Late Start Gardening in 2012

We got a late start gardening in 2012. We did not know until June that we would be staying here for another year.

So during the second to last week of June, I went over to K-mart and bought some plants:

Two cabbages

Two cucumbers

a thai basil

a regular basil

spear mint

Later Steven bought some:

cherry tomato

regular tomato

habanero pepper

Seamus and Bossy's Catnip Patch!

Garden seems mended

This morning the garden seems mended, like it would rebound pretty quickly. Schwew, or however you pronounce that. Yes, okay so maybe I'm a gardening drama queen.

I brewed the Old Gaffers ESB last night, let me tell you fuggles hops smells ALOT better than Kent Goldings. I'm starting to think I like naming beers as much (or perhaps more) than I like brewing them. Newest beer name Bunny Kicks IPA...

Shit I need to make labels for the proudfeet.

And holy shit google maps new "Street View" is creepy!

At least I still have the homebrew

Holy Shit, it just hailed hard for 20 minutes. Welton St is covered in ice. I kept thinking: maybe I don't want to become a farmer. Having a tiny garden destroyed would be bad enough, having entire fields ruined would be pretty near unbearable. I still have beer fermenting at home, I guess its good to diversify hobbies.

Update: I talked to Steven, and he said the garden isn't too bad off after all that hail, the lettuce is a little flattened but the tomatoes and peppers look undamaged. Sweet!

Gardening Last Weekend

Sunday I suddenly panicked because half the garden is still not filled out and its almost June, so I bought three hot pepper plants 2 Jalapeno (hot and mild) and 1 habanero at Urban Roots. Then I went to another store and bought another basil (which I split into 3 plants, I have a lot of basil...) and another cherry tomato and a cilantro. I also met the friendly rabbit who so far seems to only eat weeds around the garden, not any of the lettuce that is 6 inches from them. (WTF??) But I have a bad feeling that soon I will wake up to an empty, rabitted lettuce patch. But its so damn cute!

Monday I spent the entire day gardening with Bonnie. I dug up part of the weedy front yard and planted some winter squash that will hopefully sprawl across the entire front, I also planted some yarrow that will most likely be levelled the aforementioned squash. Bonnie planted some birdhouse gourd and some hideous (tee hee) chocolate flowers.

transplanted tomatoes, basil,

The garden is starting to flourish. Last Friday we had the first mini-harvest. Bonnie and I made salads (yes yes from store bought lettuce) but we spiked it with arugula from the garden, the arugula is so good! (Actually, I guess we've made mint tea before.) I planted the basil I got at the Botanic Garden plant sale last Thurs morning. Today I planted the tomatoes. I just planted them where there seems to be the most sun. I also just planted bean seeds between the brocolli rows, cuz I think by the time the beans start coming on strong it'll be too hot for the broc. The beans are contender bush beans, which Steven scorned, "bush beans only harvest for a few weeks!" But I'd already boughten the seeds by the time he'd gone into his antibush rant so I figured they'd go to waste otherwise. Plus I like to grow bush and pole beans, because the bush are ready to harvest 3-4 weeks before the pole beans. I also planted crookneck squash seeds in the NW and NE corners of the garden.

Bonnie mentioned getting a hive of bees, which I'd thought about before, but our house is in the middle of 3 or 4 parking lots, so I really don't know what they'd pollinate. Otherwise I would, especially since I doubt either of our neighbors would notice or care.

I bought a second fermentation bucket yesterday and ingredients for a Hefe. Maybe called "There and Back Again Hefe".

more gardening, woodworking, mint

I finally thinned the broccoli yesterday, which turned out to be arugula, thank god. I kept pouting where's the arugula, where's the rocket? I don't need all of this damn broccoli. So as I was thinning it, I tasted a sprout and it was spicy, peppery like rocket. Sweet! I also thinned the Black Seeded Simpson which is day-glo green. That lettuce is awesome. After the two days of hard rain last week, I looked out at the garden expecting it to be a tropical paradise, unfortunately the rain tended to wash away a large part of what little top soil we had in the backyard. What I saw when I looked out was a lot of pieces of gravel. But the lettuce and spinach are still coming in strong between the rocks so we'll see what happens.

Also this week I bought a circular saw, (its a Milwaukee, I know, I'm completely wisconsincentric). Why? Well, I decided I am going to build a book shelf, and a record shelf, and a ... Okay, so the real reason, was I was reading web sites on self-sufficiency, blah, blah, blah. And this one, bizarre but strangely compelling one (The subtle way manual) said carpentry is important skill to learn if you want to survive peak oil. A few other books had also recommended this () Unfortunately once I bought the saw I figured out, oh shit, now I need a truck to haul huge pieces of wood and ply wood around, oh shit!

But I have a plan! My first project will be building shelves for our record collection out of found plywood. I came up with this after I read that 60% of landfills was discarded wood. Granted I read this in the Food not Lawns book, and kinda half seems like most of the stats in that book are pulled directly from the authors asshole. Like for instance, the author recommends getting rid of your microwave in order to save electricity, "just plan meals so that there are no leftovers." This seems to me to be the height of waste, because I've been researching electricity and microwaves use less energy to heat than either gas or electric stoves! So you'd have to cook entire meals from scratch, cook them which takes longer than reheating (a lot longer with say brown rice.) So reheating in a microwave will actually take much less energy than cooking 45 minutes on a gas stove.

So the "60% of landfills is wood" meme may be unsubstantiated, but it still seems like a good idea to use discarded plywood. Plus, I won't need a truck to haul it home, hopefully.

Also yesterday I discovered some mint growing in the huge mass of plant/rock garden a former renter left in the backyard. I love mint! Plus, the patch is far away from my garden so it won't be able to take over the rest of the garden.

Dig Dig! Hori Hori!

Dug up another chunk of backyard today. Spent all afternoon in the garden, loosening the soil, digging up weeds, digging up and throwing out all of the Myrtle Spurge that our landlord had in the backyard. Myrtle Spurge, I also discovered, is a class A noxious weed, sort of the Heroin of landscaping.

Also returned to Urban Roots and bought some more garden tools. Bought a pair of garden gloves, a hand fork, a trowel and a Hori Hori (a cool japanese gradening hand tool, hori hori means "dig dig" in japanese. Apparently these tools are used for everything: digging, cutting, chopping. It definitely useful for digging up dandelions, spurge, bindweed, and mallow.)

I measured the space we have set aside for gardening in the backyard. Its about 12.5 x 6 or so feet. So about 75 square feet.

I also planted more seeds today: black-seeded simpson and a Mesclun seed mix in the triangle in between the spinach and the redina. And then later: Bright Lights Swiss Chard in a 2' by 1' square behind the ant compound. (Yes, there is a huge ant colony under a big 2' by 2' rock. Wonder how that's going to work out??)

Also after I dug up the backyard, I started seeing more birds around, I have never seen birds in our backyard before today. I saw a sparrow sitting on the fence and then later a robin (who was obviously looking for some worms I may have unearthed.)

I was so happy today, it was such a joy working in the dirt, I'd forgotten how much this means to me.