The Garden is In!

The 2020 vegetable garden is officially in the ground. I planted all the seeds and transplanted the seedlings on Friday, May 22. It was a lovely warm day without too much sun. As soon as I finished watering in the last of the seeds, a gentle rain began to fall.

First view of the fully-planted garden

My original plan, in light of the global pandemic in which we find ourselves, was to just use seeds that I had on hand from previous years. I was going to call it the “Leftover Garden.” But, I happened to find myself at the big box home store to pick up an item for my job, and saw that there were still lots of seed packets and no one browsing them at that moment. So, I got some. I purchased royal burgundy garden beans, rocket salad arugula, mixed colors swiss chard, black turtle shelling beans, flatleaf parsley, and fernleaf dill to supplement my leftovers. Those leftovers include rattlesnake beans, purple dragon and St. Valery carrots, Chicago pickling cucumbers, oakleaf lettuce, Cascadia sugar snap peas, and black beauty zucchini. Some of those seeds are as much as six years old, so we’ll see what happens.

I decided once again to try growing some of the tomatoes in buckets. Last year, I had troubles with both woodchucks and deer disturbing the plants where they were on our back patio. I ended up moving the buckets into the main garden last year, and then proceeded to ignore them as I was doing with the rest of the garden. This year, I’m trying again with the buckets on the patio, but with an inelegant yet hopefully successful solution. We got some leftover plastic mesh from the building site of my in-law’s new house. I wrapped it around the buckets as a barrier to furry menaces. I hope it works well. I also planted four tomato plants in the garden proper. It will be interesting to see how they do in each location.

Spooky tomato plants! Pink brandywine, black vernissage, black cherry, and red cherry, like last year

We also decided to rebuild the plant teepee in the front yard. Last year we (meaning my husband in this case) tried loofah sponges with surprisingly great success. This year, he planted birdhouse gourds. The seeds are leftovers from several years ago, so, again, we’ll wait and see.

Front yard teepee take two.

In the few days between then and now, all the pepper (Poblano and sweet banana), tomato, and basil seedlings have perked up nicely, and the arugula, cucumbers, and shell beans are sprouting.

Arugula

Black turtle beans

Some squirrels have been digging in the beds, making shallow little round indentations in the soil, but they’re only disturbing the seeds by chance. It’s annoying, but not the end of the world. I have seen some blue jays hanging around in the garden too. Hopefully, they won’t cause any trouble. Never can tell with those tricky birds. They’re too clever for everyone’s good sometime.  

I wish I had a better picture than this fuzzy one, but the jays have been too quick for me so far.

Dandelion Jelly

Sometime this spring, I stumbled across the idea of dandelion jelly. I think it was a Facebook post from Mother Earth News, but I can’t be sure. When I looked out the front door yesterday morning, and saw all the dandelions in our yard, I decided to make some.

Just a few of the dandelions in our front yard.

I grabbed a big ol’ plastic bowl, and headed out around 9:30 in the morning. It had rained overnight, but the lawn was drying out, and the dandelions were perking up for the day. One interesting thing about foraging like this is that I wasn’t the only one after the little yellow blossoms. After I grabbed my first black slug (and apologized to the little thing profusely), I became more aware of my competition. Quite a few tiny green leafhoppers were hanging out on the dandelion heads, and the honeybees were out working busily. Part of me was concerned that I was taking food away from these creatures that we share the world with, but every time I stood up, stretched my back, and gazed over the yard, I saw there were plenty for all.

My buzzing competition.

My squishy competition.

I have to say, I am glad I am in fairly good health and physical condition. There was a lot of squatting involved in picking dandelions. It took about an hour to fill my bowl, and when I brought my haul back into the house, our cat was duly impressed.

He does seem impressed, right?

Okay, so now I had a giant bowl of dandelion heads, an impressed cat, and very sticky, orange hands. The next step was to pull all the yellow bits of the blossom off the green parts. (Can you tell I’m a historian, not a botanist?) I did this by twisting the base of the flower, and plucking the petals out in clumps. In a way, it felt like plucking a chicken, but I’ve never done that before either, so I’m just guessing.

After a little over an hour of blossom plucking, my husband joined in the efforts. Maybe another hour later, we finally had four lightly packed cups of dandelion bits with which I was to make a tea.

We stopped plucking when I had just enough done, and I actually returned maybe a quarter of the dandelion heads I had picked to nature.

Before starting all of this, I asked Mr. Google for a dandelion jelly recipe. I found quite a few, and ended up choosing one from Lonely Pines Farm. So, as guided by this recipe and all of the others I found online (there really is very little difference in the recipes out there), I poured four cups of boiling water over my pluckings, and let it steep 24 hours. The tea smelled a bit like steamed asparagus to me.

Dandelion tea just beginning to steep.

And dandelion tea after 24 hours.

