garden, may 25

I haven’t posted in quite some time, but that’s because the weather has been wacky and there hasn’t been much forward motion. We’ve had rainstorm after rainstorm, and the temperature has been hovering in the low 60s. We even had snow (SNOW!) the day after our average last frost date (May 15th), which had all of us gardeners giggling and groaning simultaneously.

What I have accomplished: Since I haven’t had a whole lot of success starting tomatoes from seed, I picked up a few starts at the Santa Fe Master Gardener’s Fair a few weeks ago. (Early Girl, Super Sweet 100, and Black Truffle.) Thinking that cold weather was behind us, I put them out in containers with some of the amendments that I read about on giantveggiegardener.com — worm castings, dry milk, Yum Yum Mix, and a bit of Epsom salts — and then it snowed. They survived the cold blast, and are hanging in there, but seem to be longing for warmer weather. Luckily, the forecast is calling for temps in the 70s this week, so I hope they perk up.

Last year’s strawberries were super sweet, but really small and didn’t produce a whole lot. So, I moved them to one of the raised beds, in hopes that with more space, they will fill in and thrive better this year.

My “salad bar” has been a source of endless frustration — greens are supposed to be easy to grow! I thought I had the problem solved when I put a row cover over it, which helped for a while, and then things started dying off again. (I’m down to 5 spinach plants, 1 chard, 1 romaine, and a few arugulas.) Turns out the bed has been infested with red ants. It’s infuriating, because there seems to be no solution that will not also kill my plants. I’m to the point that I’m ready to give up on that bed and just start everything over in containers.

Today, I started prepping my straw bale. I’ve never tried this method before, and I’ve read that it’s not always recommended for desert climates because it is water intensive. But the straw has been just sitting there for a year, and the season has been so wet that I have enough water in my barrels to get through the preparation stage, so I decided to give it a go. The basic idea is that you wet the bale for 3 days to start the straw decomposing, and then water in a nitrogen-rich fertilizer such as blood meal to the top of the bale for a few days, and it will feed whatever you plant there. Then you plant directly in the bale. I’m thinking either cucumbers or squash will go in the bale — but I’m really terrible at sticking to a garden plan, so that might change.

Fingers crossed for warmer weather this week!

garden, april 26

Wowza. April has had a steep learning curve, which is ultimately a good thing, but it also means my plants are not quite where they should be at this point in the year.

My greens have been causing me a great deal of frustration, and I can’t remember the last time I had so much trouble getting them started. Some seeds simply weren’t germinating; others were coming up and dying shortly after.

Once I took a closer look, I discovered that, no, they weren’t just dying, something was eating them — I’m just not sure what. But I decided it was high time to get some row covers. So after work, I hightailed my hiney to the nursery and grabbed one before heading home. Unfortunately, in my rush, I failed to grab anything to make the hoops with. So we improvised; boyfriend gave me an old motorcycle fender that was the perfect length to span the bed, and then staked it down with rocks. It’s not pretty, but it’s functional. And adding a row cover worked! After just two days of being covered, my greens are coming back, and I’m even seeing new seedlings coming up.

This weekend, I decided to tackle a task that I’ve put off due to the sheer immensity of it: foxtails. Grass is such a rarity in the desert that I’m always hard-pressed to yank it out when it’s new and adding a little green to the yard. But now that it’s going to seed, I need to get on top of it before they start sticking to my pants and my cat and ending up all over the house. And they are EVERYWHERE — front yard, side yard, back yard, between the cracks in the sidewalk…

Luckily, I don’t mind physical labor, and actually find weeding to be largely meditative. I can easily get lost in the motion and spend a few hours outside, forgetting everything else (including putting on sunblock). So I got to work, and cleared out a good portion of the backyard patch where I’m hoping to put another raised bed:

It doesn’t look like much, but it’s a huge start, considering the weeded section is about 4x bigger than the picture shows.

I was happy with what I accomplished, but I still have a long way to go. There’s still this:

And this:

And oh yeah, this:

Yesterday’s forecast called for rain. Since it wasn’t coming down when I got out of bed, I set out to clear the front yard. I was about halfway done when the rain started coming down, so I decided to head inside. The rain turned to sleet. And then the sleet turned to snow.

It looks like we’re going to have another year where we run close to the last frost date. Luckily, the latter half of this week has forecasted highs in the 70s, so hopefully then I can make up some lost ground.

The Contents of Her Stomach by Chelsea Laine Wells

A really intense and pretty incredible short piece by Chelsea Laine Wells.

