Garden 2016 Update 9

I took what was left of the garden out of the ground on Saturday. There wasn't a whole lot left, a couple of barely producing pepper plants and a mostly dead tomato. There were two celery root plants that lived, but when I took them up they had not made any root at all, they were a good  try but no win.

The lesson learned was that in the future I will only buy my plants from big box stores or Burpee, the plants are less romantic but they are hearty and they don't die. They are also cheaper and if they do die, they can be replaced without tears. I wanted the fancy varieties from the hipsters to do well and they all died. They were all too young and should never have been sold for transplant at that age. It was stupid on both of our parts. Mostly my part for giving them money for fetal plants that died of shock ten minutes after they got in the ground. Also, never, ever, ever buy "heritage" variety of anything again - its short hand for "going to die, going to to get eaten". Dumb idea. Gardening is not romantic. Its about cold hard, heartless capitalism.

Grrrr. I had such plans! I planted a lot of plants, many! I planted in a new plot! With so much  direct sun! It was going to be amazing! I was going to end up with bushels of produce! I was going to give away record numbers of tomatoes. I had real plans for this garden. I got not one single tomato. Not. One. Single. Tomato. I was heartbroken.

The tomatoes were a loss. A total loss. First it rained and rained and then it rained some more. It rained too much. And then it was hot. Very hot. Too hot. Tomatoes like the heat and sun but they don't like too much heat and sun. It turns out, hours of direct sun might not be the best thing for them. They  grew, they bloomed, they made baby fruits and then they never got ripe.

Also, something was eating them.  Before the heat/rain/fungus?( I use drip hoses to avoid fungus but then it rained and rained and rained and the plants never dried out and thus, fungus spread and dead plants) killed the plants, a critter was eating the unripe fruits from the plants. Whole. It might have been rats, but I've had rats in the yard for years and they never bothered the garden before - however, the garden was on the other side of the yard and it might have been too much work to get to the unripe fruits in years past...  I don't know who was eating them, but someone or something ate every single one of them. Heart-broken.

There were some bright spots. The tomato eater was not fond of first time  hire spaghetti squash and it turns out, I am! Those plants did very well and produced fabulously well I even was able to share the wealth. I really like them and the tomato eater didn't care for them either, I will plant them again.  I also planted zucchini for the first time and as it turns out, I like them too. Another good hire.

The last plant out the garden and by far the best producer was my pepper plants. These guys survived everything that got thrown at them and still kept on going. They were uniformly brought to you by big box stores - as were the squash and zucchini. I harvested the last hangers on and brought them inside and cleaned them out, boiled briefly, chopped the small ones and got them ready for freezing and use through the winter in soups, stews, stir fries, pizzas, and pot pies and stuffed.

I need to remind myself that this year was not a complete wash! I did get plenty of squash and zucchini and peppers. I am very fortunate that I did as well as I did under the circumstances and I should be grateful and I need to focus on my wins instead of my loses. I had some good ideas and they worked. I had some not so good ideas and I can learn from those failures and use those lessons moving forward and not repeat those mistakes.


 I already of a secret plan for Garden 2017.

Garden Update 2016 8

And I killed another two fleas today. I also took three spaghetti squash to work and they got re-homed. I have five  on the vines. There are two zucchini that should be ready by Thursday.

There are two small peppers.

And that is all. My tomaotes are all but dead and I have only two plants left in the ground and they will die soon. I don't know if  everything I planted suffered from two much rain and then spread fungus or the dirt was bad - It couldn't be too bad, the plants did make gorgouse baby tomatos - that got eaten whole by someone weeks before ripening. Every Damn One of Them.

It is heart breaking.

Garden 2016 Update 7

We have green tomatoes!

We have mostly sauce tomaotes, but there are at least a couple of slicers in the mix! I am also heartened by the sheer number of blooms, needless to say, everything that looks good and is producing, I bought at the store. The plant I pulled out last week and the plant I am going to pull out this week came from the hipsters with a greenhouse. Lesson learned damn it.

They did do well with my celery root though, and there was no way I was going to find celery root starters at Home Depot - where I am now boycotting because Mr. Home Depot is a Trump supporter!  that leaves only Lowes for my big box home improvement store needs, and I am officially angry with them too, because they cowardly pulled their sponsorship of an innocuous reality show about the day-to-day life of a Muslim family in America, because they got calls from bigots complaining about Islamist's on their TVs and thus it was removed from all of our TVs.

The bigots could have left it on my TV and just turned the channel to NASCAR highlights or whatever  it is bigots like to watch on TV.  But no, it had to be gone from all the TVs. Religious Freedom, Ya'll!

Anyway, back to the garden. The hipster provided celery root ( the only plants they sold me that haven't died yet, thank you hipsters!), I have two plants of the four I started with, this is the larger, but the other one is coming along quite nicely too.