 After straining the tea through cheesecloth to pull out all the flowery bits, I added the tea, two tablespoons of lemon juice, and one box of Sure Jell to a pot and brought it to a boil. I added four cups of sugar, brought it to a boil again, and let it boil for about two minutes. Then I ladled it into waiting jars. I filled seven small jelly jars and three half-pint jars. The jars then went into a hot water bath for ten minutes. I had gotten the water bath going before I even strained the tea so it had time to get up to a boil.

Jars of dandelion jelly straight out of the bath.

Some people online wrote that dandelion jelly tastes like honey, others that it tastes like sunshine, or joy. It certainly has a honey quality to it. I just tried a little off a spoon, and now I want waffles.  

He actually wasn’t that impressed.

My Un-Shaker Garden, Part 1

When I first built and laid out my vegetable garden six-ish years ago, I based it on the Shaker style. (Hence, the name of this blog). I love the look of gardens I have seen in person at Shaker historic sites and in photographs. I love the order and practicality of them, but primarily, I love the aesthetic. It is very un-Shaker to create something for beauty’s sake, but since the vegetable garden is functional, it gets to slide. Flowers, however, are right out!

Just a rose by the window. Nothing to see here.

The Shakers eschewed planting flowerbeds if there was no reason to have them beyond enjoying something lovely to look at. There was a loophole, however, when it came to medicinal gardens. If flowers were helpful then it was okay for them to look nice, as long as you didn’t admire them too much for their beauty. I have to say that when I intentionally created my first flowerbed here, I did not care if the plants could do anything more than be pretty.

When we first moved here, we found some flowers pushing their way through the junk piled on the east side of the garage. There were peonies, daylilies, irises, and a rose bush. I wondered why the previous owner had planted these perennials on the back side of the garage, as it was, when you cannot see them from the house. It turns out, that the plants enjoyed the spot, so why not add to them?

The "before" view with old pool pieces and a plastic pond we dug up.

I started planning my new flowerbed in the winter of 2015-2016. I bought seeds to start orange milkweed, lavender, red chrysanthemums, and pink and white Echinacea. The autumn before that, my husband found wild purple bee balm seeds in a field while working and brought them home. I started them too. So, in May 2016, I cleared off the abandoned flowerbed, and dug out some extra room for the seedlings.

All cleaned up and ready for more plants.

My precious little seedlings ready for their new home.

Once in the ground, my little plants didn’t look like much, but a couple months later they had filled in nicely.

August 2016 - They're settling in well!

Then the deer found the garden. We have a decent population of suburban deer in our neighborhood, as can be seen in quite a few of my previous posts here. Well, I never did get to see the chrysanthemums bloom as the plants got devoured long before they could even think of sending up buds. The Echinacea was chomped right down to the ground too. The lavender did well, and the orange milkweed went gang-busters. I’ve got lovely patches of it all around the property now. The wild bee balm also did very well; almost too well. I have learned to treat it with little mercy so it doesn’t take over the entire bed.

2017 - How lush!

I have kept the flowerbed up, more or less, over the last few years. I added a couple more plants that grew from a mixed packet of seeds I planted in a second flowerbed (more about that bed in My Un-Shaker Garden, Part 2, coming soon). Each year, the flowerbed is different and lovely.

The flowerbed got a bit neglected in 2018, but it still looked nice!

 I didn’t really have a reason to plant the bed in the first place other than wanting some pretty flowers, but it has turned out to be a favorite spot for bees and butterflies. Its success in bringing in the pollinators inspired me to plant a second bed, right next to the vegetable garden. (Again, read all about it in Part 2.)

A bee in the bee balm. Makes sense.

I haven’t had a chance to get out and clean up the garage flowerbed yet this year. I was going to do it on a nice day about a week ago, but a dead tree is looming over it caught upon a mostly dead tree, and the windiness of the day made it feel unsafe to be there. I will get to it though, and maybe see what new flowers I would like to add this year.

Grandma always liked the orange milkweed, but it didn't grow that well on the mountain. I wish I could share it with her now.

Seedlings!

I just wanted to give a quick update on the progress of my seedlings. I planted Poblano pepper seeds on March 7. They were the only seeds we picked up before Covid-19 hit. When I got them, I figured I would just come back later to pick out the rest of the seeds. Alas, that has not and may not happen.

My lovely, strong Poblano seedlings

I started my tomato seeds on March 30. I had in mind what tomatoes I wanted to grow this year – Juliettes are a favorite of mine, and I was thinking of planting a Roma variety for sauces, and maybe a big beefsteak (even though I haven’t had that great luck with them in the past). Well, I had four variety of tomato seeds on hand from two years ago, so those are what got started – red cherry, black cherry, black vernissage, and pink brandywine. I grew them all last year rather unsuccessfully, but that was mostly due to my inattention and too much rain. They are good tomatoes, and I think it’s good that I’m giving them another chance. The seedlings are putting on their first sets of real leaves, and are looking well.