Cease, Cows

In tenth grade you say to your friend Katie, “Let’s be anorexic.” You are joking, but not really, and she’s looking straight at you and she says, “Okay.” Katie takes to it like a house on fire, but you are weak. You break and eat after dark with shaking fingers in the cold light of the refrigerator. Katie pares her daily intake down to an apple and a can of tuna until she decides she’s enjoying the tuna too much, and then she drinks the juice but leaves the meat. She cuts her lip on the can and it doesn’t heal and doesn’t heal. She drapes across your bed, staring at the ceiling, and works the cut with her tongue while you do homework. You watch her skeleton emerge like a time-lapse video of decay. One day she passes out on her way back from the lunch line and breaks her collarbone against the corner of a…

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garden, April 18

Well… damn. This is what I woke up to this morning:

A blanket of snow coating everything. I’m not terribly hopeful that many of my seedlings survived this sudden cold snap. I didn’t have time to get row covers, and so in a pinch, I threw a sheet on top of them the other night. When the sheet didn’t give them as much protection as I was hoping for, I added a thick layer of straw over the bed and hoped for the best. But I’m not sure even that will be enough to protect against this kind of wet chill. And it’s not looking promising for the next few days… we’ll be hovering around the mid-50s to lower 60s.

It’s hard not to feel discouraged when this happens, but I remind myself that this happens every year: a few good weeks of warmth, and the inevitable cold. There’s a reason our last frost date isn’t until May. So for now, I’m going to curl up with a book, wait for the snow melt, and then evaluate where things are at. And maybe rewatch the episode of House Hunters International that showcased some properties with drool-worthy greenhouses.

garden, april 11

I had one of those days where I woke up motivated to do some serious digging, but somehow the morning hours drifted by with little to show for them.

On the upside, I walked out to discover my sugar snap peas are coming up. Peas are funny; even though everything I have ever read on them has said to start them as soon as the soil can be worked, they take their time and wait until the temperature is just right before making an appearance. I hope they produce well, because nothing beats fresh-off-the-vine snap peas. There is also a random pea plant growing in the bed adjacent to the garlic; it came up in November (??), and has been hanging on for dear life since. Since it finally seems to be thriving, I’m just going to leave it.

In the salad bar, I replanted in the spaces where the seedlings had frozen and died off after my morning-watering mishap. I have carrot seeds soaking tonight (Scarlet Nantes and the last few of my Carnival Blend), as there is room for them in the garlic bed. I’m even staggering my planting, so hey, cheers to trying out some succession planting.

My strawberry plants are happy and even flowering already. This concerns me a little, as it isn’t unusual for us to have a late-spring freeze. I’m going to have to keep an eye on the forecast and invest in some row covers. I would like to expand the strawberry patch, since they are so tasty and we could easy eat a couple pounds in a week.

Strawberries plants are already flowering.

One of my biggest struggles continues to be what to do with the front yard. The front of the house has a northern exposure and two big trees, which means the bed is simply not in an ideal site for optimal sun. I’ve been contemplating digging out the current dirt and filling in with topsoil that I have leftover from my last load from Payne’s Organic Soil Yard, but I’m not sure if it’s going to be worth it in the end. If anyone has experience working with such conditions, I’d love to hear your input.

edge

but it was not enough
to swallow the serpent & end the story here

leather-bound book & sky emptied
of light

a grave dug out, glass prism-prison,
chained to the edge, grass matted & dead

unlit, unholy, holding
an umbrella & still wet from the rain,

two stars reach out
to brush each other
—flicks of light, soft as finger tips—
& detonate

& a moon wishing, just once,
to shine its own perfect light.

originally published in ditch, January 2014

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

garden, April 7

It’s barely April and I already feel like I am behind! I seem to sleep through March and completely forget that all of the good gardening seminars happens BEFORE the season gets into full swing. That’s okay. Things are still happening!

Garlic:
The garlic I planted last fall is looking beautiful. It should be ready for harvest some time in the summer. (The blob of purple is random volunteer lettuce growing in the mix. I haven’t picked it and figure that at this point, it’s probably not going to be terribly tasty, but I can’t bring myself to pull it up.) And, for the record, I do make every effort to plant in nice, neat rows or squares with even spacing, but for some reason, things come up all higgledy-piggledy.

Garlic, garlic, garlic. And some lettuce.

Greens:
I started my “salad bar” toward the end of March, which consists of arugula, spinach, Farmers Market salad mix, buttercrunch lettuce, chard, radishes, and beets. (I somehow overlooked planting any romaine, which I’ll rectify soon.) I decided to forgo kale for now, as I really wasn’t a fan of the Red Winter variety that lives in my collection. Maybe I’ll try for a different variety later in the year.

My seedlings were coming along nicely until I made a critical mistake —I attempted to water them early morning, not realizing the temperature outside was colder than I thought. After a few minutes, the water had frosted over, and I lost a few little guys in the process. Lesson learned. The silver lining: I spent a long time devouring the wealth of information over at Giant Veggie Farmer, and came across the post on cool season crops. Hopefully, armed with some new knowledge and tips on pre-sprouting seeds, the little patch will make a strong comeback.

Spinach seedlings.

I’ve had a terrible time growing spinach in the past, but finally discovered that I had been starting it far too late in the season for it to germinate. Hopefully, since I started earlier this year, I’ll actually get a good harvest.

