"Leaning on a Lamppost"

Last night, we had two happy little volunteer helpers (ok, two cajoled, arm-twisted, and finally outright-threatened helpers) who assisted with weed removal.  We got almost the entire front bed weeded, and I ran the tiller around the lamppost.  We mixed in peat moss and planted the three small blueberries (variety: peach sorbet).  We still need to amend the soil behind the post, so that we can plant the large blueberry.  Maybe later this week; tonight is a busy evening for us all.

Our helpers also planted the last of our impatiens in the back bed, and weeded some there, too.  We trimmed up some of the plants in the side bed, weeded some of the alyssum, and picked more peas.  Hopefully, tonight, we will still have enough time to blanche and begin to freeze them -- we should have several pints by now.  Last night, we also harvested our first banana pepper of the season and some more salad greens.

Nicole brought home another couple of clematis (one to replace ours that died, one for the mailbox area) and an echinacea she insists is pretty.

The weather looks like rain tomorrow and Thursday, but the weekend should be back to beautiful.  Let's hope we can finish up the last of our spring planting (I know, I know -- it's July now) and get the rest of our plots weeded.

"So, plant a cabbage, get a cabbage, not a sauerkraut!"

It has been raining in abundance this month.  The weather kept us out of the gardens part of the time, and Cabaret performances kept us out the rest!  It was wonderful to get outside to play in the dirt a little bit today.  It rained pretty good yesterday, so it was a little less-than-ideal soil conditions, but we still weeded most of the new retaining wall bed and finished it off with green and purple cabbages, a new Chinese 5-color pepper (courtesy of Grahm & Gayle!), some lobelia and petunias, a lemon thyme, a wormwood, some pretty red geraniums, more chard, and more nasturtiums.

The weeds have really gotten away from us.  My plan this week and weekend is to get everything weeded and healthy again.  Most urgent: the front bed and the garage bed.  The vegetable gardens also need weeded, but they're not in quite as bad of a situation.  Also, in the photo above, you can see the area by the lamppost is not finished yet.  I also want to get in there, amend that soil, and get our acid bed started, so we can plant our rhododendron and blueberries.

 

Also this weekend, we shelled our first large harvest of peas, sauteed some of the dwarf curly kale (thicker and chewier than the Red Russian), picked another few beets, and sent some friends home with salad greens.  I want to get out to the pea patch again before we do freezing to make sure we got all the available pods.

"Just because it's June, June, June!"

After last week's multiple days of rain, it was nice to spend Sunday outdoors, finally getting back into the garden to do some work.  Britt had come to visit from Indiana, and by the time she left to get back on the road it was after noon, although it was still pleasantly cool for working outside.  There were TONS of gnats and bugs from all that wetness, though.

We noticed that our marigolds in the garden were in very sad shape.  I don't know what we did to kill them, but they were not just stressed from the heat -- they were dead!  We found some volunteer marigolds and replanted them in areas where our bought plants had died back.

The rabbits had gotten another of our bell pepper plants, but fortunately, mom & dad dropped by with a couple of orange bells for us, so that was a quick and easy replacement.

Tasks accomplished:

• Replaced some marigolds
• Replaced bell pepper plant
• Planted cherry tomato seedlings in the obelisk in the garage garden
• Planted replacement nasturtium along the front retaining wall
• Planted muskmelon seeds
• Moved and planted short zinnias around the tiered garden and the raised beds
• Anna planted sunflowers in her garden, and trimmed up the lamb's ear
• Pulled back grass and laid down cocoa mulch and straw around raised beds
• Prepared potato box and planted some potatoes, then put hosta around it
• Put in pea sticks for the garden peas and sugar snap peas to climb
• Burned all the branches and sticks from last week's crazy storms
• Trimmed back some of the wildly-growing perennial flowers
• Weeded (mostly) the garage garden again

Needless to say, I'm moving a little slowly today.  That was a busy Sunday!  Now we're into a week of Cabaret rehearsals, but I'm hoping to take some time off work tomorrow afternoon to finish cleaning up the garage garden and put in the green beans, brussel sprouts, herb plants, and whatever other miscellaneous plantings we need to take care of!

