Barefoot Kitchen Witch - In the Garden

27 April 2008 (yeah, a week late, practically)

Just some photos I shot last Sunday...

Tulips...

Peony buds...

Bleeding hearts...

Lilacs beginning to open up...

Iris buds peeking out...

Pea tendrils taking hold...

Baby scallions unfolding...

And little baby hops leaves awakening...

Oh...and Julia, too.

After the Morning Rain - 12 April 2008

Water droplets on the cherry tree...

Asparagus shoots...

New blueberry leaves...

And all the seedlings in the garden - the main raised bed we use for vegetables.  Along the left and middle column (they're divided by string) are tons of little broccoli rabe plants.  They'll be harvested relatively early, and once they're out, the tomatoes and eggplant and other things will go in. 

But in the left column, we also now have red leaf lettuce, chervil, pak choi, and, I think, arugula.  And green lettuce.  I think that's everything.

And now, around to the front of the house...

Tons and tons of hostas coming up.  I think  I might need to separate them at the end of the season this year.

And finally, in the window box closest to our back door...some creeping thyme...

 

Browsing - 21 March 2008

While Bill was figuring what to do about the peat moss issue I took a quick look around the yard to see what else might be coming up.

Way in the back right corner of the yard we've got a couple of lilac trees and a crook-necked pole with several bird feeders on it.  Below the feeder we will eventually see a bleeding heart, a bunch of lilies, lilies-of-the-valley, and I don't remember what else. 

Looks like a few things are starting to poke through the ground...

And over in the Rose-of-Sharon Garden the tulips continue to poke up out of the ground.  That gorgeous purple hyacinth in the pot was a gift from a friend of mine.  It'll get planted either in this garden or one of the front yard gardens.  Still not sure where yet.

And over to the west of our house...the neighbor's daffodils. 

They seem to start coming up in January.  We recently figured part of the reason, besides all the sun from the east and south, could be that the bulbs are right up next to the house.  We've got a sage plant that took root in a crack between our driveway and the foundation of the house.  It flourished through the winter, and we were thinking maybe it was just warmer at the roots and didn't realize winter had hit.  So maybe it's the extra warmth that gets these daffodils going earlier than anyone else's.  Not sure if that's it or not, but I think it's possible.

We've got one huge narcissus bud of some variety in the front of the house - just to the west of the front steps.

Maybe it's got a double blossom or something - it looks so full.

And in that same garden - some more columbine -

And - one of the surest signs of spring - forsythia.  No flowers yet - just buds.  For now.

Next up - some early transplants.

All those sad looking irises came from the raised section behind the boat garden.  They just weren't doing well there, and I was afraid if I left them there another season, they'd die.  So I rescued them and moved them to the main iris garden along the side walkway (I really need to do a diagram of the yard, huh, just so people know what I'm talking about).  Anyway, I'll also be moving the rest of the irises in the boat garden - they just don't get enough sun where they are.  So that's an upcoming project.  Maybe next weekend.

And finally - the dark pink peony in the front yard is starting to come up.  Yay!  I love peonies.  I like the huge white one in the Rose-of-Sharon garden best, but this one is pretty,too.

So that's it for the moment.

This time of year I feel like I need to patrol the grounds at least twice a day - so much is happening out there.  Lots of quiet excitement.

Bringing in the Peat - 21 March 2008

In addition to the raised bed compost mixture we put in the gardens recently, Bill also got some peat moss to work in as well.  Problem with peat moss is that it's dry and compact, so he wanted to soak it well first.

Our kids' sandbox has been more like a sand pond through the winter because the lid was left off months ago and it filled with rain or melting snow.  But at least Bill found a use for it.  He set the peat on the water and hoped.

 

The next day it was still sort of floating there.  The very edge of it - the part touching the water - had absorbed a bit of moisture, but the rest stubbornly refused to.

So he needed to get creative.

First he tried turning the peat moss over, but that didn't seem like it was going to do much.

See?  You can see a little streak of the part that's soaked up water, and the rest is still dry as dust.

So here's what he ultimately did.

First he removed some of the peat moss and put it in a big old trash can we use for stacking firewood.

And then he put a cinder block on top of the peat moss to keep it weighted down.

And then he loaded it up with water.  You can see the water bubbling up in the back corner where the cinder block meets the edge of the trash can.

