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.

Well, it's been a week...OY has it been a week!

Hello! Sheesh, we made it through the polar vortex. We were among the lucky who didn't lose power although we were asked for a couple days to turn the furnace down and turn the lights off, and not to use the washer or dryer during the daytime. Mostly we did The Hibernating and stayed inside. Yesterday there was still six inches of snow in the backyard. Today it hit 40 and I took the dog out without putting a coat on either of us.

Still too much snow for me to get to the greenhouse.

The calendulas I planted in my first tray of six packs are in the laundry room. No sproutage yet.

All the seedlings have been moved to my kitchen counter and lights set up. It's gone from being dismally dark to being the bright corner! True leaves are starting to show everywhere.

The extreme cold has done a number on me, physically, and so I'm behind on starting new seeds and potting up the seedlings. It's not going to be reliably warm for a while anyway. The good news is that the slow melting of the snow means it sinks in rather than running down the driveway to the street, so when I start laying cardboard for my garden floor, the land will be well-watered.

Transplanting and the Polar Vortex

Hi! I haven't been here in a week because I haven't been able to garden. I did manage to buy a small growlight (LED) and I've clamped it on my kitchen dishrack (which is a two level over-the-sink rack). The seedlings get some light every day now, not ideal, but the best I can manage--and the dishes get washed at night after the seedlings go back to the top of the fridge.

The Costata Romanesco squash is vigorous and exuberant, roots coming out everywhere, so tonight I repotted them into giant styrofoam drink cups--nothing like recycled and free! It's a good thing I only started three squash plants, sheesh. Hope the cups will do them for a couple weeks. We did have to laugh when we saw all the roots poking out of the sides of the toilet paper cores! They won't be able to do that with the cups, but they will have five times the soil.

Sweetpeas have to get potted up next, because their roots are coming out the bottom of the tubes already.

I think I may be saving toilet paper and paper towel cores permanently now, because that was the easiest potting up I've ever done--just lifted the whole thing into the cup and filled around the tube with wet potting soil. I do have sixpacks coming, but there's no obligation to use them all or to use them exclusively. They'll be quite convenient for carrying seedlings to other gardens and I can keep using the cores here.

The polar vortex has called a precipitate halt to my outdoor plans. I'm not safe walking through uneven snow, so I can't get to the greenhouse and that means my plans to bring seedlings inside have come to naught. So now we are having a big experiment: will lettuce and pea seedlings survive two weeks frozen solid? They do fine at freezing, but how will they do in single digit frozen nights when the wind chills are below zero? Luckily I have plenty of seeds, right? I was going to succession plant anyway, but I tell you what, if these seedlings survive the bitter cold, I am definitely gonna save seeds from them and plant it again! Polar vortexes come 6 to 8 times a decade so plants which are hardy enough to survive them will be a treasure!

Wouldja look at that!

Better than I expected, better than I dared to dream! Look at that butternut squash!

Of course, watering it like I did brought the rain two days early this week *blink, blink* and I'm seriously beginning to wonder just what is going on here... lol! Hey, this time I didn't even fertilize!

Something else really likes the rain....

Say hello to amaranth. You can see that it took a huge gulp of water and just, well, expanded! I wish I could get basil to grow like that! And no, I'm not going to pull the weeds; they're very nearly as nutritious as purslane and I've been wishing for years that I could have a chance to try them and see what they taste like. Now I have a chance!

True leaf time! First off, the punkins at the back of the purslane pot--and those droplets you see are rain; I snuck out between showers to get these pics.

The seedlings in the eggplant pot seem to be catching up with the seedlings in the pepper pot now. Maybe the difference is sunlight? The shade comes in gradually from south to north, and gets to the eggplant first.

Then we have this exciting lil development--a pepper blossom! Wooohooo!

Last but not least at ALL--check this out--new growth on the butternuts. Can you imagine? On the 7th, nearly dead, on the 8th, burgeoning new growth?! Like I said, beyond all my expectations!

I'll get back to art postings soon; I've been reading a lot lately while I wait for my wrists to settle back down. The Friends of the Library store had three issues of a magazine called Belle Armoire that I am enjoying right now; inspiration on every page.