Our salad days

We got some crazy wind and thunderstorms over the past few days.  It knocked down half of our remaining ornamental pear tree in the back yard, so yesterday, we had Bobby's Tree Service come and take the rest of it down, clean it up, and haul it away.  They did a good job -- there's just a low stump left, for which he's sending out his contractor to clean up later.

For dinner, we harvested the first of our greens.  Mixed with some chives (and store-bought cherry tomatoes), it was delicious and quick.  Yum.

First harvest

So, last night, we made the first harvest of the season: about two cups of chopped rhubarb.  We took the leaves and made an insecticide out of them (for Nicole's roses), then took the rhubarb and mixed it with some store-bought strawberries to make a compote.  It was delicious over ice cream!

We mostly took a break last night, but most of our plants all seem to be doing very well.  Most of the sweet potatoes we planted on Sunday are drooping a little bit, but we think they'll be fine.  We did lose one celery plant, and our purple cayenne (we'll try replacing that once the rain clears up).  All of our beans are now up (except the black beans), the cucumbers have sprouted, and the broccoli is beginning to come up (although we will need to weed that portion of the bed).  All of our herb pots are coming up, and the allysum around the cherry trees are sprouting, as well.  We weeded a million little tomato sprouts out of the raised beds, but the peas and greens are also doing wonderfully.

It's fairly nice today, so I anticipate some more work outside this evening.  Hooray for spring!

Breaking Ground

Today, I am exhausted.  We may have overdone things a little bit this weekend.  But we got so much done!  Saturday, we ran into Rock Island to rent a sod cutter, then stopped by mom & dad's on the way home and dropped off some tomato and pepper plants to them.  We had to make another quick trip into Davenport to drop the kids off at a wedding, but then, we headed home and removed all the grass from the newly-reshaped front garden and retaining wall, moving the grass to the hole in the west lawn, where those trees were removed and the grass has never come back yet.

That evening, mom & dad stopped by with a birthday present for Nicole and I... our very own gas-powered mini-cultivator!  The timing couldn't have been any more perfect -- we were not looking forward to trying to break through all that clay soil manually, but with this tool, we started Sunday morning after going out for some bags of compost, and by Sunday evening, the entire bed was cultivated; we had compost mixed in; sweet potatoes, nasturtium, and dwarf blue kale had been planted; and the veggies were covered in cocoa mulch.  Absolutely amazing.  But, hence our sore muscles today.  Whew!

Our hope is that the sweet potatoes will cascade down the retaining wall, along with the ornamental purple sweet potato vines and nasturtium.  Then we'll have some short kale with taller kale and chard behind it for an interesting background. On the other side of the bed, we'll acidify the soil and plant blueberries and an azalea. Nicole asked last night about putting in a few ornamental raspberries, too.

We finished everything up just in time, as when the sun was going down, a thunderstorm moved through and gave us quite a bit of heavy rain.  Fortunately, the mulch held fast, and we had put in a "dam" of paving stones to keep water from rushing down the hill and washing everything away until it can establish itself.

"Wouldn't you like to be a pepper, too?"

I took some more time off yesterday afternoon to get some more plants in the ground, hoping for rain tonight.  All of our eggplants (Pingtung Long), hot peppers (Jalmundo, Conquistador, Purple Cayenne, and Sweet Banana), and bell peppers (King Arthur, King of the North, Orange Bell, and Golden California Wonder) are now planted in the gardens.  I also put in a row of black-eyed peas and arugula.  It appears, though, that I accidentally grabbed an extra package of last year's generic arugula instead of the wild arugula I bought for this year.  Oh, bother.