 

He did the same sort of thing with the peat moss in the sand box.

So we'll see how that works. 

   

In Which I Wax Rhapsodic About Manure

I hope it stops raining today at some point so I can go out and take pictures of the gorgeous compost on some of the gardens.

I know - oooooooh!  Sounds thrilling!

On Tuesday I picked up the kids after school/daycare and got them Happy Meals to eat on the ride to get a yard of compost.  Not just ANY compost, either.  It's the "Raised Bed Mix" - one of several types of compost you can get from Earth Care Farm.  The place (if you're into this sort of thing) is awesome.  Huge mountains of compost...good stuff, with - well here's an excerpt from their website:

COMPOST INGREDIENTS

We start with farm animal manure, such as horse, chicken, cow, sheep, goat, and rabbit manures. These we gather along with whatever bedding material was used, such as sawdust, wood shavings or straw. We also mix in elephant, camel and other exotic manures from Roger Williams Park Zoo.

Other raw materials added include: clean gurry (fish scraps), shell fish, seaweed, paper, wood chips, spent bark mulch, wood ashes, mulch hay, flower, vegetable, and shrub trimmings and also food scraps. Our major bulking agent is leaves which we receive from local towns. These ingredients are lended, mixed, and turned in an aerobically managed compost system on our certified organic farm. It takes approximately 18 months before the ingredients are properly cured and considered mature, finished compost.

Nice, huh?  So the owner loaded up the bed of our truck and away we went. 

Then I spent the afternoon clearing out dead leaves and other debris from most of the flower gardens in the front yard.  Mainly the irises, as their rhizomes need sun and dryness to flourish.  I transplanted a few that weren't doing all that well - hopefully they'll improve this year in their new spot.  The kids helped for about 3.4 minutes and then grew tired of all that manual labor.  So they played in the back yard or drew with chalk on the driveway.

When Bill got home he was all excited about the compost and got that truck bed cleared out pretty quickly.  Julia "helped" by standing near a wheelbarrow while he shoveled compost into it.  I would have taken a picture, but my hands were too muddy to touch the camera.  I really need to remember to wear gloves.

Anyway, Bill distributed the compost to the raised bed and to the other vegetable garden areas in the yard, and I added some to the windowboxes as well.

Eventually, it was too dark and too cold to do any more outside.  But things are looking really good.  Nice black compost out there...ready for planting.

Bouncing Baby Seedlings - 18 March 2008

Look what's coming up!

Some arugula...

Some red leaf lettuce...

And some pac choi and some radicchio!

Yay!

I think this afternoon will be a work outside kind of afternoon.  I was going to make a big batch of tomato sauce...but I can do that tomorrow, when it's supposed to rain.

Despite the Cold - 16 March 2008

We've had this monster rose for years now, and it looks pretty in bloom, but the thing just tries to take over and Bill has to constantly trim it back.  We have other roses, nicer, friendlier, less Audrey-II-like plants, so...it was time for the monster (as we affectionately refer to it) to go.  We can also put that spot to better (i.e. vegetable-growing) use.  It gets a great amount of sun, compared to areas of our raised bed that miss out on a lot of morning sun because of the enormously tall trees to the east.

So on Sunday afternoon, Bill removed the monster.  Including miles of roots that stretched into the yard.  We know there will be little baby monsters popping up in the area as the season moves along, but they can be dealt with.

You can see the freshly churned soil in the picture above - that's where the monster was.  I think Julia's job here is to rake the dirt so it lies flat again.  Bill is on the other side of the fence digging up one of the monster's particularly long roots.  You can also see, on Julia's side of the fence, the slender baby red maple...we're going to be moving that this year, too.  There's a spot in the front, near the street, where another tree USED to be - a very large, very old, very rotting-from-the-inside-out tree that would drop a limb or two every time we had a snowstorm or heavy rain or anyone bumped into it by mistake.  Finally, finally, finally, after many phone calls from us and our neighbor, the town sent people out and they cut down what was left of the poor thing.  So at least now no one in the area needs to worry about it falling on their homes any more.

Next step there is to have the tree people come out and grind up the roots.  (We thought they were coming yesterday but apparently not.)  Once that's done, we can put some good soil in and move the red maple there, where it'll have lots of space to grow and it won't be shading out potential vegetable-growing areas.

