Garden Update 10

I spent an entire weekend and I didn't paint anything! It was amazing, I hardly knew what to do with myself.

I figured it out. I also spent my first night back upstairs and it was great.


I knew it was time to end the season for the tomatoes and while they could have hung pn for a couple of more weeks but I don't think it would have really mattered, its now more about kind of beating the weather than squeezing a few more tomatos. This way, I could do it slowly and relatively carefully and do it in the warm. In other years I've had a better harvest and the plants were healthier and it made sense to wait until the last possible moment, but its a big job made larger if you are doing it in the cold. And with a poor harvest and sick plants it was just a good day to get it done.

The ripe looking fruits were mishapen and then eaten by someone and I didn't bother getting them off.


After I pulled out the tomaotes I looked around and saw a lot of things that needed to go, stuff I should have taen out a long time ago but the state of the garden did not motivate me to do much of anything with the area. I pulled out a lot of stuff.

There was a lot of stuff that needed to go and I've been in the mood to get things out. I'm much happier with the way the yard looks now. The peppers are still very peppy and producing like champs, I'm probably going to be out there in the snow pulling them out but I'll be okay with it because they have worked so hard and my harvest has been great.

I haven't been this happy with the garden since I got it planted in the spring.

After I took care of it I mowed the yard and made it all pretty.

Also? I bought my Silver Christmas Tree!

Its going be a groovy Christmas!

Garden Update 9 2015

Organic gardening is not pretty and is entirely luck of the draw, some years you do well, some years you roll craps. In other words, some years you use pesticides and fungicides - both gifts from above, don't let anyone tell you otherwise, and some years you don't get around to it until too late. The garden has been through some changes. So far this season I've lost seven tomato plants - more than I have ever lost before. In a normal year I might have a single non-starter that dies early and maybe one that produces briefly and then turns to dust.

This year has not been a good year in the garden, I planted more this year that I have ever before with an eye towards giving a lot away and still being able to put a lot up. This has not come to pass, I haven't given away a single tomato! and I have frozen only eight. It is a bad year for freezing and putting up, its a good thing I don't really like tomatoes for causal eating or this would be a real blow.

I'm not sure if its clear, but that is a empty hole where I had planted a bunch of tomatoes. To the far right is some hateful suckers from a   useless tree I would have had removed but my neighbors really like it .

I did plant more than normal, so I have quite  a few plants left hat are still more or less producing

Most of these will never ripen. I don't know if they are getting eaten by evil beasties or they just wither, I haven't found a lot that have been violated and I'm not finding a lot of ripe or even going-to-be-ripe fruits. Its odd.

This is odd

It used to be two and now its one. Its probably going to die. I know this because it has the same skin condition most of them have

Things aren't completly bad, there is some good news

They don't look too bad and if I keep a close eye on them I'm going to hopefully be useing them in my soups this winter.

The bright spot of the garden are the peppers! I've put a lot of these up and even managed to give some away.  

These plants in this bed  have done much, much better than what I planted in the "old" garden. They have been watered in the same manner and had the same weather. They have no skin conditions and have been growing quite happily and getting ripe and fat. I take fruits off about every other day. I need to get back to putting them up because I have been enjoying them with too many meals. I need to be more responsible with them because they are also finite.

As part of an experement, I planted what I thought were leeks but were probably really just green onions. I planted a butt load of these with great effort.

I have pulled two other plants. All the rest didn't make it.

Speaking of plants that didn't make it

My corns produced weird, shrunken little ears that were not eatable. They plants withered and I pulled them out. I came back from vacation and they had come back as well. Thus far, no ears, but its nice they came back to try again.

So for next year we are going to make some changes, I'm not sure what is going to change - apart from the sprinkler doing the watering, that is off the table, the drip hoses will be coming off the bench for sure but other things are going to have to be severely tweeked.

It was a bright day today! The blanching pot and I have a date!

