May Day

I spent a few hours today replanting lettuce & arugula from thinnings. I'm planting them in places where beans, tomatoes, etc. will go.  I'll pull them out when I need the space. We had a ton of rain the past day and a half, the bed drained nicely.  The soil is pretty good, not too many clumps of clay to break up.  I noticed a lot of things that looked like seedlings coming up I think it's from the soil I had delivered. I noticed two marigold seedlings so I kept them. Pretty much everything else got pulled out or turned over.

I also finished making all the plant markers for the sunny bed. We have a slate patio & chunks of slate always cleave off during the winter so I break them up and write plant names on them with a paint pen.

I have all the materials for the shade bed ordered & ready to pick up at Home Depot. Steve's truck is at the dealership for maintenance so I have to wait to get it. Hopefully this afternoon we can go (I'd rather not go on a Saturday morning) we're supposed to have a few days of nice weather so I'd like to get started on it.  I think I worked out the bed scheme. It's hard not being able to go to the store & make notes. I'm not redoing the sunny bed design.  I don't like the wood and how it's holding together. We don't have access to redwood or cedar here so I used untreated fir. For the new bed I'm used galvanized corrugated sheet metal (for roofing) & building a pressure treated wood frame around it like this person:
how to: galvanized garden beds

I'm also putting trellises and hoops for a low tunnel on the bed at the same time so there were a lot of notes & calculations. (Lord help me!)

The weather in April was cooler & wetter than normal. I'm hoping it warms up a little & doesn't go straight to '80's. Fingers crossed.

Gah!

I woke up this morning: 26'F with "real feel" 19'F. Flurries all day. Normally I don't get sick of winter. I'm officially sick of winter. It's pretty though....

Dare alla Luce

Dare alla luce- to give to the light, to give birth.

Day 33 of quarantine

The store bought ginger I buried in a to-go soup container on 3/25 poked through last night. That's exciting.

Peas are coming up, I see signs of a fava bean coming up. Lettuce, arugula, chard, kale. The winter sown jugs are also starting to come to life- calendula, more lettuce, kale, one sunflower...

Tomatoes are coming along. The ones I planted in the dixie cups are doing quite well (the ones that came up-the seed was like 10 years old). The ones in the milk jug are leggy (same with the tomatillos & ground cherries). I waited too long to cut the top off. I'm trying to work it out with a fan & I'll bury them deep when transplanted. I'm out of practice.

The cucumbers, squash & melon are coming along nicely.  I biffed one of the Thelma Sanders squashes & pinched the stem by accident. I'm not sure it's going to make it so I planted another Thelma seed.

I pulled out the pots yesterday, I need to wash & sanitize them to get them ready for potting up.

It got down to 25'F last night. I brought in the basil & thyme plants that I bought at the grocery store (out of desperation) & re-potted. They seem quite happy. I covered up the rest of the pots on the deck with an old bed sheet. Everything seems to have survived.

DH gave the thumbs up for another raised bed along the south side of the deck. It will be shaded by a silver maple so I've compiled a list of what should be able to grow there-it was surprisingly quite extensive. He wants to wait until May to construct it (hoping that we'll be far enough along on the downside of the virus curve by then-fingers crossed).

I have mapped out the deck/patio/flower bed area on graph paper and am plotting to put in more raised beds there. I have only casually mentioned it as a long term aspiration to DH. I have planted the seed...

Ticks are a problem around here, I have been doing research for non-chemical controls...chickens.  I didn't even mention it to DH. We can have them here with a permit from the town, I'm not sure how it would work with the dogs, they have a very high prey drive but are well behaved. We couldn't have free range (hawks & other birds of prey would be a major issue in addition to the dogs) but maybe a large run & a chicken tractor would work. My neighbors across the street were quite excited when I told them the town allows chickens now so they are thinking about it. He's a grown up Iowa farm boy so he knows what he's doing.

I've been reacquainting myself with seed companies. It's been a few years since I have ordered seed. Most of the stuff I started this year was from saved seeds & I hit up the seed rack at the local garden store back in late February/early March for the leafy-lettucy things. I did a small order from Harris Seed (local) before things got too crazy virus-wise (melon, cucumber & winter squash). I wanted to support a local business but they didn't have much I was interested in. Crosman is also local, they've been around forever & their prices can't be beat. I need to order from them too, they are very old school & don't have anything too fancy but at least I know the stuff they sell will grow here.

