Fall Seed Collecting

Echinacea seed collection

Ever since the marigold coup I've been very enthusiastic about collecting my own seeds.  Above you can see a bunch of spent coneflower blossoms that M gave me from his garden.  I'm hoping to plant at least some of these in a flower bed I'm building in the community space next to my plot.

When I am at the garden sometimes I just take a look around me and marvel at the number of seeds that surround me.  At this time of year the tiniest little perennial grass that pops up unnoticed between my beans will quickly produce a whole raft of seeds.  Dandelion tufts are also coming up.  Every pepper plant in my garden has hundreds of seeds dangling from its branches.  The peas R is gobbling up at the back of the garden are seeds.  My bean patch is full of pods drying on the plants.  Big, bushy clover plants pop up overnight and form delicate little yellow flowers, as has the broccoli head I missed harvesting a few weeks ago.  Wildflowers cover the untended plots in the back corners, and long pinecones spill out of the treeline nearby. 

We are positively surrounded.

Slowing Down in the Fall Garden

It's been a long time since I posted!  That garden bed I talked about in the last post is now finished, mulched, and has a bunch of little plants (sacrificial lambs) poking out of it!  More on that later, though.

(Mostly) Fall garden

Here's what the community garden plot looks like right now.  There are still three tomato plants, though they are definitely on their way out.  The watermelon vine, freed from the shade of the gazillion basil plants and the exuberant buttercup squash vine, is trying to produce three more fruits in the waning daylight.  Peppers are ripening left and right, and the bean plants are beginning to dry out.  I still have summer squash plants in the front bed, mostly just because I prefer that to bare soil - production has pretty much stopped.  I mulched the older carrots with shredded tree leaves, and am looking forward to picking them well into the winter.  The first round of lettuce (that light green strip at the very back) is already trying to go to seed, so I've been picking quite a bit of that, plus there are three more planting rounds that I expect will keep maturing throughout the winter.  There are a few heads of cabbage that I think will finish before winter, and several more (plus a lot of broccoli) that will probably not be ready until spring.  Anyone want some basil?  We still have a few plants that I just don't know what to do with.  I planted some parsley where the buttercup squash was, though I'm not really sure if it will make it through the winter, being planted so late.  I just miss having parsley in the garden so much.  (N practically clucks at me every time we have to do anything as ridiculous as buy parsley.  I really have to pay more attention to herbs next spring.)

I have mostly been cleaning up lately.  Now that there are fewer daylight hours and the days are getting cooler, I am starting to catch up with the weeds.  I decided to renew the great cardboard project - I've covered about 90% of the paths with cardboard and wood chips, which I hope will last well into next summer.  In the process I've weeded most of the beds at least a little, and removed many of the plant stems and branches that were leaning into the paths.  All in all, the garden is looking much tidier. 

I think I will probably add a path along the right side of the plot, where the park service turned over a whole plot to "community space", with a picnic table and regularly cut weeds.  Technically the path will be in the community plot, but I think it will be a relief to the gentlemen who trim the grass to have a little buffer zone between them and my garden.  They always leave the weeds right at the edge uncut (truly, I do appreciate their consideration), which means I have to either trim them or let them shed seeds on my garden beds - mulching a strip seems easier.  If I have enough time before the weather turns I'll try to build a small bed over there, too, where gardeners can plant/pick at their leisure.  Well...we'll see if that happens or not.  ;)

R and I planted a round of garlic on the first - Inchelium Red.  I had three large bulbs, which provided only enough cloves to fill about 1/3 of the space I have designated for garlic next year.  I want to fill the rest of the space with cloves I harvested this year, but I am a little concerned about them.  When the papers are removed they have what look like tiny little pimples on the surface, which the internet tells me means nematodes.  Nematodes are tiny little worms that live in the soil and feed on the roots and/or bulbs of many, many different plants.  Most likely my entire community garden plot is infested with them, but I think I will still try heat-treating the cloves before I plant them.  Supposedly soaking the cloves in warm water destroys the nematodes so that they don't infest the soil of the new garlic bed.  Assuming it isn't already infested.