Tomatoes!

After such drama with the pepper plants, I have some good news! They are all still alive! and a couple are producing!

They don't grow very fast, but they produce much longer than the tomatoes do, I am feeling a little more hopeful than I was a couple of weeks ago.

My container squash plant is trying to squash my peppers

The plants are going nuts! They are not however, giving me any squash joy yet, I have found a few female flowers with nice looking baby's...

 But they aren't getting fertilized  in time and they die, I am a little concerned. I pulled one of the plants in the new garden because it was a little peeky looking ( from being crowded) and while I don't need dozens of spaghetti squash anyway, I would like to get at least some - but if the plants and bees don't get on it, I'm not going to have any. Sniff.

Zucchini plant is looking very nice

My corn plants that are sharing space with the squash are doing as well as can be expected, I'm really happy they are doing as well as they are. I really had no idea the squash would be so exuberant.

This weekend was  officially Shrub Maintenance   weekend and I spent most of Saturday trimming and tiding. If you didn't see how bad it was before , you can't really understand how much better it looks now. I would have taken "before" pictures, but it was just too shameful.

I pulled suckers from beneath the tree that throws entirely too much shade on the old garden,I trimmed the hell out of the plants under the bedroom window ( love my hedge trimmer!) trimmed back the vines on the fence, and mowed the yard. I also did heroic work in the front yard that required the ladder to accomplish! -  but I forgot to take pictures because it was hot and I was over it, I will post those tomorrow because the yard looks so much nicer now. I also found a couple of pictures I took before I moved into the house almost 15 years ago and it will be fun to compare and contrast.

Weekend

Friday I went to First Fridays and scored a wonderful  ( free!) chair massage that made the whole week go away, it made me think I need to do that more often. I think I'll keep an eye on groupon to see what they have on tap. I also got a big handful of fancy sunscreens and several testers of fab pastries - I went to a local small business open house and several caterers were represented. I'm glad I went.

Saturday I went to the annual Larkspur Party and had a great time, I didn't buy anything, which is both good and bad because its a good drive out there and I hate to go all that way and not  get anything! I then went to lick my wounds at a near by pricey nursery for replacement veggies, but they were out. I then went to another very expensive nursery and picked up some good new peppers and a replacement tomato and some Queen Anne Lace seeds I planted out front.

In the afternoon, Rocket and I went to an Open House/ Sale/Anniversary Party for a pet supply place downtown. We both feasted on ice creams and I picked up some high quality toys for him ( well, some were high quality, some lied) I complained about one of them to the maker and signed up to be a Toy Tester, every month I get half off one of their toys and I fill out a questionnaire about how my dog played with it and how fast he destroyed it.

I made the move to my summer quarters and slept so much better than I have lately, I really waited too long! The animals also seem happier. Next step would be turning the A/C on for the season but I would like to hold off as long as possible before I start the high electric bills. Its not all that hot, its the endless rain and attendant humidity that has made this spring so gross and the air to be so clingy and uncomfortable.

My plants, with the exception of the elephant ears, are not happy with the humidity and the non-stop pounding rains. I started out with these really different and interesting locally sourced  heirloom peppers and tomatoes that I was really looking forward to raising and as it turned out, they aren't happy with the environment or modern times or today's fungus or twenty first century insects in general. I took the last three sickly  pepper plants out of the ground today and replaced them with thoroughly modern varieties from Lowes ( I still have three of the tomatoes in the ground and they seem okay, right now). It was an expensive experiment and next year I'm not going to go back to that source, well, except for maybe celery root because the two or the four I started with are doing fine (finally) and I have never seen it in the stores or the farmers market or even the catalogs.

This is the latest in the year I have been still planting veggies, its going to extend the season by quite a bit which is both good and bad, our fall is really warm but it means I'll be doing garden chores into the early winter. It doesn't matter when I  schedule vacation, I'm going to be on vacation when  most of the plants are at their high season.

 New peppers

A single zucchini plant. I said why not? It turns out I really enjoy spiralized  zucchini faux pasta.   One plant can only produce sop many zukes.

a very young, probably not going to make it pepper. I started counting plants and I have a lot of tomato plants, I don't even eat them and I don't use them much either! Its nice to give them away but come on. I went out and loaded up on more peppers because I actually eat them myself and use them all year.

I learned that it takes more than a single zuke to make a serving of fauxpasta. They are also very water based and they really cook down to almost nothing.

This is two  small zukes, this was a good serving, I have a single zuke left and that one I am going to take the peal off and boil the fauxpasta.

