Mystery Solved & Photos

An update on yesterday's onion mystery: they are indeed scallions, not bulbing onions.  I'm slightly annoyed at the mislabeling, but I'm not too horribly let down since I enjoy green onions more than yellow.  I was just so looking forward to making our own onion braid....

So I think I'll cheer myself up with a few beautiful pictures Chad recently took.

    (A pink strawberry blossom.)

(Water drops on lettuce leaves.  Some of the earliest lettuce we planted are pretty much ready for harvest, now!)

 

(The sugar snap peas getting a good hold on the trellis.  These are also blooming!)

First Strawberry

We sampled the first of our strawberries the other day, and it tasted like absolute perfection.

I am convinced that there are few culinary pleasures as amazing as a organically grown strawberry so freshly picked that it still tastes of sunshine.

Pictures from Yesterday

I'm up early after an evening of cheap Pinot Noir. That always happens when I have a few too many glasses, but the nice thing about this morning's restlessness is that it was accompanied merely by a craving for Diet Dr. Pepper instead of by a headache.

So here I am with my giant cup of soda, thinking about what a nice day yesterday was. Chad captured much of it in pictures.

A few strawberries in the June-bearing basket are turning red, and this one looks soooo tempting.

I was enamored by our Red Lady Fern, which was nothing but a pot of curly little twigs when we first purchased her.

Chad started taking a closer look at some of the plants in the veggie garden, including the Little Gem Romain:

And the ruffly basil that lives between the Supersweet 100 and Genovese tomatoes:

As I tended the garden, I found that both the basil seeds and some type of grass or weed has sprouted around the tomatoes. I weeded the grass and put cardboard down on the areas where it was trying to grow and will look into buying some straw on the way out to my parents' house in the country later today. Straw makes a nice mulch for vegetable gardens..

Chad worked on part of one of the side flower beds, putting in our creeping phlox. It's a grassy, weedy bed that's had no preparation, but we couldn't really put weed block around a creeping plant we want to creep. So he brilliantly cut cardboard to fit the space, leaving holes for the still small phlox plants, which should kill off much of the weeds before it biodegrades and lets the phlox do it's thing. With some of my super cheap potting soil thrown on top, it's already looking a little prettier.

We then took a walk to the wine store and looked at all of the plants our neighbors have been putting in. These pink flowered bushes were one of my favorites just based on their solid color, and I simply must hunt some down once I learn what they're called:

Can anyone tell me what they are? Perhaps I can catch the owners outside sometime and ask them.

I'm also in love with this funky little tree, manipulated bonsai style:

I'm guessing it's related to a weeping cedar? Whatever it is, we saw a couple on our walk and I'm terribly fascinated.

Well, today should be lovely as well. Nice and cool, in the 60s. We're going to try and make it out to the arts festival for a bit, but I want to visit my parents and take them their tomato and strawberry plants. I'm really eager to see how the flower bed we planted out there is doing!

Storms, Pictures, and Various Seedling Updates

I've been up since the tornado sirens tonight, but nothing more than rain and lightening actually came close to our neighborhood. The entire time the sirens were going, though, all I could think about was the fact that I had opted to leave all of the seedlings outside for the night! Nooooo!!!

But no tornadoes for us, thank goodness. I think I may have heard some hail though, so I hope nothing got hurt.

In any case, I recently took pictures of some of the young garden plants, which are coming along rather nicely.

Onions:

The onions really are looking nice. It's so tempting to pull back the dirt and look for bulbs!

Little Gem Romaine lettuce:

They're all growing sets of true leaves, so it shouldn't be long before we actually have tiny little bunches of lettuce.

White Icicle Radish:

Most of them have true leaves now, and a couple of them are just huge! These were a very last-second addition to the garden, and I'm so pleased I decided to try them.

Sugar Snap Pea:

All four of the sugar snap peas are getting big and beautiful like this fellow. Look at the little tendrils seeking support! It's definitely time to put in the trellis... this week.