Well, this post is getting long, so I think I'll sign off and write more another time.  Hope all is well with all of you and your garden clean-up (or gear-up) is going well.

A Glance Around the Community Garden

I always find it interesting looking around at all the other plots in the community garden.  I don't know if it is the same for all community gardens, but there is such a rich diversity of plants and styles and techniques out there, and people are always happy to stop and chat about what they're doing, what problems they're having, etc.  For me this has been a totally unexpected benefit of growing out there - it really is a community.  A crazy, rich community with people from all corners of the world.

Some of the plots are still untended (though just a few) and some people I think are already starting to feel a little overwhelmed (it's weed season!) but many plots have seen a lot of work already.  There are two plots that were dug into raised rows and covered entirely in black plastic by a 76-year-old man growing more hot peppers than I could ever imagine what to do with.  (Kimchi, apparently.)


Black plastic covered rows of pepper plants

D's garden, with the soil beautifully tilled and a few seedlings planted 

My garden neighbor D and his brother have been hard at work in their 3 plots, though D said he's still waiting for the soil to warm a little bit more before he plants all his seeds.  D comes in the early morning several times each week and produces an amazing amount of food.  His gardening style is very traditional.  He mostly plants summer crops, tills in aged manure and plants in rows.  He cultivates all this soil with a metal rake, maintaining a nice dust mulch by scraping through the top inch or so of soil several times per week, until about August when he's harvested what he wants and decides to let the weeds reclaim the garden.



M's garden plot

M's garden is always well-tended.  He comes in the early evening and grows a more contemporary garden.  He has established wide raised beds, with lots of added compost and mulches.  He grows year-round, doesn't till at all, and frequently plants several different plants in the same bed.  He also seems to know everyone at the garden, and is always willing to answer questions, swap information, or lend out a tool or a hand.  He is sort of the garden ambassador.



A crazy garden

Two plots down is a guy I've met a couple times but whose name I never seem to remember.  He's another veteran of the community garden, and seems to know an awful lot about growing, but his style is a little less tidy.  It always looks that way.  I'm not kidding - always.  He grows a lot of stuff, the mess just moves around to make room for plants as necessary.





And then there's me.  Somehow, my garden always looks sort of vaguely unfinished - a hodge-podge of gardening techniques used in a non-committal manner with varying degrees of success (e.g. the broccoli bed half-covered with jerry-rigged tulle.)  The new gardeners all seem to think I know what I'm doing - maybe because I had such a good lead on the season - but maybe the look of my garden reflects me pretty well.  Uncertain, undecided.  Still feeling my way around this gardening business and figuring out what it all means to me.

Seed-Starting Reflections

Yesterday I moved all of the plants out of the guest bedroom, took down the lights and the table, and removed the plastic cover from the low tunnel outside. There are now about 30-40 little seedlings in the low tunnel bed and all over the sidewalk in my backyard. There are also a couple trays at the community garden, which I'll hopefully be able to plant today. (Actually, I hope it will rain so much that I'll be unable to go to the garden to plant, but I'm not holding my breath for that.) I thought it might be a good time to record some of my reflections on this year's seed-starting enterprise.

1. The tomatoes are in really, really rough shape. I don't know if they're diseased, but whatever is wrong doesn't seem to spread to eggplant or pepper seedlings, which makes me think (hope?) that it's cultural. Too much water, as the Territorial rep suggested? Too much florescent light, as a random internet discussion suggested? Too much time spent in small pots waiting for transplanting? (I think they grow faster in the guest bedroom than they did in the basement.) Aphids? (I have seen aphids on several plants, but it's difficult to know if they're the cause or effect.) I am beyond frustrated with growing tomato seedlings every year, only to scrap them at the last minute and stick in healthier-looking nursery starts. I'm going to plant at least some of them and see what happens. I may also plant a couple seeds directly out there and see how they do. Next year I'm going to start them later in the season, maybe mid-March.
2. I need to get some more nursery pots. Now is the time to start scavenging, I think.
3. I definitely prefer to start everything for the community garden at home in containers. Conditions out there are too dry and windy (at least this year) for seeds.
   
