GARDENING: UR DOIN IT WRONG

Confession: I am the world's laziest gardener. Really. Remember this? Oh, it all started so promisingly, didn't it?

I had tilled up a patch of the backyard. I didn't put anything in it. I mean, no fertilizer, no compost, no store-bought soil. Mistake.

I was thoroughly spoiled at my former residence. There, I (really!) just stuck a half-dead tomato plant in the ground, and several months later I had about 100 tomatoes. Literal number. Here, not so much. The soil is very clay-y. It mats up given half a chance. And the weeds! Crab grass, I guess. I don't go outside much, and I certainly don't have time to sit on the ground for 15 minutes every day weeding. You think Crazy Babby/Super Toddler is going to let me do that? No. Not without a fight, anyway.

There's also the part where all of my cucumber and butternut squash sprouts withered away to nothing after I put them in the ground. (Probably because I didn't weather them or whatever it's called.)

Oh and I never actually got around to putting the basil, sage, or bell peppers in the ground. They're still in little pots on my windowsills, not growing, threatening to die.

So my "garden patch" looks like this:

[My actual garden, enhanced with the help of this website.]

This zucchini plant should have died, but it is obviously too stubborn.

This snow pea plant gave me two snow peas before it keeled over.


There's a tiny tomato plant in here... somewhere.
Oh! And the strawberries! I forgot about the strawberries! I bought strawberry roots and then apparently left them in the garage too long before I planted them. I tilled them up a nice little patch in the front flower bed, planted about 6 strawberry roots, and then.... nothing happened. Well, I mean the grass is back. But other than that, not so much.

There are but two success stories here -- the compost pile, and the green beans.

Here is the compost pile I started over the winter:
It digests food scraps and mostly smells like dirt, so that's a success, right?


And speaking of stubborn, here is the green bean plant:


And here are the green beans!

[Some heirloom variety of crazy-long bean.]

And here are some more that aren't done yet:


And here is your opportunity to insert a "That's what she said!" (or "Barrowman!", if you are my lovely husband or part of the new Doctor Who fandom...) joke of your choosing:


One of these years, I will be so on top of things and grow soooo much food. Sigh.

Garden Update 2010

[Pots of potting soil waiting to be watered.]

Gardening! Gardening is, to me, a very tedious way to get cheap food. Occasionally there are moments of joy and discovery ("Pumpkin flowers are gorgeous!" "Wow, if you plant a strawberry plant, eventually you'll get strawberries! And they're so tasty!"), but mostly I do it to get food. That's why I don't plant flowers or do any... landscaping.

(Although I did totally hack away at my rental-house rose bush this last fall. That thing must not have been pruned in at least 5 years. It's already starting to grow again! AKA, Yay, I didn't kill it!)

This year I bought heirloom seeds off Etsy. Last week I planted 34 little pots of seeds to start my plants indoors. (There's a slight possibility that's way too many.) Sage, basil, tomato, butternut squash, bell pepper, cucumber, and zucchini. The snow peas need to go into the garden yesterday. The green beans and cilantro will wait until it's warmer.


I used pots I found while curb shopping. I had a little problem to overcome (and we'll see if I do yet) -- If I left the pots on my dining room window sill, Babby would be able to get into them, or else I'd have to keep her out of the kitchen all the time.

But hey, my pantry was kind of sparsely populated. Maybe I could move stuff around and fit them in there. Indeed I could. I bought a florescent light and rigged it up with the help of my husband (good thing someone in the house can tell when a power drill is spinning the wrong direction). Lovely.


Oh, and some sage on the sill above the kitchen sink.


And on Saturday I kinda tilled up a small flower bed on the side of the house for herbs later.

I also started a compost heap several months ago. I was very discouraged about it when, after both of this winter's snowfalls, the compost heap didn't seem to be melting the snow on top of it. (Properly-decaying compost heaps are warm.) But when I went out to turn it the other day, I found brown, dirt-looking stuff towards the bottom that smelled all earthy! Hey! That's compost! Cool!

Two Things:

I have two things to share with you. I'm putting them both in one blog post in case I don't see you for a while. I feel I will have a baby very, very soon. At least, I'd better, because the pressure on my pelvis is much worse than it was before, so for my own comfort and sanity, she needs to come soon. Anyway, the two things are:

1.) Yesterday I picked and ate the season's first strawberry. Mmmmmm.... There's nothing quite like a sun-ripened strawberry right off the... strawberry plant. It was very tiny, but amazingly tasty.

The weird thing is, I didn't plant strawberries. I didn't plant anything outside this season. I'm pretty sure that plant has just been there all winter since last year and decided to do some more growing and give me some strawberries. Cool.


2.) I made this stuffed guitar for a friend's baby shower. She had mentioned that she hopes her daughter plays the guitar/is a musician, so I thought I'd get her started on the right foot.

It turned out pretty much exactly as I imagined it in my head (and believe me, that doesn't always happen).

I love it. I really wanted to keep it. But they need it more than I do.

Taggies!

I'm back, and I brought produce!

Yes, I've been rather neglecting this blog. My apologies. But you can't be that mad at me, because I have pictures of food! Yay!

(This post is mostly for Jenny, since she gave/sold me the following plants when they were just wee little things.)

