July 2012 - What is my garden up to?

I'll try and post some pictures here later today, but I at least wanted to get the report done (because if I don't do it now, it probably won't get done!)

Well, the herb garden is doing well.  I haven't had time to do much to take care of it, and there are tons of herbs that I really need to harvest, but I don't have time to do anything with them - most of them I dry - and so there just out there growing away.  I'm not sure I can remember all of the herbs I've got out there, but here's most of them - stevia, cilantro, parsley, tarragon, thyme (used this as a ground cover along the border, and this is growing like gangbusters!) basil, lemon verbena, dill, sage, rosemary, lavender, oregano, spearmint, peppermint, chocolate mint, marjoram, sage, and chives. 

On the north side of the house, I planted a three zucchini plants, and it looks like I might get zucchini off all of them this year.  There are two zucchinis on one plant that are about a day from being ready to pick.  I also planted a perennial flower garden on this side.  It is doing o.k.  It has been crazy hot for weeks now, and hardly any rain, and I only water a couple of days a week.  Next year, I'm doing drip irrigation, but for now, it is just the sprinkler, and so the flowers in particular aren't doing great.  But I'm hoping for the best.  There are 6 plants in the bed now, and I plan on adding 4-6 more in the bed next year.

Along the fence on the north side, I have two containers - one has two butternut squash plants with lattice behind it for it to climb, and then the other container has two melon plants with lattice behind it to climb.  The squash is doing o.k., slow but steady growth.  The melon, well, it might be dead.  I haven't looked in the past few days, but it isn't growing really.  I think I planted them too early and then it got too hot, etc. 

The four boxes along the west end are doing o.k.  Box 1 has onion and garlic.  I have garlic flowers coming up now, and so I will probably cut the scapes and make some garlic scape pesto this weekend.  The onions are plugging along.  Box 2 has some lettuce left in it that we need to eat up this week, and some HUGE swiss chard, celery, and 8 cucumber plants that are growing horizontally on garden netting.  I think I might actually get cucumbers this year! I planted marigolds or some kind of flowers by any of the plants that flowered, and I think that helped to bring in the pollinators, etc.  Box 3 has peppers and tomatoes.  I have small tomatoes on the plants, and I have banana peppers ready to pick.  The green peppers are slowly but surely growing.  Box 4 has green beans.  I'm not sure what is going on there.  I've got leaves, but I haven't seen blossoms or any indication of beans.  I planted them well over a month ago. 

The strawberry patch had some strawberries in it this year, but I didn't get as much as I'd hoped.  I probably got a quart total.  But about half of them are the everlasting kind, so hopefully I'll get another quart in the fall. 

I'm planning on a fall garden this year - at the very least, I'm doing broccoli, peas, and spinach. 

I've got BIG plans for the garden next year.  I'm putting in 4 new beds - one for potatoes, one for cabbage and broccoli, one for greens (this one may actually be a cold frame instead of just a raised bed), and one for blueberries.  I'm also moving the peas to a different area and putting netting or fencing in between the rows instead of doing bamboo teepees in one of the boxes.  I'm also planning on planting more peas in general next year.  I'm planting grapes and a pear, an apple, and cherry tree next year. Oh, and asparagus.  I totally meant to plant it this year, but the spring just got away from me.  As always LOL, I plan on doing better with successive planting and getting a spring, summer, and fall crop out of as many of the beds as possible.  I'm also putting in a drip irrigation system. 

I'm super tempted to start a front yard garden too, but I think I'll wait another year after that.  Check with the HOA and the city over the next year, and get all those ducks in a row before I do it.  However, if nothing else, I do plan on adding some more perennial and native plants in the front yard.

Why do I garden?

I've talked about gardening several times here, and if I wasn't so lazy, I'd link to all the posts, but I won't.  But I've gardened every year since I started this blog, although that first year, it was just a very small area (like 2' x 3' space) here at the house. 

I've also mentioned that when I grew up, my parents gardened.  From the time I was 11 until I left home, my parents had a HUGE garden.  It was almost a 1/2 acre, and it also included about 8 fruit trees. I didn't love working in the garden back then.  It was something that we did because we were asked to do it.  I don't remember ever just wandering out there to weed or even just to grab a handful of raspberries.

So when I thought about gardening, I thought about that big garden, and I didn't want to do that.  And then, for some reason, I don't remember, Mr. Simple cleared that little patch in 2007 or 2008 and I grew a few things.  Mostly herbs.  And they all grew.  Like magic.