4. Herb seeds....so annoying.
   
5. I made my own seed-starting mix this year by mixing compost, bagged potting soil, and vermiculite. (About 2:2:1) Very economical compared to the bagged seed-starting soil, though it probably has less nitrogen in it.
6. I didn't like the liquid fish emulsion for seed-starting at all. It's very smelly, and can't be kept or mold develops. Since it has to all be used the day it's mixed, I tend not to mix it often enough, and some of the plants this year definitely wanted more fertilizer. I will continue using it until this bottle runs out (that will be a while) but then I'm done with it.
7. I think the timer may be broken.

Overall this was a good season. It was a little overwhelming doing so many seeds. This post could also have been titled something like, "It Finally Over!" (Though of course I still have a lot of planting to do, most of it in the next couple weeks.) A lot of the things I've started at the end have been one-time things, though - I started a lot of perennial flowers to plant near the back 40. More on that in a couple months!

Salvage in the Garden

Salvage is something gardeners can sometimes carry too far.  The woods around the community garden are dotted at irregular intervals with little piles of treasure stored there by enterprising gardeners over the years: orange snow fences, large straight sticks of all sorts, old beat-up tarps, broken storage totes.  Junk-looker that I am, I certainly can't throw any stones.  Yes, those are milk jugs holding down a protective net covering made from the crinoline of my wedding dress.  (It just made it too bulky to store, okay?!)

Community garden plot

In one respect, however, garden hoarders are far ahead of their time: the use of leftover, excess, and unwanted food materials to enhance the soil.  It really makes me sad to think how many people will get up tomorrow and make coffee for themselves, throwing yesterday's grounds into the trash.  I can't escape the thought that some portion of the materials used by the coffee plant to make those beans came directly from the soil and will now end up locked away in a landfill.  How long can this continue before we have to start digging this precious stuff back out?

Gardeners know better.  My local Starbucks bags their coffee grounds and filters separate from the trash and leaves them out back for a guy who comes every day to pick them up.  Where does your food waste go?

A beautiful Valerie lettuce plant, with scattered coffee grounds on the right

Cover Crops and Green Manures

Last week I wrote a post about the dutch white clover I planted in my community garden plot this fall (see Cover Clover).  Renee Michelle pointed out in the comments that I didn't really explain cover crops or how they work - and they're really brilliant! - so now I'm going to.

Cover crops are grown on land that isn't being used for production with the intention of cutting and/or tilling them (in my case, turning the soil with a shovel) before they produce seeds.  What's awesome about cover crops:

• Reduce erosion of (presumably) valuable topsoil
• Reduce loss of soil nutrients - particularly nitrogen - due to rainwater run-off and percolation
• Discourage invasion by weeds
• When they're cut/tilled organic matter is added to the soil, which:
• improves water and nutrient retention
• makes soil like mine much easier to dig, plant, weed, you-name-it
• Many can also be considered "green manures" because they are legumes, so they steal nitrogen from the air, which gets incorporated into the soil as they biodegrade
• Plant root systems improve groundwater and oxygen penetration into the soil
• Cut plant material can serve as a mulch for successive "cash" crops

I made those last two benefits red because they can't be realized if you till or turn the cover crop into the soil like I do.  But hey, pretty good, right?  And the only drawbacks are that:

• Can become weeds themselves (if not cut in time)
• Seeds cost money

I am sort of excited about cover crops right now because I've never had a garden as big as my community garden plot.  I am finding it onerous having to hoe so many square feet of path, particularly in mid summer, when the bare clay soil dries as hard as a rock and the wild grasses run amok.  (My plan has more path in it than strictly necessary because I feel having lots of paths helps reduce the temptation for little feet to impulsively run through a bed of newly planted seedlings.  A good trade-off if you ask me.)  The gleam in my gardening eye these days is the beginnings of a new, better, bolder plan for next year's weed-free garden!