Here is my bay tree (yes, as in bay leaves). It is apparently very happy to be outside.


On the right is my basil plant. Dang. It's like a full-blown shrub now. To its left is my strawberry plant. I have two red strawberries! They're tiny, but they are definitely strawberries.


The firstfruits of the strawberry plant. Once again, a dilemma is raised -- am I not supposed to give my firstfruits to God? What's the best way to do that? Putting the strawberry in the offering plate seems a little silly. Giving one or two pieces of produce to one of my ministers also seems odd, considering they both have large families. A new idea that just occurred to me today -- mash the strawberry up and put it in the communion bread when it's my turn to bake it. But then, what if someone at church is highly allergic to strawberries? They would have no reason to suspect that there might be strawberry in the communion bread (after all, it would only be there because I'm crazy). Hmm....

The grass is always greener...

Or so the saying goes. Well, in our case, it is actually, literally true.


Ya see that? Yeah. Our lawn is on the left. Our landlords are great. They're very conscientious about the property -- they fix things promptly and keep things up so that they don't get run down. This includes taking care of the lawn, which is great in the summer when we don't have to mow our own lawn. However, it also means that they spray. They spray to kill the "weeds". And whoever owns the property on the other side of our fence isn't quite so conscientious. But look how much prettier the lawn looks!

Now, let me just look here and see how the word "weed" is defined...

Ah yes, here we are:
"1. a. A plant considered undesirable, unattractive, or troublesome, especially one growing where it is not wanted, as in a garden."

Hmm. Kind of a toublesome definition, isn't it? It's not really a definition at all! It's a license to write your own definition.

Well my definition of a pretty lawn is one in which things are growing. But what do I know? I'm just a hippie.



In other news, while making Norman's birthday cake on Thursday, I got cake batter on the ceiling. Cool, huh?

Garden Update - Oct 13 (or "Nananabooboo, Minnesota!")

Yes, I'm still growing tomatoes. I got started kind of late. I didn't start the seedlings inside like the seed packet told me to. I just planted the seeds outside in April. Remember what the tomato plants looked like at the beginning of June? And at the end of June? Well, here is one of them now, in the middle of October:


That's the one I planted in the ground on a whim because there were too many plants in one pot. Yeah. At last count it had about 70 tomatoes growing on it.
Here's one now!:



It weighs 9.5 oz. Now I know that's not exactly breaking any records, but I'm pretty proud of it. I think I'm making spaghetti tonight.

Oh, and a new venture -- lettuce! Planted about 3 or 4 weeks ago:

To-mah-toes

I stepped outside this rather soggy morning to find that I have tomatoes! Well, kind of. They're not anywhere near eating yet, but they're so cute!


See it peaking out there? It's not quite the size of a dime.



Bug's eye view


Also -- cucumbers! These have been growing for some time now. They're lopsided, but I hear that's because the flowers weren't pollinated. Oh well.

Beans and Stirfry (and Fish Biscuits)

This was a couple weeks ago, but oh well. Here is my first major bean crop.




I added three more to that, and then Norman made this:



It seems that one of Norman's favorite things to do is make stirfry. He's very particular about it. I'm particular about a lot of things, but cooking is not one of them. Mostly I figure we have to eat, and I want to spend as little time as possible on cooking and still make tasty food. Norman takes his time and makes everything just right. This is a good thing. Otherwise we'd never have anything even approaching gourmet food in the house. So, needless to say, this stirfry was awesome. The vegetables were still crisp, which apparently is the way they're supposed to be (who knew?).

While we were eating the stirfry, I was struck by how magical food really is. I mean, 2 months ago, those green beans were just seeds. And all I did was stick them in some potting soil, water them, and wait. And now they're crazy-delicious, sweet, crispy, nutritious green beans! (Can you tell this is my first gardening experience?)

I was talking with Kelly Mac at church about kombucha and kefir and all sorts of other magical things. We determined that modern nutrition just takes all the magic out of life. It's quite sad, actually.

Oh yeah, and these aren't magical, but they were pretty fun to make:



That's right, those are Lost fish biscuits. Fortunately they taste like citrus sugar cookies, not fish or dog or bear biscuits, or whatever they were supposed to be on the show. I got the idea and the recipe here.

Flowers and a Bean!

Pumpkin flower (it's a lot oranger than it looks in the picture):
Cucumber flowers (I actually had no idea that vegetable plants would be useful and attractive):

Firstfruits (should I be giving it to the church?):

Garden Update

I went outside this morning, and my plants just looked so cute, and I'm just so proud of them that I had to take pictures and share them with the world. (Can you imagine how obnoxious I'll be when I have kids?)

Pumpkin (doing that viney shoot thing):

Green bell peppers (chuggin' along):

Cucumbers:

Sunflowers (the white stuff around the bottom is DE -- the ants were going to town!):

Herbs (clockwise from top: cilantro, mint, mint, sage, basil, basil):
Tomatoes (were getting eaten, but I got some neem oil pesticide -- I think we're good now):

Green bean flowers!!!

Garden Update - 6 May

Beans

Basil

Sunflowers

Cucumber


Pumpkin

Let me know if you want some cucumber, green bean, or basil seedlings. And probably other stuff when it comes in (if it comes in?). I planted too many seeds.