I was looking around on the internet for a place to buy the Pellegrini bean & came across Great Lakes Staple Seeds. They've got a lot of good stuff. Unfortunately they aren't shipping right now because they are a two person operation and one person is helping to make ventilators with GM. So I have book marked them for the future & I looked at their reference/recommendation guide for other small seed companies & I found Fruition Seed from the Finger Lakes (!!!!!!). Swoon. I'm in love.  Local, Organic, and a lot of fancy, interesting stuff.  They didn't have the Pellegrini bean but they do have the Haudenosaunee Skunk Dry Pole Bean (!) a pre-Colombian heirloom from the indigenous people of our region. I ordered it along with a bunch of other stuff that I probably don't need. I couldn't help myself.  My pepper seeds haven't germinated (because they are older than dirt) so I will probably order pepper seedlings from them.

Dusting off the old blog...

Corona Virus Quarantine day 17

Welp....here we are. Bizzaro land. The last day in the office for DH was Friday, March 13 (he's been working at home since). We're honoring the quarantine request of Gov. Cuomo by social distancing & only going out when necessary: Grocery store, once to the hardware store and we walk the dogs twice a day in the neighborhood. Not much to do...might as well garden & blog.

I haven't been gardening much in the past few years. The trees grew too tall & shaded my old plot. Last year we took the fence out & I did a lot of container gardening on the deck & patio. A neighbor had cleaned out her garage & was selling huge ceramic pots for $1 each so I scrounged around for cash & bought 15 or so. Score!

This year for my birthday DH got me wood & dirt. He knows how to make a girl happy.  I designed & threw up a raised bed in 2 days. It was a lot of work. DH supplied the muscle. It's 16'x4'x20"- long & skinny. My one trip to the hardware store was for wood & screws. I called the local nursery & they delivered topsoil & leaf/mushroom compost.  I scrounged around in the garage & found my old pea fence & gardening bag with twine. I spaced finishing nails out every 12" & made squarefoot gardening squares with the twine & put up the pea fence.

The new bed.  You can still see the outline of the old bed up in the top left corner. (We're looking E/SE).  The flower bed is the blob in the lower left corner & the circle on the right is the peony bed that needs to be fenced or moved because it always gets clobbered by the dogs.

I have seeds of all different ages. Some of my tomato seeds are really old- I soaked those in bleach solution for 30 minutes before planting-some in the flats, some in little dixie cups, some in a milk jug.   I got out my heat mats, grow lights & seedling flats & got things started. It's a lot harder than I remember. I'm having damping off & leggy seedling issues. I found a bunch of milk cartons in the garage so I'm starting some seeds by the winter sowing method. Fingers crossed.

This is the current starting line up*
*subject to change

Started outside in the garden:
Peas
Fava Beans
Rapini
Carrot
Swiss Chard
Kale
Arugula
Lettuces:

Winter sowing:
Borage
Sunflower
Calendula
Marigold
Zinnia
Parsley
Cilantro
Mentuccia Romana
Shiso
Arugula
Rapini
Kale
Roman Chamomile

Starting inside seedling flat & heat mat:
Tuscan Kale
Basil
Corriander
Lettuce-I think this might be a bad idea
Tomatoes: Black from Tula, Champagne Cherry, Black Cherry, Stupice, Matt's Wild Cherry, Cowlick's Brandywine, JD's Special C-Tex, Tigerella.

Also: DeMilpa Tomatillo & Molly's Ground Cherry

Starting inside Dixie cups & heat mat:
Zucchini: cocozelle & Striato di Napoli
Cucumber
Squash: Thelma Saunders & Buttercup
Melon: Sugarcube
Tomatoes: Champagne Cherry, Matt's Wild Cherry, Black Cherry, Tigerella, Green Zebra, Black Zebra, Ruby's German Green, Black Krim, Purple Dog Creek, Earl's Faux

Starting in a milk jug on a heat mat (I'll pulling out all the stops):
Tomatoes: Champagne Cherry, Matt's Wild Cherry, Black Cherry, Tigerella, Green Zebra, Ruby's German Green, Black Krim, Purple Dog Creek, Earl's Faux

Yes, that's a lot of tomatoes. but since the seeds are between 6-10 years old I'll be lucky if a few of them germinate. If, by crazy luck, I have more than I need I'll put them by the curb & give them away for free to a good home.

Oh! I saw my first daffodils this morning. Things are looking up!

When I'm not gardening....