Garden 2015 Update 8

As I was watering my patio and it came to me that I am going to be gone and there will be no one to water my patio - not daily like they like. I need to remember to take care of getting the timer set and do right by them.

I also need to find the lawn mower guy and have him mow my yard while I'm going and for the time being while my machine is in the infirmary - rather,  mow my yard for me after I take the machine to the infirmary and ask if they will board it while I am gone.

I am not as worried about the back yard. I have the irrigation set up and that works well. The garden on the other hand... Worst Year Ever.

Its not making as many fruits as it should be, what few are produced don't grow and don't get ripe. I think I've pulled three off so far total, and that is way, way, way below normal. The peppers are doing well, they are all ready producing and seem strong. They are in a different garden.

There have been three tomato plant deaths thus far, two more then I normally get. I don't know if it's the way they are being watered or the heat or bugs or whatever, things are not happy in the garden. Its very disappointing for me. I think the onions are doing well, I can't tell, I don't know about onions. They seem to be not dead, so I have them in the win column.

I am really stressed about the tomato plants though! They majority that are not dead, look strong and tall and green. I see little tomatoes left right and center but they aren't maturing or they are and they are getting nabbed by a garden pest or pests - I have found greenies withe bites out of them. I don't know who to blame for this : Birds, squirrels, rats, bunnies, bugs? There is a whole list of suspects.

My volunteer potatoes and tomato plants seem to have frozen in time. The plants are not getting bigger but not dieing back either. The volunteer tomato plant is covered with blooms but isn't getting pollinated, so its not moving forward. The potato plants were doing well but now seem to be static.  If they would bloom I would dig them up and get my potatoes, but they aren't maturing or growing any more .

Could it be the heat? Can it be too hot for tomatoes? I could understand the potatoes being uncomfortable since they really are not a summer crop but the others?  I think I should be try watering with Holy Water.

Garden Update 7 2015

SInce walking is out of the question, I left dog inside and  went to examine the garden and I'm not completely happy with what I am finding.

What I'm finding is blossom end rot which is from either too much water or no enough or too much heat or whatever, it happens, its just one of the the things you deal with, its mostly harmless.

. A new player in the arden is not familure or harmles. Its  some sort of bacterial spots on my fruits and yellow leaves.

These are not happy signs for the 2015 garden. Blossom end rot is one that I am familure with but its never something I want to see. The splotty problem is a new issue and I'm pretty sure that the reason I haven't seen it in the past is that in the past I used soaker hoses to water the plants and this year I am using the sprinkler.

The black spots are spread by wet plants and I haven't had wet plants in years past. I think that I will not have wet plants in future years. Snif.

Positive thinking time!

There are lots of tomoatoes! Big ones little sauce ones, lots of them. I did lose a plant, but it was one that came home with a half assed root system and I only planted it because I wanted to give it a chance.

Loseing that plant was a sad moment but,  when a door closes a window opens

Volunteer Plant! I don't know what variety of tomatoe it is, but its a tomaoto! I think this is neato.

On to the peppers!

Some of the peppers are doing fabualousely well

They seem very happy to be away from the looming, sun stealing tomaoto plants.

There are also peppers doing less well.

Yeah. Just not very happy and something went to town on them. I'm hopeing they will contiune to mature and hopefully will get stronger and produce for me. These are a different variety from the green bells, these are purple and I really like them. Happy Thoughts for the peppers!

The leeks look okay? I don't know what they are supposed to look like or what they need to get robust. I'm just glad they didn't all die. Most of them died.

The corn. The corn also asks for positive thoughts, its growing and there are baby ears but they don't seem to be growing in the right places? I'm not sure whats going on here.

I wanted to put something pretty in the yard and maybe draw in more bees. Well, I started out with two hanging baskets and within a couple pf days I was down to one hanging basket. Good thing they were cheap.

On to the front patio

My dead ferns are trying to come back! Im so proud of them.

