and any other plant just starting its springtime climb up from the soil. I also took a couple of minutes to wind the Carolina Jessamine into the chain link fence. I'm trying to train it to cover the whole side of the fence eventually.


Daylilies:


Carolina Jessamine (about to bloom):




We planted two pots of creeping phlox to sit on the church potluck table on the back porch.






We added soil to the potatoes that had grown 4 in. shoots. I was afraid I had killed off all the potatoes somehow, but now several pots have robust growth. I even found a few sprouts today in the pots I had almost given up on.
This is one of the pots where the stems grew up tall, and I covered them again. If you compare this picture to the day I planted them, you can see how much more dirt is filled in.




We kept the seeds of our spring garden wet. Everything has sprouted (beets, carrots, arugula, lettuce, spinach, and a mesclun lettuce mix), but the mesclun mix is really winning the race to our plates.

Blurry carrots:



Mesclun mix:




We cut the dead growth off of our fountain grass. We are gonna mulch with all that good straw, and we found dahlias popping up underneath the fountain grass.


We watered the onions, which are absolutely perfect. I would have grown them before if I knew they would be this easy.

And finally, my loropetalum. I just love this thing. Gorgeous reddish leaves all year long and pink blooms in the spring. And I love the shape as well, which is its natural shape, with no odious clipping.

Potato Planting Day

Today, we finally had a nice sunny day with no rain, so we got the potatoes planted. I ordered seed potatoes of the following varieties: Red Gold, Yukon Gold, Red Norland, and Yellow Finn. My plan is to harvest as we go along and have lots of new potatoes, and if we get a large harvest, I'll leave some in the ground all the way through the season to store for the winter. I have only grown potatoes once before, and it didn't go well, so I am not exactly sure how many I will get.

I cut up the seed potatoes two nights ago, making sure each piece had at least one eye. I ended up with more than I needed, so next time, I will leave more eyes on each piece and have fewer pieces. I left the potatoes out for the two nights because I read that it can prevent rot if you let the cuts callous over before planting. More sophisticated gardeners sprinkle sulfur on the potatoes to prevent rot, but I can't be bothered with that. They can rot if they please.

I planted the potatoes in the containers that you can see here. Yes, my neighbors will think I am running a garbage can farm, rather than a potato farm. The bag that you see is a left over bag of peat moss. Livy emptied out half of the peat, and we planted potatoes there too. If you also want to plant in your random containers, make sure you cut a whole or two in the bottom for drainage.

Below you can see that I put only about 5 or 6 inches of soil in the containers. As the potato plants grow upward, I will add more dirt to encourage the plants to make more lateral roots and more potatoes. I read that I should add more dirt whenever the plant reaches 4-6 inches high. I saw a great way to make this kind of bed, starting with one tire and adding more tires and more dirt as the plant grows. If I see any abandoned tires, I will be grabbing them for next year.

The next picture is of the tiny lettuce seedling that have popped up in one of my containers. The first seeds of the spring are always a delight.

Below are pictures of our science experiments we are doing about plants. The first one is celery in colored water, illustrating how stems pull water up from the roots to the leaves. The second is one of my seed potatoes half in water so that we can see what is happening to our potatoes under the soil.

Spring really is here. I can tell because suddenly the yard needs mowing (but I won't for a while because it is full of sweet smelling purple blossomed weeds), daffodils are out in force, and my lilac bush has tiny leaves on it. My next tasks are to cut back the old dead growth on my fountain grass
and to plant some new flowers and summer blooming bulbs.

First Gardening Day of the Spring

Today, we had a gorgeous 75 degrees and sunny kind of day. I put the top down on the Jeep, and Livy and I went to Walmart to get some gardening supplies for the spring. We bought 5 bags of potting soil (I'll show what we did with them below) and 3 bags of composted manure.

Once home, I laid down cardboard and shopping bags on the ground to kill the grass where I want my new veggie bed to be. I put the bags of potting soil on top of the cardboard (after cutting drainage slits on the bottom) and cut the top off of the bag. In this new container, we planted our onion sets (Red candy and Candy varieties). My plan is that by the end of the growing season, I will just take out the plastic, use some old boards to make the sides of the bed, and add any soil need to fill the area. Voila, new raised bed with improved soil from where the cardboard and shopping bags composted in.


The onions that I planted are intermediate day onions, selected to match my region. This is the first year I have grown onions, and apparently, the variety you choose has to do with the amount of light, not the temperature. Still based on latitude, but a little bit different. I bought the onion sets, instead of seeds, because I want to make my first onion experience as easy and successful as possible.

Next, Livy and I cleaned last years plants out of our self-watering containers and mixed in compost to get the soil ready for the seeds we will plant tomorrow. I LOVE these containers. The bottom of them has a large reservoir which is filled through the tubes you can see standing up. A plate with lots of holes covers the reservoir, and the soil goes on top of that. In our hot GA summers, without these pots, I have to water veggies more than once a day. With these pots, I can go several days, and the roots just pull water up from the reservoir. The green that you can see in one pot is chives from last year.

These pots will be home to our deck garden. These are the plants I want access to at any moment: grape tomatoes, herbs, lettuce, spinach, arugula, mixed greens, beets, and carrots (the things I harvest nearly every day). The plants that get harvested less regularly (onions, larger tomatoes, potatoes, and bush green beans) will live down in the yard.

Tomorrow, my plan is to get the spring seeds in the pots and to cut up my seed potatoes. I am considering planting the potatoes straight into half-empty cubes of peat moss so that I can mound the dirt as they grow. I haven't figured that out yet. I may have to build a bed for the potatoes. I am also considering straw bales. The seeds that we will plant tomorrow are: Roquette arugula, Bloomsdale spinach, a spring lettuce mix, Red Deer Tongue lettuce, Black Seeded Simpson lettuce, Golden Detroit beets, and Little Fingers carrots.