Harvest Notes

6 oz lettuce
3.5 oz spinach
3 oz broccoli

What a Gorgeous Day

Wow, I don't think we've had a nicer day than today since last spring.  It was perfect: sunny, mid-70's, nice steady breeze.  N, R and I spent most of the day outside, doing yard and garden work and swinging in the hammock.  I turned my compost pile, or at least I turned about 70% of it, got tired and decided it was too wet and would benefit from a day or two spread between two bins.  Then I mowed the lawn, or at least I mowed about 80% of it, got tired, and made N finish.  Then I took down the supports for my low tunnel and cut the grass around it, then for good measure snipped the grass around the foundation of the house and all the flowerbeds with hand trimmers; I stopped in the middle to blow some bubbles with R.  Then I transplanted a bunch of stuff (R helped by moving potting soil 2 Tbsp at a time into my hanging baskets) while N grilled burgers.  Mmmm...burgers!

The thing about pregnancy is, it makes you insane.  It makes it impossible to lay in a hammock looking at dirty windows without wanting to climb a ladder RIGHT THIS SECOND and clean them.  (But don't worry, I just closed my eyes.  :)  Like the baby will care!

What a lovely sensory experience spring is.  Damp green grass, bright red cardinals, fragrant soil, and the sound of my son laughing while my husband shows him how high he can kick a soccer ball.




Some observations for my own records:
1) The compost seems to be much more decomposed than this time in previous years.  Maybe the PVC pipes really are helping.
2) The strawberries are budding.
3) The stargazer lilies came back up!!!
4) The slugs are finally waking up.  What a weird spring we're having.

Unlucky Patsy!

Well, it turns out that Gauss was not eating my seedlings (see World's Worst Cat...).  Several days ago I transplanted a bunch of petunias from a frozen lunch tray into Soho cups and moved them down the basement.  When I went back to check on them two days later three of them had been eaten down to nubs.  (And a few other things as well!)  I'm positive Gauss hasn't been down there, so he is off the hook.  I went ahead and moved everything but the tomatoes and dill upstairs and N is going to hang a light fixture in the downstairs bedroom for them.

I'm not really sure how to make it up to Gauss.  I did splash his wanted picture all over the internet.  Maybe a can of tuna?

Some Photos I Meant to Post Sooner

Plumbers' Hole, Before

Plumbers' Hole, After

My community garden plot, approx. 25x30 feet

Potato bed in the community garden plot

A much more advanced plot

More Potatoes at the Community Garden Plot

As of April 1st I officially had access to my community garden plot, and I have been there several evenings this week with R working.  (Words of Mommy wisdom: Snacks help facilitate evening gardening!  Apple slices don't make great garden snacks!) 

So far we have gotten a fence up between my plot and that of my neighbor (David?) who is apparently a long-time veteran of these gardens and has already planted several dozen of what look like cauliflower on his side of the border.  Since I prefer to be a good neighbor and R is not exactly known for watching where he steps, I made this fence my number one priority.  After that we measured out the spaces for most of the planting beds and staked the corners with bamboo stakes N cut for me.  We finished the staking tonight and N came out to help me bury the rest of my seed potatoes in their allotted space.  (I'll try to get some pictures tomorrow if the rain isn't too heavy.)  N also ran some string along the opposite side of the garden, just in case someone moves in to the plot over there.

So far I have met two other gardeners out there.  There is one gentleman, Mario, who is almost always there.  I'm pretty sure I met him in 2009 when I went to scope out the gardens and he offered me some tomatoes from his plot.  He's been very helpful; among his useful tips:

1) There is some leaf mold/compost piled near one end of the park, where they dumped leaves and cuttings from the adjacent soccer field last year, free for the hauling.  You don't want to try to drive over there and get it, though, as a lady got her van stuck in the mud trying that earlier this week.  Some friends tried to haul her out with their pickup, but I guess they didn't succeed.  Then this evening they brought in a tow truck to try to pull her out and...the tow truck got stuck.  Luckily some more friends of hers showed up and after more than an hour they were able to extract her van while the tow company sent another truck to get their first truck out.

2) The parks department has promised to install a 10-ft fence around the gardens this year to keep out the deer.  This is a great thing, since the deer tracks I found in my plot today are pretty darn big.  Tonight I noticed they seem to have installed the fence posts along one side already, so I have hope that they will get this done soon.