Okay, go ahead and laugh.

Cover Clover

Planted garlic beds

I decided to order some cover crop seed to try to reduce the weed-pulling workload in my community garden plot.  Then I accidentally set the large paper seed package down in a puddle of water.  Then I scattered as many of the seeds as I could salvage around my freshly weeded tomato beds.  It's coming in kind of thick, don't you think?

A Look Around

There are some really beautiful wildflowers out at the community garden that are just about done blooming, so I snapped some pictures the last time R and I went out there.

My plot from across the path

My plot is starting to look a little more tidy now that the weather has cooled and the mosquito population has gone down. (Those big weeds in the foreground are the path.) Some of the plots have been completely abandoned, but a few others are taking advantage of the chance to plant some fall crops.

The end of the season

More Good Weather...

Okay, I am a little tired of the rain.  But otherwise...  On Saturday I went out to my community garden plot and got lots of work done. 

I pulled up my tomato plants, and replaced them with garlic.  I had one bulb each of the two kinds I planted last year, plus 4 big new bulbs of Chesnok Red hardneck garlic from SESE.  (I ended up not having quite enough room, so I brought one-and-a-smidge bulbs of Chesnok Red back to plant at home.) 

There were two tomato plants I particularly liked this year and I wanted to make a note of the variety names: Husky Red and Supersonic.  Both were very productive and seemed to resist the blight that (I assume) eventually killed my plants.  Both also had really big root systems  - about a foot and a half worth came out intact when I pulled them up.

It looks like the cabbage worms are still active out there because they got into my little seedlings.  I killed many of them and weeded the carrots and cucurbits.  I wanted to weed the peas as well, and set up a small trellis for them, but as I was chucking old cornstalks over the fence to get to the fencing (trellis) material, I came across.....a snake!!  Being from Iowa and knowing nothing about snakes I can only tell you this about him: he looked mad.  (It was awfully cold out.)  Suddenly I am looking at every weed-covered garden out there in a whole new way!   

I pulled a bunch of weeds up in unplanted areas and brought lots of things home.  The bean trellis still needs to come down, though.  Okay, more later...

Great Gardening Weekend!

The weather here has been cold, wet, and mostly overcast for the last two days.  Normal people are probably sad, but I was thrilled because all that cold air came with a beautiful promise: dead mosquitoes. 

When the park service plowed our community garden plot last year the plow left a 1.5-foot deep trench along the side where we enter our plot.  With the crazy amount of rain we've gotten over the last month or so (I saw a half-full 55-gallon drum out at the community garden!) it has been almost constantly full of water.  On top of that, the park service is still sort of working out the kinks in the new deer fence, one of them being that they haven't mowed the grass and weeds in our path since the fence was put up last spring, and it is starting to pretty tall.  So, no surprise I suppose that the mosquitoes out there have become unbearable.  The last time I took the boys out there I was in my plot for about five minutes before I decided we'd better run for it.  Literally.  I ran the stroller (thankfully covered in netting) over the weeds, back to the car and threw both boys in.  I chucked stuff in the trunk and drove out to the parking lot before stopping to buckle the carseats, in between waving a cloud of mosquitoes out of the car.  Until yesterday I haven't been back since.

So, yeah, I just love this weather!  I'll have to write more later to tell you all the work I got done....

Hurricane Picture

Collapsed Bean Trellis

Here's a picture of the damage to my bean trellis out at the community garden.  The teepee at the far end is the one that came apart - I sort of lashed it back together to the best of my ability.  After I took this photo I moved it a few feet closer to the other and managed to work the cross piece back through the bird netting (annoying stuff!) and get it back up in the air.  Only one plant seems to have been uprooted, and this prompted me to do some desparately needed weeding.