...I make stuff.  I haven't found a place to fire my pottery so I decided to take up the "fiber arts" about a year ago. It began with felting. I started a new job where I had to dress like a grown up so I bought some clothes and decided I needed to accessorize to make the outfits go further. Accessories are expensive! Felt is pretty but expensive. So I figured out via YouTube and books how to make felted things- mainly scarves. Above is a washed-out picture of a scarf I made with some silk bits (orange) and purple, green and orangey-tan wool. I really like felting but it's not something you can pick up here and there when you've got a free minute. It's a process. So....felting progressed to crocheting. I learned to crochet from my mom & grandmother when I was a kid but I had never made anything. I started fiddling with it last fall and was encoraged by a coworker to keep at it. Through the miracle of YouTube I got the hang of it and quickly progressed from scarves to blankets:

I made a bunch of blankets last spring and over the summer. I eventually put the blanket/afghan projects away for two reasons: it's too freakin' hot! and I caught wind of some summer yarn sales. I bought some   A LOT very pretty yarn (not blanket appropriate) and  I started making shawls. Why shawls?  because the AC is on full blast at the office and I had a lot of shawl appropriate yarn:

Next on my agenda is knitting. I have no idea how to knit. My grandmother tried to teach me when I was a kid but it was a disaster. I tried on my own (with YouTube of course) a few weeks ago and got very frustrated very quickly. I'm ready to try again. I was talking to my cousin this weekend and  she told me about a knitting group that meets on Mondays- all skill levels, she said it would be a great place for me to learn ( and keep her company).  She's encouraging me to learn to knit in the Continental fashion. I did a little research and it sounds like a good idea. She learned to knit Un-Continential (?) as a kid then learned Continental when she lived in Denmark. The word on the street is she's a fast knitter and pretty darned good at it. Soooo....my job this week is going to be to get some 6,7 or 8 knitting needles (hello Craft Thrift Store: all needles = $1), a ball of light colored, 4 ply yarn (I'm sure I've got something kicking around the house) and any illustrated "How to Knit" book.

Argiope aurantia

The garden was pretty much a bust this year. I scorched 90% of my tomato seedlings by accident while hardening off. The only ones to survive were the smaller ones I had planted in containers and wrapped in floating row cover:
Black Cherry, Tigerella, Matt's Wild Cherry, Coyote and/or Champagne Cherry. I ended up buying tomato and pepper plants from a nursery. I think they were traumatized from spending the hot spring in a green house. The tomatoes aren't producing at all and the peppers are pathetic. Except the Hungarian Hot Wax. They are going nuts. Serrano and Anaheim? Not so much.

It was a scorcher this summer, DH was strangely obsessed with watering the garden but the output didn't keep up with his input. Bunnies appreciated the exra water and ate the beans, edamame, peas, lettuce, chard and kale before we did.  The cucumbers did really well- Marketmore and a long, spiney Japanese variety- nice and crunchy. I'm giving them away at work, co-workers run like hell when they see me.  Zucchini are doing ok I think I was struck by the dreaded SVB but I ignored it and the plants seemed to recover. Interesting.  I planted 2 melons: supposedly a cantaloupe and a honey dew. I've got 1 melon on each vine and they look exactly the same. Not like a cantaloup or a honeydew - weird shaped greyish green things

I haven't done much with the flower beds this year. We had work done on the house and the back bed got trampled by the workers. I did rescue an oakleaf (or laceleaf- can't remember) hydrangea from someone's curbside. I dragged it home and planted it. I think it will make it.  The front bed by the mail box is pretty much on auto pilot.  I have to pull out the fennel and parsley (in their 2nd year and petering out) and replace them with something.  I also have to dig out the Spiderwort. I'm over it.

DH and I are going to start planning a new veg garden location (the current location doesn't get enough sun and is in the way of the new hockey rink). I say "we" as in the male interpretation of "we". Meaning: I will to dig out some graph paper and start plotting the whole battle plan.  I will figure out how to make the raised beds and a fence, get the lumber and cram it in my Civic. Bring it all home, borrow my brothers saw, try not to lose a limb while taking a day (or three) off of work to get it done and not have it look all jacked up. I will come up with a plan to get the new beds filled with soil. I will start the seeds and harden them off (hopefully with more sucess than this year). I'll figure out a way to get a bale of straw in the Civic. I'll get everything built, filled, planted and DH will water and eat. Teamwork. That's what it's all about.

The little lady in the picture is Argiope aurantia or black and yellow garden spider. Quite lethal looking (DH wanted to kill it immediately) but lethal only to things like mosquitoes and wasps and such. She lives by my mailbox and scares the neighborhood kids.

White Admiral!