Assorted tomato seedlings

I also decided to start some sweet banana peppers as I had the seeds from last year. They came free with an order, and actually grew quite well. I started some basil as well. I wanted to start some parsley and other herbs, but I have no spare herb seeds from years past. I’ll just have to go without or see what I can find after stay-at-home orders are lifted.

Basil seedling – taken with the new macro lens on my phone

I don’t plan on starting any other seeds. I will be able to direct sow everything else. I am hesitant to make a full garden plan that uses just the seeds I have on hand because I hope to actually get some of the varieties I had originally wanted for this year’s garden. I generally don’t plant the bulk of the garden until the end of May, so there may still be time to buy some more seeds; if they aren’t all gone from the stores by them. Victory Gardens, or at least earnest attempts to start Victory Gardens, seem to be a thing this year.

I really do love this new lens!

The Magic Compost Bin

I think we got our composter in August 2016. I’m not really sure. I usually write things like that down, but I either didn’t or just can’t find it. Not that the precise date matters. The earliest picture I have of our lovely compost bin was taken August 26, 2016.

Composter settled in nicely by the garden.

When we first moved into the new house, my husband made a do-it-yourself compost bin out of a large plastic trash bin. He drilled holes, and set it on a platform behind the garage, and it worked reasonably well. It did have a tendency to blow over when there were high winds, however. Somehow, we found out that County Stormwater Coalition had composters for sale at a discount price for county residents. We went and picked up one at a truly reasonable price, and never looked back.

A closer look at the shiny new bin.

Now, back when we lived on the mountain, we tried composting. When we had chickens, it worked well enough, but before that the climate was just not conducive to composting. It took forever to breakdown, and there was never much to spread in the garden. That seemed perfectly normal to me as that was where I grew up; in the land of weak composters.

Here things are different. There are actually worms here! I still celebrate a little every time I dig a worm while working in the garden (they were so very rare in the mountains), but the celebrations peter out around the tenth worm or so. This composter works so very well. It seems it can compost everything. Never has it been more than 2/3 full because everything breaks down so quickly, and we (meaning my husband) have only emptied it twice.

The first time emptying the compost bin.

The second emptying happened last week. It was a nice day, but I was working from home and stuck inside. My husband went out, emptied the bin, and cleaned up the garden as well. I had not put the garden to bed last fall so it was in a sad state. There was enough compost to spread over nearly two full raised beds. I’m sure that will make the veggies happy this year.

Out of the bin…

…and onto the garden.

 The compost bin is refreshed, reset, and ready for more green and browns. It was a job well-done, and I appreciate that my husband did it, though I am a tad bit sad that I couldn’t be out there working with him. But, there will be plenty more time for that as the season progresses.

One more shot of the compost bin, but mostly of the little deer who came to visit.

Back with Renewed Ambition

My last post here was September 20, 2017. I never intended to drop this blog for more than two years, but here we are. Nothing major has changed in my life. We live in the same house we did two years ago, and I planted gardens in 2018 and 2019. I just haven’t taken the time to post anything.

July 2018

August 2019

For each of the last two years, I started out with the promise to myself that I would maintain the garden and record what I was doing, and each year I didn’t live up to that promise. 2019 was a particularly bad season for me. I neglected my garden so much that a family of rabbits took up residence in my pak choi bed.

What's that clump of stuff in among my neglected pak choi? A rabbit nest!

There were six baby bunnies! We let them stay.

I can make excuses about why I gave up on my gardening duties – the season was too wet; I was busy with work; I had fallen into a depression from the death of my grandmother – but the truth is that I just turned lazy.

Last year would have been a particularly interesting year to document. I got a bunch of heirloom seeds left over from a local historical site’s garden, so it was one big experiment in growing black peppers and red peas and warty squash. I took pictures, so I could go back and describe the experience, but I don’t think I will.

I planted three different types of carrots in 2019.

Instead of looking back, I’m going to commit to doing better in the future. I’ve started planning my garden for the 2020 season. I have a list of specific varieties of vegetables and herbs I want to grow with the goal to put up as much as possible. I’m trying to eat more locally and seasonally. I started Poblano pepper seeds about three weeks ago, and they seem to be growing well.

This year's fresh Poblano seedlings

I have run into a bit of a snag in my plans, however. As I type this, we are in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Essential businesses are still open, but I’m working from home. We’re not in a quarantine situation yet, but going out to find particular varieties of seeds doesn’t seem like a good idea. In fact, it feels irresponsible and selfish. Likewise, I don’t really want to shop online and make someone transport such a small thing for me when so many people are in need of essentials delivered to their homes. So, I will wait and see how this thing plays out. Plans can and will change, I’m sure. It’s the perfect time to practice flexibility. 

And here's a crow yelling, just because.