And the next year, my sister asked me to garden with her at a plot - it was 15 feet by 20 feet.  And we planted.  And things grew. Like magic.  (Well, besides the peas.  For some reason, I never had good luck with peas at the garden plot.)  And I grew things at the plot the next year too, and that year, it ended up that I had the whole garden plot to myself.  And things grew. But so did the weeds and it was all on me.  It was great to have all that space, but it was a lot of work too. 

So last year, I did square foot gardening here at the house. And things grew. Like magic.  And there were almost NO weeds.  And it was close.  And I was able to grow as much food as I did at the plot (well, not as many tomato plants, but I was able to watch the tomatoes better, so I ended up with almost as many tomatoes anyway.)

I don't have that much space dedicated to gardening at my house, but what I do have is very productive.  I do spend quite a bit of time dedicated to gardening at the beginning of the gardening season - picking the seeds, preparing the soil, building any new beds, etc. But the thing that I love about square foot gardening is that from that point on, the time I spend in the garden is sort of up to me.  I certainly don't need to dedicate an hour a week to weeding.  And I can harvest the minute that things are ready and I get food in more manageable batches that way.  And I can just sit outside and watch the butterflies and bees and the birds flying around.  I can sit in the sun and enjoy just being outside.  I can take the food and freeze it for days like this in February where there is no fresh produce available, but I can cook up a batch of green beans from the garden from last July.  I can take the herbs inside, and dry them so that I can add them to my (homemade) tomato sauce for the spaghetti tonight. 

And sometimes, on a bright June morning, I'll go outside just to grab a handful of strawberries too.

Love that.

And so that's why I garden. 

Square Foot Gardening - I love it!

I decided this year to NOT garden in my usual spot. For the past few years, I had had a 15' x 20' pot behind the church. There was many good things about it, and I learned lots of things about gardening while I gardened there.

BUT

It was really inconvenient. I had to drive 10 minutes to get to it, and it was in a direction that I don't normally go on a regular basis. That, and I was never organized enough to get some sort of mulch down, and so I would ALWAYS end up with tons and tons of weeds.

So this year, initially, I decided not to garden at all. And then after just a tiny amount of begging, Mr. Simple agreed to make me a raised bed. Which, after the first one went together so easily, he then quickly agreed to make me 3 more!

I followed the directions for the soil mixture in the Square Foot Gardening book as well as the spacing.

He did the beds in early/mid-April, and so I got a spring planting in. It was AWESOME! I can't tell you how much I enjoyed being able to just walk out the back door and grab a little lettuce for lunch or dinner. Or some broccoli and peas.

Here you can see box 1 early on, plus the other 3. Box 4 was actually moved inside the backyard and currently has strawberries planted in it.

Another shot of box 1 early on.
Box 1 a couple weeks later. There are some broccoli, lettuce, cauliflower, onions, beets, and peas.

Box 2 with just the soil.

Box 2 early on. There is lettuce, spinach, and cabbage.

Another shot of box 2.

This is the flower bed. I pulled all the daffodil bulbs out because they weren't growing well anymore. Flower picked annuals to put in here, although we planned on putting in bulbs back in this fall.

This is the area that was cleared for bed 4 - the strawberry patch.

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Then summer came and I planted tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, basil, and lots and lots of green beans. And cucumbers and summer squash. And for the most part (besides the cucumbers and squash), everything did well. Watering was easy. Weeding was practically non-existent.

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This is bed 3 in mid May. The peppers are in.

The other side of bed 3. The basil is in.

Here is the flower bed planted.

Another shot of the flower bed after we planted in early June.
In addition to the tomatoes that I planted in box 3, I also put a few in planters on the side with lattice on the fence for support. These tomatoes did NOT grow well. I will not be planting tomatoes in this way again.

Along the north side of the house, I made a small raised bed on both ends of the house. I planted a zucchini squash in this bed and a crookneck squash in the other bed.

Here is the zucchini after a week or so. The zucchini grew well for awhile, and started producing fruit. And then the squash bugs came and killed the plant and I only ended up with two small zucchinis.

This is bed #2 in June. I put up a frame with netting on the south end and planted cucumbers. They looked good when I planted them. But they never grew very tall. Again, I think I got two small cucumbers.
Here are the tomatoes and peppers in June.
Here is all of bed 3 in June. The board is so that I can rest a foot or two inside the box without pressing the soil down too much. Bed 3 is 3 x 8 and a little bit more difficult to maneuver around in.