It's been dry for a week now, so we've been diligently watering our fresh-planted seedlings, until they can put down some real roots.  Our potted basils are starting to sprout, as is the kale and chard I have in the greenhouse.

Nicole and I went to a community hosta sale after work yesterday and picked up several new hosta, including "Wolverine," "Battle Star," "First Frost," "Fire Island," and "Andrew."  Then, to kill time before my rehearsal, I stopped by Teske's and picked up a French Tarragon plant and some more Alyssum seeds for around the garage garden.

Happy Mother's Day!

This Mother's Day weekend, as has become tradition in the Manasco household, we hit up several area plant sales and subjugated the children to forced slave labor in the flower beds. It was a surprisingly chilly day (we actually moved several of our tender plants into the garage Friday and Saturday nights), so we donned some warm apparel and set off in search of unique plants at bargain prices. We went to the Port Byron library, the Silvis greenhouse, Our Lady of Guadalupe, the RI County Fairgrounds, Black Hawk Park, and the RI Botanical Center. We procured:

• Several huge potted grasses for the front yard
• A couple of coleus for Anna's bed
• Three sweet potato vines for the retaining wall
• Two dwarf blue kale for the retaining wall
• Three short cosmos for the vegetable garden
• A couple of tall cosmos for the raised beds

Our last stop of the day was at True Value in Moline, where they were having their annual Mother's Day bedding plant sale. We got four full flats of annuals -- lots of impatiens, vincas, marigolds, and some random flowers for hanging baskets.

Anna and Alex were of huge help: they planted almost 100 vinca and impatiens around the back patio garden. We also planted our new grasses and about 20 caladium around the front of the house and got the (slicing) cucumbers in the ground, along with the zucchini, butternut squash, and pumpkins.  Oh, and on Sunday, we attended an Arts Festival in Davenport, where Nicole picked out a couple of cute copper animal garden ornaments.

Then on Monday, I took the day off of work and spent the entire day preparing for or working in the garden. It was glorious. First thing, I went into town and purchased a couple of straw bales and some final seeds, then planted some kale and chard in the greenhouse, waiting for the weather to warm up. Around lunchtime, I got outside and planted thyme along our back patio walkway, some alyssum around the cherry bushes, and put in all of our tomato plants in the vegetable garden. I also turned over the area for the black beans and peppers, although I didn't quite have enough time to finish them. This week looks to be pretty busy, and then things get wet again for a while, but the next time we have some time and its not raining, I'd like to finish the peppers, black beans, green beans, and plant the last of our herbs (dill, basil, and savory). We are also going to need to get some pea sticks set up, along with another trellis for the black-eyed peas.

Making our garden grow

The forecast calls for rain tonight, so after picking Alex up from swim practice and while Nicole took Anna to bass lessons, I hurried to get a few more things planted this evening.  We now have broccoli (regular and Romanesco) planted down by our rhubarb patch, pinto beans planted by the side of the shed, and yin yang beans near the top of the top garden plot.  Additionally, I begain clearing away the weeds and burn-off residue from the garden, and labeled those plantings that had not yet been labeled.

I did notice that something had nibbled several leaves off of our freshly-planted celery plants.  We'll have to keep an eye on that.  I want to get the nightshades planted this weekend, build two new trellises (one for the top garden plot, one for the raised beds), and finish clearing out and weeding the lower garden plots and the garage garden.

In terms of growing progress, both sets of peas are now up, along with the radishes, mesclun/lettuce, and beets.  The crabapple trees are in full bloom (see picture on left above), and the front yard smells very strongly of flowering cherry.  We can start harvesting rhubarb, chives, and loveage at any time, and the strawberries are in bloom.  It's a good time of year.

Busy bees

Too busy for full entry.  Must sum up:

This weekend, we stopped by Wallaces.  Fun was had.  Came home with three blueberry bushes, two roses, some herbs, a grass with a purple flower, some wormwood, and lemon thyme.  Trenched celery in the garden; rue and lemon verbena in herb pots.  Pulled weeds.  Planted roses and re-arranged flower beds.  Edged front beds.  Got mildly sunburned.