Oops.  Julia's getting a bit overzealous with the rake.  That dirt doesn't do much good sitting on asphalt.

Oh, and those buckets?

Those are the peas.  Two kinds - sugar snap peas and...those flat ones - we just call them pea pods - we eat them whole or use them in stir-fry type dishes.  Anyway, Bill planted them earlier that same day.  He also planted the first round of seedlings in the little seed pots in our basement.  Here's the set-up:

And inside there are arugula, pac choi, cilantro, swiss chard, red leaf lettuce, green lettuce of some kind, rosemary, chervil, parsley, radicchio, and two tomatoes - Brandywine and San Marzano.  Eventually, when they're all up and have started their first real leaves, Bill will move this whole enclosure up to the south-facing window in our dining room.  He built the frame to fit the windo perfectly, and the wire mesh is to keep the cat from snacking.  Pretty cool, huh?

But let's go back outside...

While Bill and Julia were working

and Alex was bouncing along...

I wandered around the yards (front and back) to see if anything new was coming up...

Yay!  The white peony has started poking up through the ground!  This is one of my absolute favorite plants...those gorgeous enormous white flowers and their sweet, addictive fragrance...

More and more and more tulips poking through...

Another hyacinth...

This year Bill's growing the strawberries in a recycle bin.  The little spot where they've been growing since we moved into the house isn't great - not enough sun, and it's also right there in the playing area of the yard.  So last fall Bill dug them up and put them in one of the old recycle bins, and more recently he added better soil and raised them up so there's all sun and no shade from the sides of the bin.  So we'll see how they do this way.

Here's a view from inside the yard.  There's the blue bin with the strawberries, and the green bin will probably have a zucchini plant eventually.  The cherry tree is a little bigger, but Bill wants do something different this year as far as protecting the fruit from birds.  Last year he draped row cover around the whole tree, and that worked really well at keeping birds out and fruit in...but he says the branches look bent a bit from the weight of the cover.  So this year he's thinking of running a pole into the ground next to the tree - something that's taller than the tree is, and then having the covering hang from that and drape over the tree and tie up underneath.  At least that's the initial idea.  We'll see what final shape it takes a bit later in the spring.

And here, in front, is the original raised bed Bill created 6 years ago.  This year he removed a lot of the soil because it's probably drained of all the nutrients that our vegetables require.  So he's moved that dirt to the boat garden in the front yard and will be putting really really good new dirt and  compost in the vegetable bed probably some time this week.

And here's more of that raised bed...and Julia, who for some reason is scooping dirt out and putting it in that whiskey barrel.  Just behind her is where the asparagus bed is.  I looked, but nothing's coming up there.  Yet.

And here are some shots from the front yard.

Those flowers blooming?  They've been like that ALL WINTER.  They're crazy.

   

Here's the boat garden.  It will have some work done this year - we're going to raise it up a bit, for one thing, and figure out which plants really do well in this spot. 

And that's about it for now.  As of this past Sunday, anyway.

Signs of Spring - 7 March 2008

The daffodils against the eastern side of our neighbor's house always come up well ahead of any of our spring flowers.  They've been up a while, and finally I noticed tulips coming up in the garden on one side of our driveway.  (We refer to it as the Rose of Sharon garden, because of the big Rose of Sharon growing in the middle of it.  We also refer to the garden as "The Garden By Ann's Yard" because she is our neighbor and the garden shares ground with both her property and ours.)

Anyway, I took the camera outside a little while ago to take a few pictures of things poking up through the ground.  Bill planted a ton of bulbs last fall - tulips and other things - so we're looking forward to finding out what the squirrels left for us.

Here are a few pictures from this afternoon....

These are some of the tulips in the Rose of Sharon garden:

Here's another one:

A hyacinth:

Daffodils in front of the house:

More tulips - these coming up along the front walk:

Happy surprise - a few mini crocuses!  (Or mini croci?)

And columbine in front of the house on the other side:

Ooh - and another little crocus peeking out from last fall's debris:

Forsythia buds...

Buds on the spindly maple out front...

Early blossoms on the Andromeda in the back yard:

Buds on the cherry tree:

And on one of the rose bushes:

Oh, why not.  One more look at the crocuses.

Spring is on her way.