Tag: Garden

Beet it

~ meh ~ Leave a comment

…and they’re arriving.  Our garden finally started producing vegetables during the month that Paul was in Costa Rica.  Unfortunately, Paul was gone during that month, and I don’t like beets.  So I gave this one to Marsha.

We also have baby watermelons, gallons of tomatoes, peppers, carrots (which Paul thought was parsley, so he picked it too early), cabbage, broccoli (which went bad because I wasn’t sure how to pick it), colonel mint, and strawberries.  The blueberry and raspberry plants are also growing OK, but probably won’t produce any fruit until next year.

RIP corn, lavender, the blackberry plant that Spike ate, and Paul’s edamame that he planted on bald spots IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LAWN (a landscaper unexpectedly cleaned up our back yard last week and mowed over them.  That’s what you get.)

Recipes to follow.

Interesting (Garden)Bedfellows

~ meh ~ 1 Comment
April, 2011

=

July, 2011

Morning glories next to the squash and zinnias in the tomatoes.  Makes for a colorful garden.

Speaking of tomatoes, we are overflowing with them, and they have been enormous and delicious (Paul is on a mission to can some tomato sauce…I’ll let you know how that goes).  But we have had issues with our veggies getting eaten by bugs and small animals.  Yesterday I came across this:

This tomato is bigger than my fist, and that is no small bite.  My first reaction was holy crap, that is a big animal that’s eating our produce…a possum maybe?  Meth rat?  And then…

Figures.  I guess it’s a lot easier than stealing his favorite baby carrots from the fridge.

Garden update

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I couldn’t even write about it when it happened like 3 weeks ago because I thought the blog would be getting too redundant, but after our last replant (after the greenhouse blew over for the second time), we had put our only surviving plants on the picnic table, and I walked outside to find said survivors spewed across the yard and Spike chomping on the biodegradable pots.  I really lost it and almost killed him, but Paul and I finally figured out a solution (5 attempts too late.)

A shelf.  In the yard.  Where the plants can get sun, and Spike can’t reach them.  Success.

Garden of woes

~ meh ~ 3 Comments

…or more accurately, empty garden box of woes.

the survivors, weathering some high winds on top of our rain barrel

Saturday morning I worked at a triathlon in Versailles (pronounced “vuhr-SAY-uhls”…and just FYI, for those of you who are local, if you are trying to use the voice command on your Andriod phone to get directions, Google Maps doesn’t recognize “vuhr-SAY-uhls”.  You have to pronounce it “vehr-SIGH”, like the rest of the world does).

The weather was completely awful (kudos to those who made it through the bike and the run, wet, in 40 degree wind and rain), and I was doing my best to sell arm warmers to those who came unprepared, when I received this text from Paul:

greenhouse flipped over again and spike ate most of the plants. taking the stupid thing back to my parents house and building a permanent one over break

Sure enough, I got home, the greenhouse was in pieces, all of our plants (except for the ones above, which are my flowers) were gone, and Spike looked stuffed.

I guess Paul put the greenhouse out when the sun started to peek through the clouds, went inside to take care of some business for like 3 minutes, while he was inside a gust of wind came…and you know the rest of the story.  Spike had a field day.

At what point do you just admit it…

via blackenedbutterfly

Tragedy strikes

~ meh ~ 4 Comments

Unrelated, but there are some awesome tulips blooming on our block.

A few weeks ago we noticed that our garden was wilting due to lack of sunlight in the kitchen.

So we started putting our plants outside on sunny days.

One weekend when I was out of town, Paul put the garden out on a windy day, and most of the plants died.  So we had to replant almost all of them.   That’s when Paul decided that, instead of waiting until it warmed up a little more, the answer to our problem was a greenhouse.  He found a row of lightweight shelves covered with a clear plastic cover in his parents garage.  Viola.  Our greenhouse.

We moved all the plants into the greenhouse and put it in the backyard.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, there have been quite a few tornado warnings the past week.  There may have been a few comments offered up regarding the possibility of the plastic acting like a big sail and the greenhouse blowing over…but nothing came of them.

Within 24 hours Paul was raving about the number of sprouts that had popped up.

Our greenhouse lasted two days.

There was one survivor.

We don’t even know what plant it is.

So we replanted everything…again…

…took it down two levels, and rigged it up to the backyard lounge chair with a bungee cord and duct tape.

Third time’s a charm.

Update: Paul says the surviving plant is “definitely a corn.”

Updated Update: Paul now says he thinks the surviving plant is just a piece of grass.

Final Update: It’s confirmed, the survivor was a piece of grass.  It’s been plucked.

…but there is no joy in Jortsville

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Bad weekend for Kentucky.

I was actually in New York city for the game, but found the Kentucky bar in NYC (as you can see from the picture above.)  I came home to find the town in quiet despair…nobody even cared about watching the final game.

So tonight, instead of watching the game, Paul and I went to our favorite Cajun restaurant around the block.

Last week they were giving away free meals for anyone who came in and made their jeans into jorts.  Apparently, it wasn’t enough.  Sad, sad weekend.

Oh, and Spike ate our blueberry bush.

Berry exciting

~ meh ~ 4 Comments

Meet the newest members of the fam, planted along our back fence.  I thought the packaging was cool, completely biodegradable and meant to be put in the ground with the plant, which I had never seen before.

And while berries are particularly hardy and can handle the cold, our other crops are going to have to wait another month or so, until the final frost is over, before we can let them out of the house.  (“Before the final frost”…I sound like I’m living on the prairie in my covered wagon.)  But they are doing pretty well.

Paul is excited.  Spring is here.

Plant the seed

~ meh ~ 3 Comments

Some of you may remember the garden that Paul planted on the table of our tiny apartment in SF last year.


(If you’re wondering, those tiny sprouts growing out of those little black containers are now producing tons of peppers in my parent’s back yard in Santa Barbara.  The zucchini plants weren’t so lucky.)

Well, now we have a yard, and another Spring Break project was getting the garden rolling.  Paul built two garden boxes (and a compost pile) in the backyard…

…and we began the process of planting some starter crops, including:

Herbs

Corn (soon to be followed by beans and squash, the Three Sisters.)

…and tomatoes (tomatillos and Roma), spinach, and some flowers for the house.  The weather is still pretty cold (case in point: today it snowed again.  bastards.) so the seed options in town are limited, but there should be more in the next month or so.

And because it’s too cold for them plants to grow outside, for now our garden is flourishing in the kitchen.

Progress updates to come.