frustration

Remember all those seedlings from March? Well, they died.

So I started them all again.

And those died. Maybe there was something wrong with the potting mix?

So I was forced to rely on the kindness of friends (thanks, Lisa M!) and the surplus of the 4H garden club and the varieties available by retail. Sigh. No hand-selected heirloom tomato or pepper varieties. No unusual veggies like bok choy or purple cauliflower.

Fortunately, there were still lots of plants to be had, and my friends also like unusual varieties. So my garden has tomatoes like Isis Candy and White Queen and Black Trifele that I got from Sugarbush Nursery. And Amish Paste and Beefsteak and Early Girl that I got from 4H. And, of course, the annual Mystery tomato that Lisa always ends up with. They're growing well, and so far the squirrels have not started eating them. Of course, I haven't either, as they're still green.

It's kind of a drag to go from 50 pepper seedlings to 10 stunted last-picks. But at least there are some pepper plants growing in my garden. Still have to see if they actually bear. Last year's didn't, so I don't have high hopes.

We added some more raised beds this year -- two 4' x 8' beds full of mushroom soil, peat moss, and Rodale Institute compost. One has just tomatoes (and a few peppers), and the other has 3 pounds of potatoes -- fingerling, yukon gold, and purple beauty. These are the best two beds of the farm. I cannot believe how lush the growth is in these two beds. I'll try to get a photo soon. Hopefully the potato plants are not just leaves. I'm really hoping for some yummy potatoes next month.

The other plots -- the ones with the PVC-and-chicken-wire cages around them -- have all been infiltrated by varmints. I have replanted my beans so many times that I've given up -- and I can't for the life of me figure out how the (bunnies? chipmunks?) are getting in!! No beans this year. The carrots are fighting to survive -- the tops are mostly gone, but hopefully there will be some bottoms in the end. Argh. The only plants left in these beds are things like onions, garlic, and turnips. Try to make a meal out of those.

It's a real bummer to try to sit down and blog about gardening when everything feels like a failure. Maybe in some future year I'll have all this pest-control figured out, then I'll look back on this and... what? Laugh? Cry? All I know is I look back on my last month or two -- all the time spent working in that blasted garden -- and cry over all my wasted time feeding the stupid animals.

and they're off!

Seven weeks until spring and the broccoli, pak choi, collards, and cosmos are up!

Need to get the tomatoes and peppers started...

the subversive garden club

After 6 months, I have finally gotten around to posting again. I'm sure it's directly related to the fact that I started some seeds today.

I always start each gardening season full of optimism -- this year, I'm going to grow so much! I'm going to keep track of everything! I'm going to keep my beds weeded and watered! I'm going to keep the critters out and the bugs off! I'm going to can and freeze and dehydrate! And, of course: I'm going to blog every day!

Reality usually sets in, though. The weeds grow, the critters come, the rain doesn't... and neither do the words. But this year, I know it will be different. This year, we started a garden club.

Today it was just three friends getting together for white-bean-and-kale soup (thank you, Lisa M!) to talk about what we are thinking in terms of a garden club (what were we thinking?) and maybe to start some seeds. (According to the farmer's almanac, we're 7 or 8 weeks before last frost, so we'd better get our cole crops going!) A printed email from a fourth friend lay on the table, full of ideas and potential garden club names. "Cathy likes subversive things," Lisa said. Thus, the subversive garden club.

I now have a tray with twelve 4-packs of newly planted seeds on my dining room table -- broccoli, kale, pak choi, impatiens, basil (I just couldn't wait) -- and a fire in the fireplace. We still have a long way to go, but spring is coming, and there will be a garden!

spring retrospective -- part 2

April was beautiful in the orchard. The peach and nectarine trees were especially beautiful, covered in flowers.

The apricot and one of the Northstar Pie cherries had some blossoms, too. The Red Rome apple tree had a few flowers later in the month. Unfortunately, those photos are back in Broomall on the server. I'll upload those after the weekend. :/

Eventually, there were baby cherries, nectarines (on both trees), and peaches (on 4 out of 5 trees).


We harvested about 2 cups of cherries in June!

At the end of spring, the peach trees were full of peaches. Dana counted 115 on one of them (the Starking Delicious). The nectarine and apples trees had just a few fruit on each. Didn't see any apricots. I'll add our pictures when I get back to Broomall...

spring retrospective -- part 1

Well, school is finally over and the grades are in. Unfortunately, spring is just about over, too. We did get a fair amount of spring gardening done, but not enough for my liking! A little bit more every year...I hope.

It seems that we spent more time this spring building cages to protect the gardens than we did actually putting in the gardens themselves. Hopefully this is work that won't have to be repeated each year. This is the biggest cage, built by James out of PVC and heavy plastic netting. It's where we planted the peas -- has to be tall to let the peas climb and also covered to keep out the birds. Pole beans will go here when the peas are done.