Cucumber plants are finally peeking over the soil, but don't look like much so far. I had to thin the carrots like mad, but they aren't very interesting looking plants yet. I'll post photos as soon as they're a little more visible.

Strawberries!

I've potted a few strawberries. A basket with two June-bearing varieties, a basket of Alexandrias, a basket of Alpines, and one single Alexandria sitting on the bottom back step (to see if the stray cats will leave strawberries alone before I risk them in large numbers). Most of them look wimpy so far, but the ones that have been in their pots for a while are getting stronger.

Emergency Tomato Transplants

I had a tomato transplanting emergency the other day. The seedlings were outside for hardening off (which is complete!) and the Oklahoma wind decided to pick up like mad once I was inside. It managed to crack one of the delicate brandywine seedlings right at the base. It was time to put them in more soil anyway, so I hurriedly repotted them all up to their necks and the cracked seedling is still looking healthy. Seriously, I would have stomped childishly if I'd lost it. I feel like I didn't start enough of the brandywines, and one already looks less healthy than the others.

Just about two more weeks until it's time to put them in the ground!

Flowers

As I've commented before, I'm more into edible gardening than flower gardening or landscaping. However, Chad and I have made quite a team on the porch and in the flower bed. He's put something like 20 purple annuals in the flower bed so it'll look nice and full while the perennials establish themselves, and I've started seeds in several pots on the porch. There are cheapie square planters on each step up to the porch with tiny Petite Marigold seedlings, and we got a little experimental by planting the marigolds in a ring around alyssum in two squat barrel-style planters on either side of the porch. Tiny seedlings in these, too. We'll take photos once they're more visible. I'm honestly not the biggest fan of Marigolds, but it's difficult to pass up 10 cent seed packets and they do make decent mosquito deterrents.

What I'd like to do next year, however, is to grow only edible flowers in pots, and maybe even a few in or around the vegetable garden. Decoration is nice, but I much prefer plants with more of a purpose.

A Simple Gift

Plants make great gifts. I'm taking this little strawberry plant to a birthday party tonight. It's one of the dozens I've grown from seed and I just spruced up an old pot with a scrap ribbon. Plant tags make a nice touch, and they don't have to be anything fancy, though crafty touches are much more impressive. In this case, I just printed it, cut it, and taped it to a craft stick. Voila! An inexpensive gift almost anyone can appreciate.

Seedling Pictures

Radish Seedlings

Lovely!

Radish Seedling

I planted the radishes mainly to deter cucumber bugs, but now I'm just pleased at how beautiful the seedlings are!

Little Gem Lettuce

Chris apparently dropped a TON of lettuce seeds into each hole. :) No problem. I'll give them another day or two to see if there's a particularly strong looking individual and snip out the rest of them.

Sugar Snap Pea


Onion in a Soda Pop Cloche

Not a seedling, but I love this one that Chad took!

Creating Old Traditions for the Young

Last weekend was such a heart-warming weekend, I don't know why I didn't post about it right away. We had Chad's nephews (9 and 11 years old) from Saturday morning through Sunday evening. As usual, we tried to make their time with us thoughtful, productive, and fun in ways that most kids don't get to have fun these days.

We picked them up late Saturday morning. We first visited their great grandmother at her house and then took them to see their grandmother in the hospital. Chad asked them questions and got them thinking about the body and the immune system.

Our next stop was the farmer's market. We absolutely love the farmer's market and had been wanting to share it with the boys for quite some time. We handed them canvas bags and and walked them around to our favorite tables. We bought some organic eggs and the seller showed them pictures of the mobile hen house while we talked about how her chickens, unlike most, get to walk around and scratch in the dirt like nature intended.

Our next purchase was a fresh honey comb. Chad asked the boys if they'd ever tried one before, to which they replied, "We've had Honeycomb Cereal!"