Here is bed 2 in June. You can see the cabbages and swiss chard, and the first round of green beans.

This is box 1 in June. You can see the broccoli, beets, onions and peas.

Another shot of box 2 in June sometime.
The crookneck was really growing well, but it never produced any fruit before it also succumbed to squash bugs.

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In September, I planted a few things - some mustard greens, and some chard. I wanted to do some transplants - broccoli especially, but my favorite nursery sold out early on most fall transplants, and their broccoli transplants died, and it was too late to plant seeds, so I didn't get in as much as I had planned.

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And here is box 1 in late September. It had successive plantings of green beans. You can also see the bean tee pee in the background. It was planted in the corner, just inside the fence.

Box 2 in late September. This box had had green beans in it, but all had been harvested from this box by this time, and the bean plants were pulled and composted.

Box 3 in late September. I harvested a lot of tomatoes from this box in July/August, but it really slowed down by late September. I pulled the last of the tomatoes (they were mostly green) in mid/late October.

The other side of box 3

Box 4 or what we refer to as the strawberry patch in late September.

The flowerbed in late September.

Another shot of the flower garden.

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Then a couple nights ago, I planted flower bulbs in the flower bed, and garlic in one of the SFG boxes.

I really, really enjoyed gardening this way, and I already have my garden planned out for next year, including at least 3 more boxes! It really is amazing how much I am able to grow in such a small area. I am using parts of my yard that were basically unused before anyway, and now we have harvested/preserved/eaten so much food from the garden this year!

Gardening: Late Summer Update

I'm sorry. I really meant to be more on top of giving you gardening updates. It would be easier to give you updates because my garden was at the house this year instead of half way across town, but yet, I didn't.

BUT

the square foot gardening has been a smashing success. SOOOOO glad I did it. Especially given that our summer was crazy busy and then I was laid up with burns. If I had had to go across town to harvest or weed or whatever, it just never would have happened. Speaking of weeds, I had to pull almost no weeds this year. A huge, huge, huge improvement over last year. When it seemed like that was all I did, or at least all I should be doing and didn't and by that time, the garden would be overrun with weeds.

So I ended up planting 4 boxes. Three boxes are 4 x 4 and one box is 8 x 3. Oh, and then I planted herbs in the beds in the front of the house. I plan on putting in one more 4 x 4 box soon, and maybe another couple next year.

I did a spring planting of spinach, lettuce, peas, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, swiss chard, beets and radishes. Oh and a strawberry patch in one whole box. The cauliflower didn't grow and I discovered that I still don't like radishes, but everything else grew fabulously. I loved, loved, loved being able to go out and pick stuff for a salad every night for about a month for dinner.

Then I planted beans (and beans and beans, I've done successive planting, so we have rarely been without beans since late June), tomatoes, peppers (2 green, 1 sweet banana and 1 cayenne) eggplant, cucumbers, zucchini, and crookneck squash.

The beans we have either eaten fresh or I have put in the freezer. I don't have a ton in the freezer. Even though I planted quite a few, I think I'll devote even more garden space to beans so that I can put more beans in the freezer/pressure can, etc. Maybe even do some pickled green beans!

My roma tomatoes grew well, but the other tomato plants didn't. I got very few tomatoes on the 5 non-roma plants. But I planted 10 roma tomato plants and they have grown like gangbusters. We are still semi-drowning in tomatoes, with no real end in sight. I've been making tomato sauce out of the tomatoes. I don't have a lot of sauce so far (10 pints?) but I'm hoping by the end of the season to have 20 pints or so.

The peppers have done o.k. I just haven't had that many green peppers or banana peppers. The cayenne peppers have grown really well though. I tried those in the dehydrator and then put it in the food grinder and made my own red pepper flakes. The eggplant hasn't been a big hit, and the cucumbers and summer squash got squash bugs and died.

So this weekend, I'm planting some spinach for my fall garden and hoping to put in some more spinach, lettuce, chard, broccoli, and maybe peas in the next week or so.

This post is already long enough, but the next post (hopefully tomorrow or Tuesday) will be a picture of the garden areas and the crops growing in them, etc.

So do you miss me posting yet?

Summer's are crazy for us around here. The kids are in Swim Team - this year all the kids, even Super, are on the team, and it seems like we are always at practice or at a meet. Practices are M-F from 7:00 to 8:30 am and 5:00 to 6:30 pm. And meets on most Tuesdays and Thursdays evenings. So that's where I've been quite a bit of the time.