I moved my ivy from its tiny pot into a big pot. It was happy in the small pot but I think it can live out its life in its big pot. Hat loaf thing in the pot is last years elephant ear that I tried to over winter and did everything I was supposed to do to make it survive the winter but it didn't.

So I bought new plants. They are doing very well. Go Plants! They aren't as big and lush as the failed experiment, but maybe it was too big and too lush and it just  peaked too soon and had no strength left to make it through the winter.

I bought some  marigolds for the front planters so bring some color.

Look at all those baby blueberries! I won't get to eat any of them, I have never gotten a ripe berry off any of the berry plants. Who gets all of them? The birds are going to eat all of them! Hateful birds.

Garden Update 4 2015

I posted the After pictures yesterday, I kind of jumped ahead because I was excited. Today we see how it got from here to there.

We start

I am locked out of the closet of my shed and I can't get my rakes or shovels or anything else I needed to level the garden spaces post tilling. This was not ideal, I ended up going to Big Lotts to buy a rake - they only had leaf rakes, which while nice, but not what I needed. I had to go to Wally and hope they had something that wouldn't snap in my hands. Fortunately, they offered two levels of rakes and I went with the slightly less cheap version, its nicer than my existing one, to my memory, and it didn't snap in my hands! It did a nice job leveling the dirt and letting me get the weed barrier down.

This year I did not go with the drip irrigation for the first time since I started this gardening habit. I decided that it was just a huge amount of work to get set up and then to get un-set up and after throwing away yet another set of drip hoses, I decided that I needed to learn about my options.

I bought a very nice sprinkler last year for vacation coverage and it is a jewl. It worked very well and offered options and I said to myself that there was no reason to not move it up to the starting line up for this season. So I did.

It waters both gardens and the yard and the tree and hanging baskets to be named later. There is a lot covered in its reach. I have for years read that its very bad to get the plants wet when irrigating them. It brings bugs, the water can potentially knock off blooms and it wastes water. I get it.

However. I had to run the drip hoses for long periods of time because I had to hook multiple hoses together and the longer your hose is the weaker the flow becomes. I had to have two hoses hooked up to have enough water pressure to get adequate water pressure to fill the monster hose enough to water anything - and then it was never balanced and some parts of the garden ended up soupy and others were barely damp. This is not great.

So, now I'm going to go with top down irrigation. Rain comes from the sky! The plants deal with it. We'll see if there is any change in the quality and quantity of the harvest this year.

The genuine rain from the sky finally stopped falling and I got the rest of  garden in the ground. This year I planted leeks for the first time, I had to look up how to do this and I'm glad because I would have just planted the pot they came in and waited for leeks to happen. They would have happened, but they would have been disappointing. They would have been leaky not Leeks.

I looked online and learned that unlike all the rest of the plants that company sells that you can't just plant the pot the pot they come in. You have to separate  all the individual baby leeks out of the leek bunch and plant them one at a time , and there are a lot of individual leeks! You make a tiny trench and you put the leeks in it, as time goes on you build a cone of dirt around your leeks so that they stay partially covered - like potatoes, this is called "blanching". Its to keep the greens flavorful and supple, unlike potatoes where you keep them covered so they don't turn green and poisonous. Viva la difference .

 some of the leeks, the pellets are alfalfa, I used them liberally.

 Corn, soil amended with store boat bag dirt, manure dirt, alfalfa pellets and coffee grounds

Everyone all together

Okay, totally off topic, I was trawling craigslist and I found this . I don't want this, I don't need this, I'm not sure if I would be comfortable using it  - but  isn't it cute? I mean, if you were into solo camping or just liked being able to go without having to make reservations and just wanted to be able stay where ever you end up or  didn't think it looked like a very well appointed coffin,   or went on over nights to somewhere that didn't have room for you for whatever reason...this would be ideal. It even has a tiny kitchen! I kind of wish I needed one.