We planted about 250 peas in here -- 125 sugar snap and 125 garden peas. We harvested about 2.5 pounds of each so far. Not really enough for freezing -- they're so good raw, so who cares -- but it's a start.

The square foot garden had a lot of cole veggies during the spring. We got one tiny broccoli (head was the size of a ping-pong ball). It looked beautiful one day, but so tiny, so I decided to leave it. Then, when we went back a few days later, it had started to turn yellow. So hard to garden when you're not there every day! Plus, we left it in the car when we got home, so no one got to try it. The chickens liked the two green caterpillars on it, though.

The pak chois were the prettiest, imo. Can't wait for fall so I can grow more. They looked so beautiful one weekend but had bolted by the next. Now I know how big they'll get (not very big) and will harvest them sooner. And plant more of them. We needed three plants to make enough for one dinner. (One from my garden, one from Julia's, and one from Xing Hua's.)

Still in the gardens are collards (supposedly heat tolerant, thus their popularity in the South) and kale. Hope the kale doesn't bolt on us.

The onions are doing well. We pulled one a week or so ago to see how they were growing. The bulb was about the size of the broccoli. Bigger than a scallion, but not quite an onion bulb.


I think I got the lettuce and spinach in a bit too late. All the spinach bolted with just 4 leaves on the stalk. Lettuce is iffy. We did get one butterhead. Very spotty, though, and not good eating. And a bunch of radishes. But who likes radishes if there's no lettuce?

My friend, Lisa, gave me gobs of lettuce from her garden. She did it right -- plant early and often! I ate salad for lunch every day for a week. Salad with her lettuce, my radishes and garden peas. And some left-over roast chicken (from Julia's 4H bird, of course.) Now that's living!

so much to do

I am realizing the biggest problem with writing a gardening blog. In the winter, there was never anything interesting in the garden to write about. Now that it's spring, there is so much to write about but so little time to write!

I have started lots of seedlings, which are growing under lights in the basement. I have removed last fall's leaves from my gardens and noticed new growth. (Oregano! Chives! Peppermint! Sage! Julia even picked a bunch of second-year parsley already!) But it's too early to plant much outside besides peas, greens, and cole crops.

We have done a lot this past week, though. The weather has been gorgeous -- sunny and 70s all week. I'll have to catch up a little at a time, as I can't write everything now. (Back to school. Ugh.)

Ever since I'd discovered the book Square Foot Gardening (in our Lansdowne-gardening days), I've always wanted to try actual square-foot gardening. So this year, Dana bought me the newest edition, and I am going to try a few SFGs with my smaller crops. (Meaning, those I'm not planting lots and lots of plants.) So, on the last Saturday in March, Dana and I went out to the farmhouse and built a 4' x 8' SFG raised bed. I planted 4 squares of onion sets (they were starting to sprout already), 4 squares of lettuce (various types), 2 of spinach, 1 of turnips, and 1 of carrots.

On April 3, we spent the whole day working in the farmhouse garden. James built some (hopefully) squirrel- and rabbit-proof cages out of PVC and chicken wire, so I was able to cover my SFG. (Someone had already dug up some of my onions!) I planted 8 squares of cole seedlings (2 broccoli, 2 kale, 2 collards, 2 bok choi -- one seedling in each square) and 1 square of onion seedlings (hoping to get scallions!). Hoping the new cage works.

I also planted 246 MORE pea seeds (same kind as last month). And James built a HUGE cage for that plot. (No SFG here!) We didn't have time to finish it, but hopefully we can get back to do that before the seeds come up and the animals eat the seedlings.

Okay...back to grading papers. Tomorrow I'll tell you about the flowers and the fruit trees, and maybe even the baby bunnies in Xing Hua's garden. Sigh.

spring is coming!

The snow is almost melted, and I am getting started on the garden.

Two weeks ago, my first box of seeds arrived -- from Rohrer's Seeds. It took only 2 days from the time I placed my order! At that time, the ground was still covered with snow. Since then, we have had several days of mild weather (highs in the 50s and 60s). Today, the ground is visible, and the small raised bed where I garden in Broomall is actually workable. (Yesterday, I actually saw crocuses blooming here!)

So this afternoon, I cleared out the dead tomato and pole-bean vines, stirred up the soil (mixing in the chicken poop from last fall), and planted 240 peas -- 120 garden peas (Early Freezer) and 120 Sugar Snap peas. I have barely made a dent in the half-pound packets I bought. Perhaps I was a bit over ambitious. I'm hoping to get out to the farmhouse and plant a bunch more before it gets warm. We'll see if that happens.