Whooo, hot out there!

Gryph and I were working in the yard. It's pretty hot out there in the western sun! Really discomfortable... and I am discomforted to be sure! So glad we're going back to spring weather tomorrow.

Veggies: Peas are up in the greenhouse, as are lettuces and a tiny number of carrots (Cosmic Purple). We moved the flats off the fridge and the herbs off the washer, so the greenhouse is filling up.

Weeds (which are actually herbs): Henbit and speedwell are blooming all over the yard; purple archangel (deadnettle) is just coming into bloom. I notice that the polar vortex set them back quite a bit; they're all pretty short this year. Last year they were just tall enough to look like a gentle meadow. Dandelions are leafing out and once in a while blooming. No sign of violets, but the curly dock is a good six inches across.

Bulbs: The crocus finally gave up the ghost and the daffodils are just coming into full bloom. A lone tulip has come up in one of the front yard flower beds and I believe that's where I'll put all my grocery-store tulips, see if they can adapt to life in the yard.

The new peach tree is blooming already, sooo pretty those pale pink blossoms, wide and delicate. I'm considering putting her in the front yard but for now she seems to be glorying in that hot western sun so I'll leave her on the back porch.

The potatoes have gone into my first big pot by the wheelchair ramp. We left the bag of potting soil next to the pot so I can fill it as the taters grow, and covered the pot with bird netting to keep the squirrels out.

Invasives: We  have to do something about the Star of Bethlehem. It's toxic and invasive and I need it GONE. It's so hard for me to deal with that I'm actually considering an herbicide for it and for the English ivy which is taking over the entire house and yard. I just haven't got the stamina to deal with them, never have had, and I also don't have the money to pay someone else to deal with it.

March 12 catch up

Hmmmm. Good and bad alike. The bad astonished me. I started with clean new potting soil and clean new pots and got damping off anyway. **sigh** Probably gonna have to replant my last two top-of-the-fridge flats. But the flats in the greenhouse are doing really well. Wish now I had put them all out there to begin with.

My big lesson here is that I simply don't have adequate lights. The seedlings should have been well past the damping off stage by now but they're growing slowly--even the ones under lights--because it just isn't bright enough no matter what I do. I've spent that stimulus check four ways from Sunday already, but at this moment I truly want to spend it on a professional lighting set up. If I'm to be serious about growing part of our food and all of our flowers, then I need the proper tools for it.

The morning glories are well up and need to go out and get tons more light, but our very changeable forecast once again calls for freezing nights midweek. I'm thinking about repurposing a craft cart and using it to take the plants outside during the day, then bring them back in at night. It'll harden them off, which has to happen anyway.

Trip to the nursery netted me many herbs, including my favorite pineapple sage and a wonderful dark green parsley, a couple of lavenders, as well a flower, Dicentra (bleeding hearts). A trip to the grocery store netted me a Loring Peach tree. It's not a dwarf, so it could easily get to 15 feet. We honestly don't know where to put it. I'm thinking it'll have to go in the front yard. The back is full!

Lettuces are up in the greenhouse and so, it seems, are a few carrots (Cosmic Purple). The new beets and chards are up. Even the kohlrabi is up, but there is absolutely no sign of peas. That mystifies me. 

I have seen ants in the pots, so I am evidently not going to be able to escape them this year.

We're slowly expanding the garden floor in the back yard, just one layer right now, but it looks to me like a perfect berry bed. I want to get more raspberries and blackberries and see if I can keep them going. The harvests in years past were most wonderful; I want that again.

The lilac is planted in the front yard now and is leafing out. No sign yet of leaves on anything else. The back yard daffodils and crocus both bloomed on March 11.

I've been slowed down by illness and will have to make up for lost time as I can. Have held off on planting warm season crops because I have nowhere to put them yet--but once the midweek frosts are done, I can put them in the greenhouse.

Reseeding

Replanted peas in the greenhouse today: De Grace in the long low pot, Carouby De Maussane in the two 24" pots, and Sugar Bon in the two square pots. Haven't decided whether to reuse the cardboard tube pots with all the non-sprouted carrots and beets; probably will. 