Fall Planting

Broccoli bed

R and I went to the garden several times this week, and N braved an approaching thunderstorm last night, trying to get some planting done for fall.  R helped me pull all the weeds from the cucumber bed and turn it over with a shovel.  The next visit we planted some broccoli  and I dug a new bed in a previously unused section of the garden, where I intend to plant carrots and celeriac.  (I asked R if he wanted to help, but he was done weeding and digging by then.) 



New carrot bed awaiting amendment



Unused section of the garden

Finally, I added cauliflower to the broccoli bed and dug up the potato bed.  Then last night N hauled in two bags of LeafGro, which I'll use to amend the new carrot bed and the old potato bed, which didn't get any compost in the spring.  Then he turned over the soil in the old corn bed, where I'll put in some peas.

N's been working on a garden planner that will export easily to blogger; once it's done I'll post a picture of the fall plan.

Tomato Trouble

My tomato patch is showing some signs of wear.  I originally planted seven slicing tomatoes, one cherry tomato, one grape, and one roma.   The Roma I think had troubles very early on - branches dying one-by-one - and I really didn't get much out of it before I decided to trash the plant and hope whatever it had hadn't spread.  But, a few days ago I gave up on the plant next door, and there are a bunch of others that seem affected.



A row of tomatoes

Blister beetle on my tomatoes

It probably doesn't help that they are under attack by an incredible number of insects.  A couple weeks ago I killed a bunch of black blister beetles.  When I came home I looked them up and found an old extension bulletin that said they were not particularly damaging because they don't stay in an area for too long.  Whoever wrote that does not seem to know what they're talking about, because mine are still around and have now been joined by some gray cousins.  There are also an awful lot of stinkbugs around, which are damaging some of the fruit and rendering some of it inedible.  And then there are some creepy-crawlies I haven't identified yet.

Beetle feeding damage.  You can see some frass (poop) on the tomato.

Finally, there are the two-legged pests.  After much trouble with the combination locks freezing up on us, gardeners unable to water during the heat wave, having to cut the chains repeatedly, etc, we have temporarily abandoned the idea of locking the garden gates.  I'd love to say our theives gave up, but I am certain at least that someone has raided my zucchini a couple times and stole a beautiful butternut squash I've been eyeing.  They have probably been in the tomatoes, too, though I couldn't prove it.  Curiously, we really only had trouble with the locks on the gate nearest my plot, which makes some people suspect that the locks were being sabotaged.  Clever, really.

Security Upgrade at the Community Garden

Sadly, community gardens are often targeted by theives, and mine is no exception.  When I first visited this garden in 2009 one of the plots had a large, homemade banner over it that said, "It's easy to steal shame."  So frankly I was expecting some losses.  July 3rd we had some friends over for dinner and I made a run to the community garden plot looking for squash and zucchini to grill and was shocked to find...none.  A couple days later a series of emails went around the community garden mailing list describing things that had been taken from multiple plots that weekend: tomatoes, squash, and even an eggplant that was supposed to be well-hidden behind weeds.  Sounds like someone had a home-grown celebration.

So the nice folks at M-NCPPC got chains and combination locks for the garden gates.  They won't stop a really determined person, but they do send the message that we care about this place and our food.  And maybe I don't really want to stop someone desperate enough to climb a 10-foot fence and throw food out.

Potato Problem

My potato plants this year look pretty sad, despite N's best efforts.  They looked quite happy and healthy until sometime in May.  We started seeing some kind of red beetle on them that I never got around to identifying; R would help me find them (kid eyes are really sharp!) and I would squish them whenever we visited.  Then one day we showed up and it looked like one of the previously vigorous plants had suddenly died.  M, our community garden guru, said he was familiar with the red bugs and thought the death was caused by something else - possibly some sort of disease or fungus that was on the potato bud when I planted.  Now none of the plants really look healthy, and none of them have produced flower buds, which I think they should have by now. 