Garden Update 6 2016

This is the larger of my two surviving celery roots. Its really doing well! The wee one seems to have gotten the whole growing and doing thing down finally too and its starting to grow and develop like a healthy plant. And then there is

My Cherokee, its hurting! Half of it seems to be doing business bu the other half is wilting and sad. I don't understand whats wrong with it, I gave it some tomato sticks to help it along but I think its in bad shape. If it doesn't get better I'm going to pull it out and try to find another one like it. I finally got tired of replanting dead peppers and put in a Lantana instead.

These the tomato plants I bought locally, they are still a little small but they seem to doing alright, with the exception of the Cherokee, they are doing okay. I in the background, those very large leaves belong to three squash plants that are finally doing their thing)

These belong to one of the store bought plants, I have two so far that are producing. They seem healthy and growing well.

Growing well, but not tall. They are all short and chunky. They all seem to be growing out but not up, so different then my plants in years past. It might have something to do with the extra sunlight they get in the new space. In the other garden the plants grew tall and thin, these guys are completely different . I only see a total of four fruits  on two plants,  both store bought.

Peppers in tomato garden garden, not growing much but doing better than the peppers  in the satellite garden, two are being eaten. I fell down on my spraying routine and now my plants are paying.

This is a squash, the smallest plant of all of them.

 The tall thin leaves belong to my corn, poor corn! I thought it would out grow the squash but its been on the wrong side the whole time.

I think this is two squash plants! They are doing this in a container! The ones I have in the ground have finally started to stretch out but not like these guys.

 I'm so proud of these guys! I got them for half off at Home Depot because they got tired of watering them. I repotted them and look at them now.

This plant is on the block every year and every year it does that and saves itself. I wish it flowered better though, I bought a sexy variety and I should have just planted the normal kind, it would be twice the size and have four times the blooms.

Look at all the baby ones! I'm proud of this plant.

But not as proud of this one, it went through the winter on it sown and outside and has continued to kick much ass into the spring.

Garden Update 5 2016

The tiny plants and not so tiny plants are showing progress! I've replaced a number of peppers since I planted them originally and that is not the most happy making thing for me to think about. I tried to do the right thing and buy local and small ... and ended up with starters that were too small to go in the ground and too fragile to survive out in the actual real world. It was a lesson learned. Sweet little hipster couples trying to make a go of it, might possibly learn a little more about horticulture than buying  fancy seeds from fancy seed catalogs and then planting them and selling them once they sprout -  possibly think about getting jobs at a nursery where they might learn a little more about plant husbandry .

So three of those pepper plans perished, or just failed to thrive, one by one I bought replacements.  And one by one I bought replacements for those too. The new plants seem to be doing much better now. Lesson learned - avoid hipsters and Wally for your vegetable starters. Home Depot has been a winner for me this season. Last year I bought everything at the Farmers Market and had the worst plants and poorest harvest I ever had. I'm not sure I like the lesson there in the least! Big Boxes are bad and bad for us but they sell the higher quality garden starters? It should not be, but it is.

 From the store, very uninteresting generic variety bigger, older, better adapted.

From the Hipsters. Adorably unprepared, interesting old world variety not available from stores.

The pepper family picture

I've had significantly better luck with the tomatoes! They were only slightly larger than the peppers but they are were so much better prepared.

The original Hipster provided slicing tomatoes. The plant in the front is  Cherokee Black, a very old variety that originated in NC, it looks different because it is different. They are still smaller than the store bought varieties but they are going to be okay. And fabulous.

Store bought sauce varieties.

  

less fabulous but already producing. 

The tomato family picture, note there are three peppers in this garden.

The cages in the foreground are around my remaining celery root plants. The teeny, tiny, bitty celery root plants. One is doing really well-ish the other is just stringing me along.

I think this one is just getting my hopes up, its so small.

My squash is doing well too. I have it in two locations. 

There are three or four in the big garden, and they are perking along and I think they are going to do well. However.

These were planted at the same time in a container. They are bigger, better and absolute rock stars. I have no doubt these guys are going to do land office business. From a box.

I'm not sure its visible, but a baby squash is gestating.


I am also growing corn!

Right now they are being upstaged by the squash, but soon (I hope!) they are going to out grow the squash .I'm going to have to re-home some of them  elsewhere in the box as they get bigger.

I wasn't going to deal with those nasty, high maintenance flowers but I changed ny mind. I also explored the clearance shelves and with minimal investment, watering and a touch of  fertilizer - I got some lovely plants.

(Lantana, working, working)

(above) New Elephant ear, doing well and all ready looking after babies! My senior plant made it through the winter and is going like gangbusters. I'm so proud.

And from last year, my much searched for wild Honeysuckle! It is doing well and making its way around my door. I am hoping it climbs all the way around the door and thrives! I love the way it smells.

In honor of beautifully scented climbing vines, I added a new jasmine in the back yard.

I had to dig a deep hole! So not easy, but totally worth it.

Hopefully by next time I'll have wee babies to show you.