Garden Update 2015 3

When I wasn't doing an extended dance of joy that the painting was done and the painters were finally gone and I had my house back, I put the garden in.

But first I had to get my veggies, to to decide which varieties to get. I stood there in the stands at the Farmers Market going from one to another checking out the plants and deciding what I needed (a few of each) and how many of each ( some of these and some of those and a few of them) this sauce variety verses that sauce variety and aren't all sauce varieties pretty much the same? I had been getting a super sized sauce variety from Burpee that grows a very large fruit, and I liked it and the tomatoes it produced, but it was expensive and took a looonnng time to reach maturity - which left it open to all kinds of harvest lightening predators.  Faster  to the freezer is better in a world full of things that steal my vegetables.

So now I a lot of small  sauce tomatoes. And I got them in the ground. And I saw I needed more. I changed the lay out this year and  that opened up a lot of new land for tomatoes. I had to go back to the Farmers Market to get more.

and I said "Hmmm. I like those for my uses, but I have people who like the other, bigger varieties. I found three different large, sandwich tomatoes and I got those in the ground. I have a lot of tomatoes now. A lot, a lot. More than I need. But, I use what I have and the more I have to put up, and if I end up with a lot to share, that's good too. I had to get more cages too, now I have all the cages.

And I did it all in the rain. It rained the whole time. It was a joy! The ground was nice and soft and my baby plants got a lovely, gentle start  (not too warm and overcast) and though all the digging, and there was a lot, because you need to bury tomato plants deeper than other vegetables- I only found one grub! This was fantastic news, one year I planted winter cover because I heard it was good for the soil and fed it over the winter, so I did it because lets hear it for healthy soil! What I got in the spring was a jammed tiller and a garden full of grubs and a terrible harvest. Now instead of winter cover, I amend, amend, amend. I feed the garden compost, bags of new dirt and as many alfalfa pellets as it can swallow.And I get no grubs and decent harvests.


I didn't  find  grubs but I did find worms by the handful! I decided  that this  spoke to happy, healthy, well airated soul that will produce bountiful happy vegetables. I found more  with the peppers than with  the tomatoes.


And then it was time for my peppers! I love peppers! I changed the lay out so that my peppers could have a better life away from the faster growing, taller, shade causing, sun hogging tomato plants. I also had to buy more of those than in years past. Darn.

I don't cage then because they don't get as big as the tomatoes and they seem to do better without their assistance.  Also note, still raining.

I also picked up some corn plants, I wasn't going to do corn but there it was and I saw it as a sign. While I was getting corn I wasn't planning on, I got some leaks. I'e never grown leeks so it will be a learning experience. They are not planted yet because the corn is going in a container and it needs to be filled with lots of dirt ( genuine store bought dirt, thank you very much) and very amended because corn is a big eater. I don't want to do all that in the rain. The onions I just haven't decided where they are going to go. Yay for learning!

Friday Cat Blogging

My own private Eldon, day 4/ Garden 2015 update 2

Today "we" are still sanding. Four days of sanding! They did paint the ceiling yesterday, so I know Eldon is sleeping better.  He is going to come to the house at lunch Friday to hopefully, finally get to painting, at last. He  also plans to be here at 8am Saturday morning.

Which means I am going to be up and moving at 8am Saturday morning too. I have to say that being up and ready to greet Eldon at 8am Saturday morning was not really on to-do list for Saturday. However, it does mean that I will be getting the garden in the ground this weekend. I could have bought plants this evening if I was not PARKED IN AGAIN ELDON.  Now, I will get them after work from the Farmers Market, at least, most of them. There are a couple of tomato varieties that they sell at Wally and they have worked well for me in the past and I'm not going to mess with what has worked.

I'm still up in the air about the corn. I'm not sure.

But first I have to get the weed barrier down, and I'll do that first thing. I still can't get into the broom storage so I can't get to my rake and I really need to rake the garden so its more flat and less not flat. I want it to be flat. No amount of weed barrier to going to correct the surface I am working with now . I'm going to have to do it by hand? I could use boards like they do for wet cement? That would work to smooth it out? Yes, I think it would. Hard work is good for us.