Calendula are sprouting well. The weather is too unsettled to plant them out yet. Even unheated, my laundry room is 20 degrees warmer than the greenhouse so putting them in the greenhouse won't work either. But that greenhouse will be getting lavender sooner rather than later, because I forgot to read the germinating instructions and they say 30-45 days in the fridge before planting. To me that says "cold stratification" and in nature, that would be cold moist stratification (snow and rain)--easy to get right now with freezing nights. I'll likely plant the lavender and prairie sage in the same flat, and search out any others I have which need stratification.

Today's seeds, in a 72 hex-cell propagator which is now on top of the fridge: creeping thyme, clary sage, aromatic aster, lemon bee balm, purple prairie clover, and marshmallow, plus the three peas mentioned above.

Next up: salad mix, lavender, and prairie sage.

Aaack! Sorry...

Ooops, didn't mean to disappear on y'all like that! Doggoned hands just get so tired; this is the first carpal tunnel flare-up in a while that hasn't gotten better quickly, and I'm thinking it's because I can't find my wrist braces.

So, it's Kansas in July and it is HOT. I don't mind this too much, since where I come from--Phoenix--it was this hot in April already and has progressed on to the Mouth of Hell Itself by this point. I will take this Kansas relatively mild heat with gratitude!! And um, I will also sing the praises of whomever invented air conditioning. *eyebrow waggle*

Anyhow, summer is supposed to be hot, when it happens in July. BUT what this means for my teensy lil flower-pot garden is daily wilting and some plants dying. The purple flower (a friend identified it as verbena, thanks!) is suffering, the butternut community is down by half, even the jack o'lanterns and bell peppers are starting to wilt more and more. So I give you the above pic, my herb harvest before this latest heat wave hit. Wasn't it lovely?! It became the flavoring in my chicken stock! I didn't even strip the leaves from the stems; I just dumped the stems in whole and let them boil. The stock (and chicken!) tasted great!

Um.

Did you know *dismayed look* did you know that fresh herbs have a... um... well... a certain effect on chicken stock?

It turned GREEN!

*blinkety blinkety blink blinkblink*

And now you know I have always just used herbs from my spice cupboard, lol...

Anyhow, the greenness faded some when I strained the herbs out of the broth (thanks be!!) and the chicken was not green at all (BIG thanks be!!) (eeep!), so all is well. The chicken lasted us for several meals and I still have several cups of broth left for making rice... and amazingly enough, the leftover herbs are still fresh in the fridge, waiting for me to dry them.

The mint plant is fading away in this heat, but all the other herbs are still going strong. One of the weeds died... just wilted up and DIED... so its pot of soil went to cover the butternut roots (which regular watering had washed clean, eep). The other weed is happy, lol...

To think I worried about there being enough sunlight for vegetables in that location... the sun moved to a new position (as it does through the year) and all of a sudden the shade is gone for most of the day. It would be okay except for the huge expanse of concrete which glares the heat and light right up into my plants, even long after the sun has moved on and my plants themselves are back in shade.

I haven't decided yet whether to give up on the butternuts--which opened FIVE big glorious blossoms this morning, valiant plants that they are!--and fill the pots with green beans or not. I did rip up a couple sheets of newspaper that were wrapped around a thrift store purchase and use them to mulch the pot; it may be too little, too late, or it may be just enough to make a difference, who knows?

This morning's gallon of water was the fertilizer mix. I'm using Miracle Grow's tomato food since that was all I could find at the hardware store (they had nothing organic) and quite honestly, if anything has a chance of saving these plants, that would be it. When potted plants get two to four gallons of water a day pouring through their soil (it works out to about half a gallon per plant per DAY), they need those nutrients replaced pretty often. I fertilize once or twice a week right now, depending on how sad they look.

I dreamed last night that someone handed me an umbrella and yanno, if I had an extra one, I would CERTAINLY stick it in the butternut pot! lol!

Oh, Dawn, your comment/question about celery? I think it is a springtime plant in most of the country; it does like water, it doesn't like heat. In desert gardens, it is a fall plant. I'll look it up for you in a little bit.

