Tag Archive | personal: garden

Planting!

Jun16

I’ll try to get pictures soon (keeps raining, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it) but I finally got winter squash in the garden yesterday:

2 spaghetti squash
1 “carnival” squash
1 “table ace” squash
1 Buttercup
and, sadly, only one
1 Butternut squash (everyone was out!)

We already have one yellow crookneck summer squash and several cucumbers in, and I may replant the volunteer squash plants that came up in a yet-unfinished bed from my compost.

Now I just need to eat the last butternut from last year’s crop!

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On Chives

Apr9

I started chive seeds last night!

Chives are one of my favorite plants, because they start coming up and are green and edible when the rest of the world is full of snow. Plus, they’re super low-maintenance.

I already have chives growing in my Invasive Plants garden (two sorts), but I want to fill in some of the bleaker and weedier parts of the hedgerow with chives, which will take, ah, quite a bit of chives.

I started one “flat” (in this case, two stacked take-out containers with holes poked in the top one for drainage), one of chives-chives (Allium schoenoprasum – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chives) and one of garlic chives (Allium tuberosum – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garlic_chives) I’m not sure about the second chives – they are listed either as the same thing as gau choy/Chinese chives or a completely different thing, so we shall see).

Each flat has 6 rows of 4 seeds each, which will get me a good start, but I want to do two flats each eventually and find other varieties of chive, as well as something that I bought from a nursery last year – society garlic (which is grown for its leaves, culinarily, and for its pretty flowers). Our hedgerow is going to smell beautiful. Well, depending on your tastes, but we’re downwind from a dairy farm, sooo…

This might be a good article for me to bookmark – http://www.bhg.com/gardening/flowers/bulbs/alliums-for-your-garden/

And more info on chives – http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/index.php/Chives

Know any good varieties I can grow from seed?

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Long Weekend of Dooooom (or, at least, a lot of fun)

May29

Wow. Weekend took me so long to recover from, it’s Wednesday before I’m posting about it. 🙂

Saturday, Rion & I went to visit [personal profile] inventrix, who lives in Colorado but was in NY for the holiday. That was loads of fun – and only the second time I’ve seen Trix in person. (Internet people are real; they’re just a little realer when you’re buying used books with them!)

Sunday was All The Gardening. Well, raking. First raking the lawn, then raking and clearing a patch of dirt for the melons/squash we plan on planting. Then more raking, I think. I’m not actually sure where Sunday evening went.

Monday, Ri and T. and I hit three wineries on the top west of Seneca Lake, then spent a couple hours at the outlet mall, then hit 2/5 wineries (“Three Brothers” is three wineries and a brewery in one) and a cafe before driving home. Then we stacked firewood until dark.

We have a lot of firewood. 🙂

That was my weekend. It looks a lot shorter in text form, but, mainly, it was a lot of fun.

How about you?

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Rock Gardens.

May9

I’ve been thinking about rock gardens.

I even have a Pinterest board of rock gardens.

See, our property has a lot of rocks. It’s got so many rocks, it’s sort of like someone dumped a thin layer of topsoil over a gravel quarry.

(Someone did. The glaciers. We’re at the bottom of the Finger Lakes, which means we’re the dumping ground for a lot of Canadian rock. Anyone want their rock back?)

So as we do anything in the yard… we pull out rocks. Big rocks, little rocks. Tiny rocks and huge rocks.

We’ve started covering up a pretty horrid border garden to the west side of the house with large flat rocks, tucking Coleus plants in between the rocks. It’s looking decent so far; will look better once we get down more weedcloth.

But we have this wet sunken corner of the yard… and I’m thinking more rocks. Rocks, and a little water feature. Maybe a waterfall.

What do you think?

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First and Last Frost Dates

Apr30

Getting impatient?

Three resources for last frost date by area:
http://davesgarden.com/guides/freeze-frost-dates/#b
http://www.farmersalmanac.com/weather/2007/02/14/average-frost-dates/
http://www.victoryseeds.com/frost/

(these read between May 2 and May 31 for last-frost for my approximate area).

here’s a map for the UK: http://www.vegetableseeds.net/category_s/153.htm
and another: http://www.gardenfocused.co.uk/adjust-dates-uk.php

Something not entirely clear for Australia: http://www.geocities.com/mastergardener2k/frostaustralia.html

Of course, even with a chart, it helps to look at the weather on a day-to-day basis at the beginning and end of the season.

And I’ve planted some peas and put my first butternuts in the ground.

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Seeeeeeeeds!

Feb14

It’s the time of the year when we start planning our garden. This time of year, the snow and the slush demand some thinking about the warmth and the nice weather to come.

Also, seed catalogues have the best sales in February.

So, the T. and I were all set to put together an order last night – just needed to look through the box of freecycled seeds I’d picked up Tuesday – and then.

We opened the box.

O_O

Squash, at least three types
Four types of melons.
cumin, basil, more basil, parsley.
Peas, beans, GARBANZO beans, peas. Beans.
Posies. Loads and loads of posies.
Spinach. Lettuce. Two types of Kale.
five types of tomatoes
tomatillos
habeneros
bell peppers
Turnips, carrots, parsnips, rutabega, BEETS
Onions.

We’re gonna need a bigger garden.

They’re not new seeds; they’ll probably have a much lower germination rate than fresh seeds. But that’s okay. There’s enough overkill in there to allow for a rate as low as 10% on everything but the root veggies.

Guys, this is awesome.

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Tiny Houses

Dec29
100_9882 by aldersprig
100_9882, a photo by aldersprig on Flickr.

Awesome gift from Kelkyag, with hens-and-chicks planted in them.

100_9881

I got these in the mail just after Christmas… what a surprise! And how awesome, too. They are, she informs me, drafts, inspired by something I pinned months ago, but lookit them! Aren’t they adorable?

(“C” is the Thorne Family initial IRL)

Late Harvest

Dec28

So, Wednesday – that would be the day before the major snowstorm, but certainly after a bit of snow – I went out into our garden and pulled the leeks out (most of them), and cut the parsley, sage, and oregano back to the ground.

Parsley is amazingly resilient stuff! It will do just fine as long as you brush the snow off. But with a food of snow coming… it was time for it to get cut.

I used this idea and rolled it into a log, which went into the freezer.

Oregano and sage went into freecycled little jars, topped off with cheap (barely virgin at all) olive oil. That’ll go in the freezer after T. rearranges the freezers this weekend.

The leeks? Deep fried and eaten. Delicious.

I love that it’s December and I’m still pulling things out of my garden. 😀

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