Catching Up in the Garden, June 29 and July 7

It was my goal to post about the garden once a week or so, but I got overwhelmed by life and missed last week's post. I did remember to take pictures, though, so today's post is a catch-up.
This is the garden on June 29. You can see the butternut squash was pretty happy at that point!
It's a little difficult to see, but in the top middle of the pic, there are butternut flower buds in the joints between stem and leaves. The plants set male flowers first, so I know these buds won't give fruit... but they're exciting anyway. *grin* You can also see that the lettuce was already unhappy... fragile lil plants! Sheesh.

This is the purple mystery flower in with the golden marjoram and the parsley. Looking at this pic, I realize once again what a valuable tool that lil camera is--the growth difference between June 29 and today really startles me--not because they grew, but because I didn't realize how much!

Purslane, and basil seedlings. I went through and deadheaded the purslane a couple days after this photo. It was setting seed, and I want green growth. Looking at this pic, I have to say the deadheading paid off!

Pea seedlings at the back of the butternut pot. They're a darker green than the lettuce seedlings, and a much sturdier plant, as well. I poked the seeds in pretty deeply to give the plants a better chance at surviving the heat.

Herb seedlings. At this point I didn't know what the one in front was. There was a fly on one leaf; the fly was metallic gold, of all colors!
It's hard to see in this photo, but there are seedlings in with the pepper.
There ya go! Straightneck summer squash seedlings! (ha, say that four times fast...)

You can barely see a squash seedling in with the eggplant. What you can see clearly, though, is the bad thing the soil is doing... doggoned cheap potting soil! It has caked together and pulled away from the sides of the pot. What this means now is that any water which gets near the sides will flow down and out through the hole in the bottom of the pot without ever getting near the plant roots. I used a fork and broke the soil up to get it to go to the edges of the pot again... but yanno, it keeps on pulling away like this. Mulch might make a difference, if I can find some.

That brings us to today, July 7.

I love my purple mystery flower! The parsley and marjoram are doing well also--but I had thought the purple flowers were mostly gone, and the plant surprised me no end with more!

May I just say that I admire the temerity of this... um... weed? The basil seedlings are slow-growing to say the least, but the weed has just taken off! Not only that, it brought its little sister; you can see her at the back of the right hand back pot. *sigh* If only my herbs n veggies were that happy!
Well, okay... I have to say the purslane IS pretty happy! It's put on a growth spurt and is filling out really well. The basil seedlings at the front of the pot are also doing okay. At the back (or top) of the pot, looking like really large purslane leaves right behind the flower, are the punkin seedlings. I have my fingers crossed for a Halloween jack o'lantern *grin* even a small one would be amazing and wonderful!

This is the pepper pot today; look, true leaves on the squash and green beans! And, although tis hard to see, tight lil bitty flower buds on the pepper itself, right at the top! Wooohoooo!!

Peppers, like tomatoes, are normally perennials if you can protect them from frost--but here in Wichita the "frost" quite often seems to be a foot of snow topped with ice. I think this pepper, like all my veggies and herbs, will be an annual. I thought about trying to winter some of the plants over, but I would have the same problem that led me to set the garden up outdoors in the first place--four cats who love to dig. Tis easier to let it go and start again next spring.

We'll see if I still think it's easier come November! *wry laugh*

One of the mysteries of life... the seedlings in the eggplant pot, planted the same day in the same way and receiving the same water and fertilizer, are three days behind the seedlings in the pepper pot. Go figure, eh? The eggplant, I'm happy to say, seems to be much happier than it was last week.

Not so the butternut squash....

This is a HUGE improvement over the sad state of affairs this morning. I honestly thought it was wilted past recovery, and am amazed at the resilience of life in a squash plant. What this serious kind of wilting means for future squash I don't know, although I suspect it might delay it at the least and will probably limit production as well. But there is hope...
...check it out, the flower buds are still alive!

If I didn't already know these are male flowers, the stems would be a give-away. Female flowers would have teeensy baby squashes instead of straight stems.

So there you have it, the garden from the end of June into the first week of July. Oh, and I put a pot saucer under the seedling herbs... it rained the next day. Now I've watered thoroughly and all of a sudden we have clouds overhead even though the weather report said it would be sunny until Wednesday.... should I fertilize? Will that bring the rain right away? lol!

I leave you with a picture from the back of our building, facing the same direction (and the same yard) as the daylily picture last month. This is a mimosa tree with masses of feathery pink flowers. It hangs over the daylily fence from the yard beyond, and has been giving me pleasure for a couple weeks now.

Happy gardening!