Herbs & Flowers:
My mint, rosemary, and lavender are all coming back nicely, as are the chives. The daffodil and iris bulbs that I planted last year have come up, although they seem to be a bit small, and I’m not holding on to high hopes that I’ll get blooms out of them.

Inside, I’ve started some Roma tomatoes, bell peppers, and leeks. I think I’m going to do my tomatoes and peppers in containers this year, since they have a tendency to take over my small bed regardless of whether I plant them or not. A lot of these decisions are hinging on whether or not I manage to get a few more raised beds built before transplant time comes. Fingers crossed, because if I get it done, it will more than double the amount of space I currently have.

Other things in the plan for this year:

• zucchini
• cucumbers
• squash
• watermelon
• strawberries
• carrots
• chamomile
• echinacea (my seedlings died last year; I’m going to try again!)
• sunflowers
• peas
• marigolds
• shallots
• onions
• thyme
• tarragon
• cilantro
• basil

A fellow gardener friend and I also realized that we could save a good deal if we go halvsies on our seed order, and split the goods. It seems like a smart move, seeing as neither of us ever go through an entire seed packet in a season, and she’s a whiz at seed saving… so depending on what we order, the list may change, shrink or grow. I can’t wait to start looking at all the different varieties out there.

And, this season is going to be about education. On my list of things to understand better are 1. succession planting; and 2. fertilizing. I know next to nothing about fertilizing, which is kind of embarrassing seeing as promoting fertile, living soil is THE most important aspect of gardening. So, I am making it a goal this year to better understand the components that make up healthy soil, and how to amend it to better suit various crops

garden, june 3 part II – tire pots

I’d be remiss if I failed to mention the tires that we spray-painted to use as flower pots.

This idea came about because there is always the early-spring space struggle between the kiddo and I. She wants to plant flowers; I want to plant food. And there is never enough space for both of us to do all that we want to do. I had seen this idea on Pinterest, and since we had several old tires lying around, I thought it would be a fun project. But since I’m not sure if eating food grown in old rubber that is potentially leaching metal and contaminants (not to mention the paint), I was happy to give them over to flowers. They’ll also add a nice pop of color to the front yard.

A friend of mine is going to give me some seeds for giant sunflowers, and we’re going to create a little (ahem, huge) fairy ring in the yard, with an opening so that said kiddo can hang out (or hide) inside of it.

Link to the post that inspired the sunflower ring (#24): http://www.echobrown.com/2013/04/25/32-cheap-and-easy-backyard-ideas-that-are-borderline-genius/

garden, june 3

It’s June. How did that happen? The solstice is coming, and I’m starting to feel a little bit frantic with how behind I am. I read other gardening blogs and see the size of their starts, the seeds they have already put out, and feel the chase of the chant, behind, behind, behind.

The last week yielded a lot of forward progress. My dear boyfriend went and picked up a load of garden soil, a bale of straw, and a wheelbarrow for me, so now planting can resume in earnest:

Sorry for the crummy picture; despite the longer days, the sun was already going down when I took it.

 

That’s a cubic yard of soil, my friends.

So this evening I moved a good portion of it into a second bed that I dug out a few weeks ago, made a few mounds, and planted zucchini. As the sun went down, I busted out my ever-so-stylish headlamp so I could continue working in the dark. I built a sandbank around the potatoes (more on those in a moment), started mulching the plants in the big raised bed, and watered.

Geez I’m nerdy

Ah, yes. The potatoes. I have never grown potatoes before. I had some in the house that were sprouting, and I had read somewhere that potatoes like to grow in compost. So, in the slapdash way that I am a little ashamed has my method this year, I dug some holes, filled them with compost, and stuck the potatoes in there. Much to my surprise, they started growing not long after. After mentioning this to another gardener, she gave me some tips on how to encourage them to produce. I need to keep heaping soil and mulch on top of the greens, leaving just the growing tips exposed, and build up the mounds throughout the season. Tonight I added a good layer of soil and compost, and tomorrow I’ll add straw. And maybe more soil.

Potatoes with the fresh soil heaped on them. Much bigger than they appear.

What else? I planted more peas in the spots where it seemed they weren’t going to come up. I have to get my melons, pumpkins, summer squash, cucumbers, and other sun-and-heat loving plants into the ground in the next few days. And see if I can find a spot that lettuce and spinach will thrive — I’ve not had any luck with spinach this year. Tomatoes, on the other hand, are popping up everywhere — in the container where I planted lettuce mix, in my rosemary, in random heaps of yard waste…

Hopefully it will mean an abundance is coming. It’s going to be in the 90s tomorrow, and I’m hoping that a late spring storm will pass through and soak everything for a day. Here’s to hoping, abundance, and gratitude for what the garden will bring.

.

a woman
blossoming
into herself
is the most beautiful
and the most dangerous thing
you will ever see.