It's a shame, really, because the potatoes are the th,ing N spent the most time and energy on, hilling them up and looking them over every time he came to the garden this spring, and they're really the only thing in the garden that looks like it's doing badly.  Hopefully whatever is affecting the foliage won't spread to any tubers the plants produce.  I've been watering and hoping for the best.

Community Garden Plot Update

In the foreground here you can see the bean trellis I was trying to describe in an earlier post.  It consists of two bamboo teepees from last year with a crossbar running between their tops.  Bird netting is wrapped over the crossbar and extends down to the ground, where it is staked to the middle of the bean bed.  There is too much excess netting at the ground, it makes it impossible to use the hoe inside the bed.  Next time I will hang it with the excess at the top.  (If you've never used bird netting, trying not to snag it is like N trying to avoid poison ivy - you'd swear it moves around when you're not looking.)  All but one or two of the lima beans were eaten in their infancy by some sort of rodent, so I replanted the lima bean section with regular green beans, and they're doing well though they're still pretty small.  Most of the plants have little flowers on them now, so hopefully there will be way too many green beans soon.

My cucumbers are starting to produce; I made a jar of refrigerator pickles with the first round of pickings and am hoping to get a few more pounds this week to do a batch for storage.  They don't seem to be climbing as well as in my garden at home, and since I planted several varieties I'm wondering if that's because they get better light here?  I've seen cucumber beetles in there, too, and a few leaves have wilted mysteriously, so I'm worried the bugs will be spreading some sort of disease.  I'd still prefer not to use a pesticide, though, since I work in there with A in a baby carrier and R runs around helping me find bugs, dig holes, and pick things

The corn is getting quite tall and the tassles (the pollen-shedding part at the top) are open on a few of the plants.  Suddenly I remember that I used to be allergic to corn pollen...wonder how that will turn out?

I'll update you on the progress of the other crops later!

Changes at the Community Garden

During my recent blogging hiatus a lot of exciting things have been going on (other than babies) - so much that I'll probably never get around to writing about all of it.  As a start, though, about a week after A was born I attended a meeting at our community garden with the park ranger in charge of our location.  We discussed the recent addition of a 10-ft deer fence around the garden (it actually happened!), as well as several other issues:

1) K (the ranger) is amenable to letting individuals have a 2-week pre-registration period to reclaim their plots for the next year.  Yay!  Keeping the same plot means that all this year's work and investment in soil amendments and even - dare I say it - infrastructure! - is not lost at the beginning of next year if someone else beats you to the phone Feb 1.

2) K would prefer not to till the gardens every year; individuals would be responsible for doing their own tilling if and where they like.  Yay!  This means that perennial crops like strawberries and rhubarb could be grown out there, as well as crops that are planted in the fall for harvest the next year, like garlic.  I sort of got the impression this wasn't a done deal - he wants to meet with a larger group of gardeners sometime in the fall and I think get a better idea how people feel about it.  I think my only concern is for newbies taking on a plot that was neglected the previous year and is chock full of long weed skeletons, eager to tangle a rental tiller's tines.

3) Whether they plow or not, K's willing to push back the end of the official gardening season from Oct 1st to Nov 15th.  Yay!  That means I'll be able to grow some fall crops, and I won't have to cut my winter squash vines just as they're getting started (assuming they do...)

4) It's unlikely we'll be able to get water access for at least a year or two.  There are absolutely no pipes near our park, not even fire hydrants for the apartment complex across the street, and having one installed is not in the budget right now.

Funny how so many of these are the exact issues that made me hesitate to get a plot in the first place (see Talk About Ambitious...), and here most of them are just resolving themselves before my very eyes!

Almost Done Planting?