Monday, we planted carrots in the garden; basil (sweet, purple, and thai), cilantro, chamomile in pots, spread weed & feed, laid out new shapes for front and side beds.  Noticed peas, lettuce, and radishes poking through the top of the ground.  Watered for good measure.  Remembered to wear head covering this time.

"It's May! It's May! The lusty month of May..."

Boom!  Just like that, it's now 80 degrees.

We got quite a bit done over the weekend.  We repotted our peppers and eggplant, and started putting some herbs in pots.  We planted four rows of peas, four rows of sugar snap peas, mesclun, lettuce, spinach, beets, and a few radishes.  We completely ringed the circle garden in onions from mom & dad, and replanted any garlic that didn't make it through the winter.  We have asparagus, loveage, and rhubarb up, and even some leftover raddichio that must not have come up properly last year.

In landscaping news, our daffodils are beginning to wane, but the grape hyacinth is going strong, and all of the tulips are popping.  Our cherry tree in the front yard exploded into blossom yesterday (with our first 80+ degree day of the season), and Nicole moved around several hosta and organized that back bed.  We want to put in another Julia Childs rose and move the peony over to the west, but otherwise, that flower bed is looking really good.  In the front yard, we plan to reshape the flower bed, and put in some annuals.  Nicole also wants to straighten out the tulips in some of the footprint beds, now that we know what we have.

We stopped by a few plant nurseries, too, and picked up a variety of flowers for Nicole, and two four-packs of celery for me.  They wilted like crazy in yesterday's heat, but I gave them a good drink of water last night, so hopefully, they will perk up.

"Blue skies, smilin' at me..."

The rain has cleared, the weather is warming up slightly, and while we're still very busy, we were FINALLY able to do some work outside this weekend.  Friday after work, we didn't get much done.  Saturday, Anna had a daytime band clinic followed by a birthday party, and Alex and I went out to the farm and practiced target shooting, but Sunday after church, Nicole and I played in the garden.

Nicole did a lot of work to the back flower beds, moving things around and making it more organized-looking, replanting hostas that had heaved out of the ground, etc.  I planted peas (finally) in one of the two raised beds, and onions all the way around the circle bed.  Then we re-potted the eggplant and the peppers, along with some herbs (rue and chamomile).  The nightshades are not quite ready to put in the ground yet, but the weather is getting close.  The 10-day forecast now goes through May 8th, and there is nothing close to freezing predicted, although we are supposed to get more rain this week.

I'm still not happy with our tomato seedlings -- the cold, wet weather when we were trying to harden them off did more damage than I would have liked.  They're a little wilty, and many of the leaves have died around the edges.  They'll probably bounce back ok, but it would have been better for them if we could have given them a smoother transition.  We'll try to do a better job with the peppers and eggplants.

Poor tomahto. (He cannot dance like the cucumber.)

I hesitate to say it (since Thursday we may see some more snow), but it looks like spring has... maybe... sorta... arrived? We had beautiful weather this weekend, and took advantage of it. I was out of town on Saturday, but Nicole got much of the landscaping and garden beds cleaned up, emptied our composter, and picked up several bags of compost and potting soil from the Davenport facility.  Sunday, we spent the day continuing to prepare for planting.  We cut back dead growth, burned through the garden, turned over and amended the soil in our new raised beds, and pulled weeds.

We also repotted our tomato seedlings.  They were getting way too big to stay in their little dirt disks, so we potted them for the next phase of their growth.  Right now, we're trying to harden them off, setting them outside for a few hours each day, but they look horribly bedraggled.  Their poor little roots had to be torn apart when we took them out of the seed trays, and then stuck in new soil, and set in the sunlight for the first time, and in the wind -- it's a lot of changes all at once, but I'm sure in a few days, they'll bounce back, happier and healthier than ever.