But back to Eldon. Today it finally occurred to me that they used a vast schmatta to cover the garbage on the dining room table but left my  couch and chair open to all the dust and debris  and now they are filthy and I'm going to have to vacuum the hell out of them whenever I get the space back.

Also. Should I paint the furniture this weekend? When I am not working like a dog on the garden? This is the best time, really when I think about it, they aren't in use, I have lots of nice daylight and they have plenty of time to dry before I really need then again. I would have also bought paint this evening IF I WASN'T PARKED IN AGAIN, ELDON. 

My own private Eldon

The Paint is happening. Its the Painter-ing! Tonight in our first installment, Eldon showed up on time, which was a good start. And then he threw up in my yard.

I know this because I had to go to Wally to get the dogs meds - Now $40 less then I was paying before plus the added benefit only being one pill instead of four. And this time I didn't leave in a huff, and I remembered to pick up protean bars. I still need wet dog food, but I can get that tomorrow when I make my daily trip to Wally, because doesn't everyone go to Wally every day?

Before the painter blew chunks, it turns out to be a case of Dinner at Hardys, so he's not hung over or packing illness, but just a bit of bad dinner judgment. A slab of the plaster next to my  front window collapsed ( would be covered by curtains, he's going to fix it up to make it smooth). Water damage, there is more of it around the other windows too. I told him the woodwork was in tough shape, I guess I failed to disclose the plaster was a little fragile in places. The fact I didn't know it was fragile in places probably isn't the best defense. Its an old house, shit happens.

I for got to mention yesterday that I have a new hero. It is my wheel barrow.

I heart my wheel barrow! Thanks to it I was able to unload and transport ten  forty pound bags of dirt from my car to the backyard. This would have killed me if I had to do it myself, with the wheel barrow, I hardly broke a sweat. I did discover that it could only carry two bags at a time, but it got the job done. If you don't have one, get one, they are life savers. Even if you don't use it all the time, its like the tiller - a super useful tool that you will use for years.

Speaking of gardening, I came to a descion about the watering. I'm going to use the sprikler instead of going with the soaker hoses again. Its just so much work getting them in place and I have this really great sprinkler that works like gangbusters and I have been happy with it when used elsewhere in the yard. It will water both garden areas and limit the number of hoses I have scattered all over the yard.

I will be interested to see how the as-yet-unpurchased plants feel about it long haul.

Garden Update 1 2015

Work. Work. Work  Filled the larder, tilled the garden, mowed the lawn, did a lot of laundry and took the dog for long walks. I rewarded myself with a trip to a cafeteria.

I also finally got my tax refund and called the painter and set up when he's going to paint my place. Its not as soon as I would have liked, but its going to get done and that's what I need to concentrate on. I can spend the time tidying up and cleaning the corners and getting the place ready for the painter to do his thing. I don't want to hear about my housekeeping from "Elden"

He's going to be here for a week, painting in the evenings after he gets off work. I see myself walking the dog quickly after work and hitting one of the places downtown before heading home. Hopefully it have warmed up by then and won't be raining. The place is going to look really nice after he's done.

The garden is going to be different this year. I'm going to move the peppers into the garden extension, to get them away from the shade causing tomato plants,  and hopefully, up production. I'm going to be growing container corn again and not growing green beans for the first year in memory. The harvest has been less then awe inspiring the last couple of years so I'm benching them for a season. I'm also not planting potatoes this year, too carby for me now, and I was getting over extended garden-wise. I'm going to get rid of my non-productive berry plants too and replacing them with more more attractive elephant ears and lavender.

I'm going to be putting in a lot of tomatoes and peppers though, and I had good luck with a admittedly, carbtastic corn on the cob, that I am just going to eat because I like them and corn is easy to gift.