I keep thinking I'm almost done planting things at the community garden (and at home!) but then it always seems like there's room for a few more things.  Here's another update on the progress out there.

My potatoes are doing quite well.  Most of the chunks I planted have sprouted at least one plant, and the plants now range in size from about 2 inches (the one I chopped off by accident with a hoe) to about 2 ft above the original soil line.  I've never grown potatoes in the ground before, so when N saw me hilling them up and started asking skeptical questions, I don't think my voice quite had the ring of authority he wanted to hear.  He went and chatted with M, our community garden's helpful guru, who told him I should actually be hilling them even higher.  Suitably reassured, N proceeded to do a much nicer job of it than I had been.  (He really wants potatoes to come out of that garden!)

The tomatoes I transplanted a few weeks ago are doing really well - they've almost doubled their above-ground size since I planted them and several are starting to flower.  As an experiment I decided to cover the ground around them with the plastic bags my leafgro arrived in.  I've seen advice on several university extension websites about mulching tomatoes with plastic to conserve water, suppress weeds, and prevent potentially spore-laden soil from splashing up onto the leaves during heavy rainfall.  So far I have to say I'm really impressed; the soil around my tomato beds is visibly more moist than in other areas of the garden, and the upper leaves (those that grew in after I put the plastic down) are visibly cleaner than the older ones.  Yay!  Now I really must get to staking!

My corn (some of it anyway) has come up.  I think I'll have to go back sometime soon and re-plant in the places where it didn't come up.  I didn't do a very good job of watering it after I planted, or of mixing together the soil and the leaf mulch I put on top of it, so I guess I deserved poor germination rates, but it's important that my rows be filled in, since I only planted two rows and pollination is really important for corn.

I haven't seen any beans (green beans and lima beans) or cucumbers yet.  N helped me put up a trellis for the cucumbers and a net for the beans.  I'll have to post pictures because the whole bean structure is kind of hard to describe and I've already gotten questions about it from several other gardeners out there.  I always laugh a little when people ask what it's for, because I have no idea if it will work and I know it looks crazy.  I needed something around 6 or 7 feet tall and roughly 15 feet long and costing almost nothing to make - surely the kind of challenge that requires a creative and unique solution.  We'll see if it works, I guess.

I also planted pre-sprouted zucchini and butternut squash seeds, and a few yellow summer squash seeds that weren't sprouted yet - I just wanted to get them in the ground in case the baby comes.  (Any day now....) 

As it turns out I have a big blank spot in my community garden plan that was originally intended to be part of a shaded seating / water collection area.  My thinking was that in July when it's 100 degrees and 100% humidity it would be nice to have some shady spot to sit in and nurse the baby between gardening chores.  But there were a lot of problems with that plan, too numerous to mention at 11pm.  I also just happen to have a bunch of old seeds for large vining plants, given to me by my friend T because she doesn't have the space to grow them and wasn't really sure if the seeds were any good.  So, I may be adding some pumpkins and/or winter squash to my plot, depending on how much time passes between now and when the baby arrives.  I've recently discovered the seemingly obvious fact that garden space that has nothing planted in it still has to be weeded, so I am motivated to at least make it all useful!

Happy Mother's Day

"Here mama, take this!"

R and I have been spending a couple evenings a week at the community garden plot, but we always make a lot more progress when N joins us, which he did tonight.  We brought several bags of Leafpro (the commercial name for the composted yardwaste from Montgomery County) and spread them on the beds that haven't been planted, along with fertilizer and sulfur (gypsum) and some vermiculite that I've had in my shed for a couple years now.

Potato sprouts

Meanwhile, I did get the tomatoes in the ground and planted corn last week, and I managed to take some pictures of the beds that are done.  The potatoes are up; not all of them came up, but that wasn't too surprising given how long it took me to get them planted.  There were a few rotten spots on them by the time the bed was staked out and dug, but the ones that have come up so far look really happy with their situation. 