Back later with another post,
Cath

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

Hello! Today is Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, and since the gardener who hosts it is 0ne of the people who inspired me to start gardening again, I thought I would participate. Here is a link to her post. http://maydreamsgardens.blogspot.com/2008/06/garden-bloggers-bloom-day-june-2008.html

My garden is a baby garden right now, only days old. I concentrated on herbs since I am completely new to the Wichita, Kansas climate. I admit, the hailstorms day after day in June have kinda taken me aback and I hesitated to plant anything... but the flowers all around the apartment are doing fine despite the lashing gulley-washers and their bonus rounds of hailstones, so I gathered my courage and took a chance. This is my lil garden, perched on the grate that covers a basement window. The apartment manager had covered the grate with an unused area mat and offered me the space. It isn't pretty, but it will do!

My one and only actual flower was in with the half-price herbs at the grocery store; it has a lovely enticing scent and I'm wondering if it might be heliotrope. I love the deep purple. Each bloom is only about half the size of my baby fingernail; they grow in clusters like verbena--and yanno, it's been so many years since I gardened anywhere but the desert that it could be a verbena and I wouldn't know, lol...

Tis growing in a pot with Italian Parsley and Golden Marjoram. The parsley was mislabeled as triple-curled, but it's obviously flat-leaf.

In keeping with my only-the-best-will-do ethic (lol!) my new plant stand was fished off the top of the laundromat's dumpster. It was a newspaper and leaflet stand in its former incarnation. I cut off the cardboard box that made the top, dusted the stand off, and voila! A folding plant stand to hold my herbs! The pot on the top has Greek Oregano and French Tarragon--tarragon is one of the very few plants I ever pay full price for without complaining much--and I don't know if you can tell from the photo, but the oregano had already tried to bloom. I pinched the stems back---but hey, if I hadn't, I would have had Greek Oregano blooming for GBBDay, too. *grin* The pic looks a lil wonky cuz the camera tilted a lil... I have that problem with my hands, lol.... but also because the shelf is slanted towards the back of the frame, so the green pot is tilted backwards. Oh well, a definite slant makes for better drainage, right? And certainly herbs need good drainage. *crosses fingers and hopes on that one!*

The big pot has my spinach, Mesclun mix, and butternut squash seedlings. It's about a week and a half old, and the seedlings were up in four days. That surprised me!

The lil pots were the herb pots. I can never leave well enough alone *sheepish smile* I had leftover potting soil and so I planted more seeds--parsley, basil, basil, dill, and cilantro. Yes, when you have five pots and four packets of seeds you end up with things like basil, basil. It works for me, anyhow. Hope you have the same good luck! *cheeky grin*

One of the things I didn't expect was the amount of shade this lil bitty garden is going to get. Squash was probably not the wisest choice. At the time, I didn't believe that anything on the south side of a building would be shady in the summer, but there ya have it... I'm TOTALLY directionally dyslexic and this is the north side of the property.

Not to mention the east side of the building.

*chagrined look* Ooops, lol... So, um, I'll keep ya posted on whether or not the morning sun is enough to grow real squash. Here I thought I had a southern location with a hive of wild bees only a hundred feet away... well, I have the wild bees, at least till honey starts dripping into the building's walls. (Sometimes apartment managers who are new don't reeeeally know as much as they think they do when they decide something is not a problem, eh?) Here's hoping the bees don't sting anyone; we have a couple tenants who are allergic. But in the meantime... well... I planted squash!

Here's the view from the back door of the apartment building, out to the side of the property behind us. The daylilies are so nice! I didn't even know they were there until yesterday, since the (huge) yard is kinda overgrown and the foliage didn't show. This is the same yard that had the clematis hidden beneath another vigorous vine--no idea what the bully is, something with five leaflets--and I'm not sure, but I think I might be the only one who saw it bloom a couple weeks ago. The first blossom was the size of my hand and deep purple; after that they were progressively smaller (the same color) and the secret show was over in less than a week. The roses have all gone by in this neighborhood now, and the irises as well; even the peonies are done... so it's daylily time. I love it!