Then, I no longer teach preschool really. It has morphed into daycare. During the school year, for the 2-5 year olds, I do do preschool activities from 9 am to 11 am, but during the summer, we do mostly free play. And I have a school age child that is here full-time for the summer. So when I'm not at swimming practice/meets, I am watching my own 3 kids plus 3-5 other children from ages 7 to 1.

Then I haven't had much to blog about in terms of holidays. We did go to Bass Lake for both Memorial Day and 4th of July, but I didn't take any pictures. And then, to completely add to my lameness, I didn't even watch the fireworks this year. I wasn't feeling well, so I just stayed back and went to bed early. I know. COMPLETELY lame. Can you even imagine what a fuddy duddy I'll be by the time I get into my 60s? Or even my 50s? Sheesh.

I have been doing lots of gardening, and I SHOULD post some pictures of that. Let's just say that the Square Foot Gardening has been a 90% smashing success! And I love that the garden is just steps away from my back door. And the weeding has been almost non-existent! Mostly just green beans are being harvested in my garden right now, but it is nice to be able to just go out every night and pick a cup of green beans for dinner! I planted green beans successively, so I'll be harvesting green beans for the next 8 weeks or so. And I'll be starting to preserve them soon. I'm hoping that between my garden and picking some up at farmer's market that I'll be able to can about 36 pints and freeze about 10 quart bags. Speaking of preserving, I made pickled beets this year! And they are good!

Sometimes, I really can't believe how different I live than just a few years ago. I always wanted to do less formal activities and do more with gardening and preserving and all of that, but just didn't. And now, 2-3 years later, it is just a part of regular routine. And for Super, who is 6, it is just mostly what he knows. He doesn't remember when I didn't make our own pickles and spaghetti sauce. When I didn't shop at farmer's market most Saturdays. When most of our food doesn't come out of a box. When we didn't spend most of our time together doing "whatever."

All right, next time I get here (which probably won't be until August. Just being honest.), I'll try and post pictures. Pictures of swim team. Pictures of the garden. Pictures of canning and dehydrating and freezing.

Oh, and did I tell you I picked up a great Summer Recipe book at the thrift store.

You know, there really are many things that I enjoy about my life. :)

I'm going to stop gardening

O.K., not really. But I've decided to stop gardening at the "big" plot. For the past few years, I've had a plot behind our church. It was 15 feet wide by 20 feet long. It was great to be able to have that much space. It gave me plenty of room to grow stuff like cucumbers or corn or other plants that are space hogs. But I decided not to - at least this year. For all of the advantages, there were disadvantages.

The first being that it isn't THAT close to my house. It is about 10 minutes by car to get there - which isn't far - but when I'm trying to do weeding in the morning before the daycare kids arrive, it makes it is 10 minutes there, and 10 minutes back, and only leaves me about 20 minutes to weed.

And speaking of daycare kids, it just wasn't working in my daily schedule to have a garden over there and have to watch small children. If I needed to go over to there to plant or weed or harvest with the daycare kids (and my own children), it was difficult to try and do that and watch children.

I also had to drive. There was no storage space for my tools and supplies, so I'd have to drive just to transport my supplies. I'm talented on a bike, but not talented enough to carry a hoe AND ride a bike. And so it costs me gas every day that I went over there. And that seemed like not quite the point of gardening.

But of course, I'm not ACTUALLY stopping gardening. I enjoy gardening. And eating fresh food. And preserving food. So what am I doing?

Square foot gardening and raised beds.

Those of you who have been to my house may wonder where I am going to put the beds. Especially since I have a large wooden playset in my backyard. Well, I have 5 feet of yard that is outside the perimeter of the backyard fence that is still part of our yard. So that is where the majority of the beds will go. I'll have two beds in the actual backyard and then 4 beds on the perimeter. I'll also be adding a couple of small dwarf fruit trees. I

n addition to changes in the backyard, I am pulling some things out of the front beds and adding medicinal herbs. I've already got a raised bed of cooking herbs in the back. Next year, I'll be adding some native plants in the front yard and another tree.

Now, if I want to get up in the morning and water or weed, it will take me about 30 seconds to get there. I can weed or plant or harvest in the afternoon when the daycare kids are napping. I can store my tools in my own garage.

It isn't perfect, of course, either. When I had the plot, I didn't have to buy the dirt. LOL I didn't have to make the beds. So there will be some work that I didn't have to do before. And more money. I'll let you know at the end of season what I thought. And if I'll be headed back to "plot gardening" sticking with "square foot gardening."