I'm going to try & keep all my posts for this years' adventure all in one place. We sat down & finalized our plans, made up our construction shopping lists, and bought the last of our seedlings for our little garden today. Because of how well our garden turned out last year, my husband graciously offered to build or buy whatever I asked for this year and actually SUGGESTED building large cages to surround the bulk of our plantings to keep the squirrels out. So we have made quite a few changes & additions from last years' garden. The biggest change is that we are moving some of our plantings down off the deck into the yard, to give the kids a "secret garden" area, and will be using trellises with acorn squash & purple pole beans to create a screen for them to hide behind. This years' plans look like this: The deck is 12' wide by 6.5' deep, and the secret area is roughly 10' wide by 7.5' deep. (Whisper is a stone frog statue that the kids picked up, if anyone was curious) It's nearly twice the area that we had last year, and we are planting roughly 4 times the fruit & veggies. I have seedlings all over the dining room that I drag in & out every morning/evening as it is STILL too cold to let them sit outside at night. One of my tomato plants is over 3' tall already, and is really getting heavy. Other than actually seeing this all come together over the next few months, I think I am most excited to see how the purple beans turn out for the kids... and to see how the strawberries produce. We are getting two grow-bags with 10 pouches each & they will grow above the lettuce & carrots in the "tall" bed. Nobody I know has used the bags for anything but tomatoes, but everyone seems to think that they OUGHT to work well! Guess that's it for now - I'll post photos as soon as we have things put together. We've got some phlox & daylilies to move this week in order to plant the kids' flower bed! love, mom
The weather has been against us for the past several weeks. Between the cold nights & the rain, we've barely been able to do a thing! However the kids & I have spent two days working on ripping grass, weeding, assembling & creating the secret garden bed. Here's how that looks now. The white things are aquarium rocks, and they're marking out where the different plantings are. The strip closest to the kids is purple alyssum, the middle is bunnytails, and the farthest is white snapdragons. Going into the ground to climb the trellis tomorrow morning (they're soaking to soften up right now) will be white moonflowers. We picked up the paint for the table & chairs... the brightest shades of pink & green you've ever seen, color-matched to the stripes in their Easter umbrella! DH is putting up guttering on that side of the house tonight & tomorrow, and if the rain stays away he'll be adding lattice to cover the bottom of our deck so the kids have a cute "wall" behind the table. With any luck, I'll have more photos to post by Monday. love, mom
We are seeing the very tiniest of alyssum sprouts - they look like green aphids they're so small, but they are EVERYWHERE! Here is what we managed to get done over the past week - the "short-bed" is done & planted! (whole garden - on the deck, facing the kids' garden) (left side planted with peppers, cilantro, and lettuce) (right side planted with radishes, carrots, sweet & cinnamon basil, and more peppers) We used sandbox sand to create our planting lines this time. The "door" flips up & rests on top of the garden perfectly, and there's just enough room for DS & me to care for the seedlings from the entry, and for DD to shinny in front to get to the peppers. We also planted our baby pumpkins in the blue buckets, and my acorn squash is in the ground as well. For this week we need to finish making the "tall bed," put the latticework on the deck, plant the beans, and create the support for our strawberry plants - which are due in the mail tomorrow! Hopefully the weather will be more accommodating than it was last week. love, mom
We are finally getting around to a bit more - in between rain outbursts. The picnic table is STILL not fully painted, and the men are outside putting the netting on the tall garden as I type. But here is what our garden looks like at the moment: The bins with the trellises in them have purple pole-beans, and the other two in the corner by the stairs have my acorn squash. I'm hoping to get around to painting the deck & trellis to match - but it's going to have to be a whole lot drier before I can consider paint & at this point I'm not holding my breath! You can see the kids picking all of the maple tree "helicopters" out of our beds - the wind has blown THOUSANDS of them into the beds over the past few hours! Anyway, that's where we are right now. My radishes are growing like crazy but I don't see any sign of lettuce yet... I'm guessing it's just plain too wet right now for it to sprout properly. love, mom
After nearly a month of constant rain, our garden is finally looking GOOD! I have yet to finish painting the kids' table & chairs because it is still just saturated from the ongoing rain. But here's what our garden looks like as of this evening. This is the entire garden - looking down the length of our yard. These are our bean & squash plants, well on their way to start climbing the trellis & deck-stairs.