Mario's plot is giving me garden envy.  He came out right after they numbered the plots several weeks ago and got to work putting in a bed of strawberries.  He's since added several other plants, including some swiss chard, cauliflower and some kind of largish alliums (onion or garlic).  He seems to have quite the operation going, with lots of boards and straw roughly arranged around the plot, and he is sort of working his way back from the front of the plot, hauling in compost, preparing a bed, planting it, and then laying down boards on the other side so he can prepare the next bed.  I am just hoping to get all my beds prepared and planted before the baby comes - everything that's going into the community garden plot is a late summer crop, so if I can get planted it'll just be weeding and watering for a couple months.

Replanting Near the Driveway

On Sunday N and I (okay, N really) dug into the awful subsoil-and-rock mess left where the plumbers had to dig up our water supply line and installed some new plants: a (Heller's) japanese holly and a (pink frost) lenten rose.  N dug deep, wide holes and filled in the bottom couple inches with bagged garden soil, then put in the plants and filled the space around them with more garden soil.  He also re-installed the disturbed portion of the rock ring around our tree, packing it in better and adding a rock that somehow got left out when the plumbers filled in the hole, so it looks solid again.  Then he leveled the remaining rubble a bit and used a wheelbarrow of mostly-rotted mulch leftover from a couple years ago to cover up all the mismatched soil and add a little organic matter. 

Overall I would rate this in excess of 500% improvement, though of course N was unsatisfied, as he always is with his own handiwork.  It could still use a layer of good mulch, and the end of the driveway is mostly covered in clay subsoil and could use a truckload of gravel.  I'll also probably ask my neighbor for a few hostas to stick in there to give it a more filled-in look while the shrubs grow, and I'd like to bury a couple strong pots in the ground for planting annuals in - in the past it has been almost impossible to plant anything new in that area because of the tree roots, and I anticipate the tree roots coming back in the next couple of years.

I normally mulch the front lawn and the side flowerbeds every other year, adding municipal compost on the off years.  This is supposed to be a mulching year, and it is needed in several places, but I'm starting to think it may not happen until the fall.  We'll see.

World's Worst Cat? Or Unlucky Patsy?

Gauss "Mouse"

I think it was the day after "The Waterfall Day" that I went downstairs to check on my seedlings and found something very disturbing.  Many previously healthy, happy little gazania and medallion flower seedlings had apparently snapped off near their bases, the tops nowhere in sight.  I figured there were two possible explanations: either something had eaten the tops (possible given some odd, tiny little holes in one of the cabbage leaves) or they fell victim to damping off and the tops withered away before I noticed. 

I noticed that several of the cabbage seedlings, while intact, were leaning oddly.  In case this indicated I did have a damping off problem, I took the cabbage/cauliflower tray and the empty gazania / medalion flower tray outside and set them on top of the grill, thinking I'd check on them later and bring them inside.  (Of course we were pretty busy that day so I forgot about them and they got rained on, flooding the trays, which caused me to take them out of the base - separating the plants from their labels! - and forget about them again, but somehow the cabbage and cauliflower lived anyway and are now happily growing in Soho cups in my basement, sans labels!)  Anyway, I also worked really hard for a couple weeks to keep the cat out of the basement.

Why the cat?  It's those tiny, round little holes - totally wrong for flat little for mouse teeth, but perfectly sized for pointy little cat incisors.

Then, a couple days ago, I slipped up and Gauss (aka "Mouse" because he is scared of everything) snuck down there while I was watering.  Once he gets down in there it is literally impossible to get him out until he's good and ready, so I shut the door and waited several hours until he cried to be let back upstairs.  Two days later when I went down to check on the plants again, the gazanias and medallion flowers had all been eaten again!  And this time, the bell peppers and eggplants were gone as well, and not from near the base like what would happen with damping off!  All the "stinky" plants - tomatoes, dill, lemon grass, etc - were untouched.

To add insult to injury, Gauss proceeded to throw up three times that morning and once again the next day.  Normally I would feel sorry for him - "Poor little kitty has a hairball!" - but not this week.  "Go outside to eat greens, you dumb, cowardly cat!"

Sigh.  So I'm replanting everything again, now several weeks late, and ruthlessly hunting the cat down and shoving him out on the porch before I ever open the basement door.  I know he probably couldn't be convicted in an American court, but somewhere in this world he'd get the firing squad for sure!