One of two rows of tomatoes

I ended up buying tomatoes seedlings at a local nursery, 5 that are indeterminate (need staking), 3 that say they are determinate, and 2 that were mysteriously not labeled either way.  I'm going to try putting plastic over the soil as a mulch this year because of the lack of water supply out there and because it's supposed to help prevent mold spores from splashing off the soil onto the plant.  I'll let you know how it turns out!

I learned something interesting from Mario, the helpful individual with the gorgeous plot (it's gotten even more beautiful since the photos I posted some time ago).  There is a small creek that runs through the woods next to the garden plots, which I had assumed would dry up in the summer when there's much less rainfall, but he told me that it's spring-fed, and has never run dry in the three years he's been gardening there.  How exciting!  He says it's a little steep getting to the water, but it's still nice to know it's there in a pinch.  He is a very interesting guy; he has a large cold frame built next to the compost pile filled with plants waiting to be transplanted into his plot, and he mixes his own organic fertilizer.  (I tried asking him if he knows where to buy bulk cottonseed meal around here, but he says he hasn't been able to find it either, so he uses....birdseed!  What genius!  He mixes it in his blender to break up the seed and says if the birds eat a little bit he doesn't mind.)

Garden Update

I was just sniffing around the garden blogosphere and realized I'm not the only slacker who's gotten too busy with spring craziness to keep her blog up-to-date!  Here's some of what's going on:

1) R and I transplanted basil, dill, and eggplants into our home garden plot.  I have completely abandoned the original planting plan in favor of just getting things in the ground quickly.
2) The azalea bushes and irises are in bloom.
3) The potatoes are up in my backyard container as well as in my community garden plot, which was planted almost three weeks later.  (They're a little smaller.)
4) The first planting of peas are more than a foot tall.
5) Both of my gardens are covered in little sprouted weeds.
6) N came out to the community garden plot with me last week and helped me move a bunch more compost from the pile out there onto my plot, and turned over the soil in the zucchini bed.  I'm ready to plant the corn and put out some tomatoes, I think.  (More on tomatoes in a second post.)  We've had an odd spring, with lots of thunderstorms and cold weather, and geese still flying overhead even yesterday, so I've been a little reluctant, but the rush of all the spring stuff blooming lately makes me feel like it's time.
7) Also a couple weeks ago N brought two of last year's been teepees out to the community plot and we set them up at either end of what will be the bean bed.  From a distance it makes my plot look as though someone who knows what they're doing is working in there!  And, none of our recent thunderstorms have been able to knock them over, so that's good.
8) My neighbor at the community garden set up a fantastic fence around his three plots, with a neat little gate and everything.  He took down the pieces of small plastic fence that I'd stretched along that side of my plot to keep R out of his cauliflower, and rolled them neatly around my fence posts.  What a sweetie!
9) I'm still debating about how to stake my tomtoes.  I've been hearing a lot of good things about the "florida weave" method lately, but the upfront costs are awfully high.  You need a 7- or 8-foot metal T-post for every two or three plants (I think I could get away with 6 of them at about $8 apiece).  It's true that you can reuse them for many seasons, but I've told myself that about the staking methods I used for the last three years and here I sit, debating trying something new, again...
10) The strawberry flowers have opened and are just starting to turn down.  I'm in a hurry for them this year because I feel like I need to pick them before I go into labor or we might miss the whole season in post-baby sleep deprivation.
11) Lots of flower buds are forming on my unruly raspberry vines.  I hope we get to eat a few raspberries this year!
12) My spinach is starting to grow upward, letting me know its time is limited.  The seeds I planted this spring are still tiny, which makes me think I may not get anything out of them before the heat hits.  We'll see!

Hmm, I think that's it for now.  I'm going to try to get an updated photo of the community garden this week, which - despite the fact that I haven't planted anything in there except one short row of potatoes - is starting to look like a real garden!