Up on the deck now, in the short-bed the left side holds peppers, cilantro & "early" lettuce, planted 3 weeks ago while the right-side holds my radishes, basil & peppers. I'm contemplating what to replace the single dead pepper with since it just didn't make it through the last storm. (sniff) The poor thing! In my tall bed; back to front we planted both beds with leeks, lettuce & carrots last week. And also within the tall bed are my tomatoes & chives... I can ALREADY count about two dozen green tomatoes!!! My strawberries seem to be a complete failure. I ordered 25 bare-root plants, and they came in 3 weeks ago... to date I see NOTHING from even one of the plants. (sigh) I will be calling for a refund tomorrow, but it's late enough in the season I think I'll have to give up on berries for this year. All in all, I am QUITE pleased... and the kids are as excited this year as they were last year about helping, which means I don't have to bend over to tend to seedlings all by myself.
Not enough tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes only tease me. Its been so cool and cloudy here on the coastline, nothing is growing locally except sugarsnap peas and the like. 10 miles inland might be a different story. x
Thought I'd share a few pics BEFORE cleaning the beds up a bit... it rained a ton while we were away, and I have seedling maple trees, and all sorts of windborne weeds in my beds right now. Anyway, here we are as of today: The kids' secret bed - we've got milkweed taking over, but the moonflowers are about a foot high, and the snapdragons are FINALLY above ground! Also in the pumpkin buckets I have one lonely sprouted pumpkin plant... and mushrooms growing in the corner?!? How did THAT happen?!?
The purple pole beans are now TALLER than the 6' high trellises! And my acorn squash is growing nicely too.
Short bed, left to right: peppers, cilantro, (not doing well in the high heat) lettuce, radishes, basil & another pepper
Tall bed, left to right: tomatoes, (lil sis says they weren't getting enough water until she moved the sprinkler... oops) leeks (really taking their time about sprouting, but I finally see them!) and carrots, and in the final bin are more leeks, lettuce & carrots. We've got a bit of weeding to do, and I've re-staked my tall tomato. DD enjoyed the first 5 cherry tomatoes with her breakfast this morning, and we're nibbling lettuce as fast as we can. Anyway, that's the garden! love, mom
Pumpkins need lots of room to sprawl out. The high heat may be affecting the other plants as well. Your mater plant looks stressed. Every year is different though. I'd get a ph kit and test the soil. If the soil is too acidic, nutrients can't be absorbed eventhough they're present. Another problem with containers is the roots can get too hot sitting in the sun. It shuts the plant down. Go with light colored containers in the future if this proves to be a problem. x
I had no luck with lettuce this year not sure why. Could be the quail ate it as fast as it came up. We have a couple baby boo pumpkins on the vine already. Way to early to last for Halloween but fun to watch. I love that you have gotten your kids so involved with the whole garden thing. And who doesn't have a few weeds. Mine main ones are valley oaks (had a bumper crop of acorns this year), oleander (neighbors have a high hedge that seeds every year), sedge, spurge and horehound. Hey have you planted any hollyhocks for the kids?
lol... I'm wishing I had room for a few more tomatoes as well. They've perked up now that they're getting regular watering, and look more like what my plants looked like last year. They are in Miracle Grow - so pH shouldn't be a problem. We were on vacation for 2 weeks & my lil sister was watering them and says she realized a few days before we returned that the sprinkler wasn't reaching a few of the plants. Gardener - no I HAVEN'T planted any hollyhocks! Are they fast-growing & extremely forgiving? My soil is about as near to 100% clay as you can get & still call it "soil" rather than "modeling medium" and I'm having a tough time finding new plants that actually like to live here. Lilacs, ferns, hostas & wild roses adore it as do my tiger & yellow lilies, but my white "peace" lily, my daisies, my lamb's ears & silver mound have all met untimely deaths. Our pumpkins are the "Jack be Little" variety. I keep trying to talk the kids into the Baby Boos, but they tell me that the white ones are "creepy." I'm looking forward to the day that we can plant pie pumpkins myself! love, mom
Hollyhocks are a pretty hardy bienniel, the plant grows the first year but doesn't flower, but the second year you get these magnificent plants with large stems of flowers. My grandmother taught all us grandkids how to make hollyhock dolls during the summer. Even the boys. They do well in clay, that's what I have and they can take some drought as well. They seed heavily so you can keep new ones coming year after year. Here's an article on hollyhock dolls. http://blog.lib.umn.edu/maasx003/garden/024283.html