"Uh, no," Chad said. "It's absolutely nothing like the cereal."

The seller shook his head in pain and said, "That's just how kids are taught to think these days!" We told him that's why we'd brought them to the market and he smiled and said, "Good! They're young enough that you can still fix them!"

Then we made a b-line for the Christian Cheese table. They sampled several varieties before settling on Cowboy Cheddar and Basil and Sundried Tomato Cheddar.

Then I spotted shelves of small organic vegetable plants and remembered the sorry state of my onions. We gave the boys two dollars and asked them to buy me the best looking bunch of onion starters. They picked out a fine green pot full of them and the grower told them about his farm and nice dog who never bites before we were on our way home to drop off our findings.

We then met up with our friend David and his 8 year old daughter at the Omniplex Science Museum of Oklahoma for the controversial human body exhibit. The kids were very mature about it and it was all very fascinating. Overall, we were very happy to have made it. The rest of the evening involved a little omniplex exploration, dinner, and then board games.

Sunday morning, I dragged into the kitchen and it wasn't long before the boys were in there helping me make a breakfast of buttermilk pancakes, vegetarian sausage, and scrambled organic eggs (the ones they'd picked out at the market!). Not long after, we all put on long sleeves and got our hands dirty in the Square Foot Garden!

Here you get to see my completely constructed garden.

The grid is just a sort of twine, but it served our spacing purposes. You can see in the photo that I'm separating the onions and showing the boys how to plant one.

Once they got the idea, my job was merely to separate the onion roots, hand them the best looking ones, and guide them a bit in their placement.




Here we are learning about the grids that are meant to serve as a guide for plant placement.


The four of us then split up into pairs and planted almost all of the garden's seeds. I suspect there may have been a little much enthusiasm for poking holes deep into the soil though, so I may need to do a little reseeding if some of them don't grow. But over all, they did an excellent job!

We knew, however, that a chilly storm was on its way that night. Our final project was to dig through recycling for plastic bottles (which I'd been hording for this purpose) to cut and place over the onions.


Once we put screen over the seeded portions of the garden to deter cats from using it as a litter box, we felt everything was sufficiently protected and went inside to wash up, play games, and eat organic mac and cheese until it was time for them to go home.

I think they enjoyed getting dirty and starting things from seed. I'm going to send them photos as the plants grow and they'll help out in the garden whenever they're over here.

It's a wonderful thing, to share something like this with children. I remember gardening with my parents when I was very small, how the rows of corn towered over me and the little carrot tops tempted me.

I plan on raising my own children with their hands in the dirt.

Early Garden Prep and Wee Little Plants

I decided it would be easier to dig up the future garden if we first kill off the grass where it's going to go. So I measured and cut two cardboard boxes to fit the 4x4 area.


We have yet to chop up and haul out the fallen limbs from the last ice storm, so I had to have Chad come out and help me move this one out of the way.


Now we have some room! I laid out the cardboard, remeasured, and weighted it down with ceramic pots. The advantage of using the cardboard instead of landscaping fabric (which we do have) is that it's totally biodegradable. Provided there are a few rains or snows between now and then, we should be able to just start digging through and around the cardboard, turning it under the soil. No pins to pull up and no waste fabric to throw in the land fill!


And as it's such a nice day, I also decided to bring my Red Robin tomato plants out for some light sun. It's their first trip outside though, so I had to make sure to give them some partial shade and will return them to their window after about an hour. One of these little guys will become a porch plant and the other will be placed in the garden, so it's good for them to harden off a little before we have to go through the entire process after the last frost.


They may not look it, but these two plants are almost at full height. I staked them on twigs (from the fallen limbs) today, and that's probably all they'll ever need. I accidentally broke off a little branch from this plant in the process, which made me feel absolutely terrible for the poor wee thing!


I started these little guys way-back-when. It's my hope that they'll provide us with some early cherry tomatoes to tide us over until the garden starts producing.