We attempted to plant some peas and greens in our raised beds tonight, but the rain during the day made everything much too wet to work the earth.  It looks like rain is forecast for the next several days (until the snow on Thurday, yuck), so it may be a while before we can actually get those in the ground.  We'll just do it when we can.

It's been fun watching our spring flowers coming up, too.  Things are much later than last year (we just got our very first daffodil to open today), but most things look healthy.  I think our cherry bushes both survived.  We did lose one of Nicole's roses, but the other two look great.  The perennials in our front beds seem to be coming back ok.  It's just nice to be able to work outside again!

Funky beets

So, we feasted from our garden again this weekend, this time on beets.  For dinner Saturday night, I made a warm beet salad, by roasting and slicing beets, then putting them with dollops of ricotta cheese on top of beet greens, sauteed with garlic and salt in olive oil.  Mmmmm.

We also did some work to the kitchen garden.  We planted the nodding onions from the May natives sale next to the sorrel, and put in some strawberries behind the sweet peas and scarlet runner beans.  Finally, I plopped down the French tarragon next to the walkway.  We got this done just in time, as we finally got a decent rain Saturday night, which gave everything a good long drink.

A working vacation

It was a beautiful day, there was nothing on my calendar, and I couldn't drag myself into the office this morning.  So, after my teleconferences with India, I scheduled the rest of the day off for gardening.  Alex and I finished hauling dirt to the bed behind the garage and worked it in, with the rest of our compost.  We then planted zucchini and butternut squash, along with some sweetpeas, scarlet runner beans, nasturtium, and sorrel.  This now leaves most of the middle of the new bed still available.  I know I want to put in a stepping stone path; maybe we'll put in some new salad greens, as well.

I also watered most things, and finally got some Spacemaster Bush cucumbers potted and set out, ready to grow.  We also picked our second batch of peas: around 3-4 cups.

Gardening in the rain

Another incredibly busy weekend: this weekend, we finished our two raised tomato beds.  Whew!  It ended up raining on us, as we frantically finished planting our tomatoes and peppers in the new beds, but we got them all in the ground, and hauled our extras to church (and to the hosta sale in Davenport).  Our total nightshades this year:

• 8 Polish Linguisa tomatoes (raised beds)
• 8 Opalka tomatoes (raised beds)
• 2 NuMex Sandia peppers (raised beds)
• 2 NuMex Vaquero peppers (raised beds)
• 1 Gepetto banana pepper (raised beds)
• 4 King Arthur bell peppers (3 in circle bed + 1 in raised bed)
• 3 Yellow bell peppers (circle bed)
• 2 Purple bell peppers (circle bed)
• 1 Supersweet 100 cherry tomato (large pot)
• 2 Melrose stuffing peppers (discovered at a plant sale - rose bed)
• 1 Traveler tomato (discovered at a plant sale - edge of the broccoli row)
• 1 Volunteer tomato from last year (other edge of the broccoli row)

We also put in a short row of lavendar on the east end of the beds.  That should smell lovely whenever we brush up against it, and look nice, too!

This weekend, we also did a fair amount of landscaping.  We planted and moved around several hostas, went to a hosta sale where we bought MORE hostas, and put our grasses in the ground around the lamp post.  AND we took an 8-mile bike ride.  Whew!  Can't wait for another productive weekend like this one!

Peas, please!

The family went on a Boy Scout camping trip for the majority of the weekend, so we didn't get a whole lot of gardening done.  I did see that the peas were in full blossom before we left (see photo on left).  The weather was in the 90s over the weekend, so everything grew like gangbusters.  Our broccoli rabe even bolted a little bit, although we pinched back the ends, so we think it'll still be ok.

Watering continues to be a problem -- it has been so warm and windy, and there has been so little rain, our plants our drying out at a very fast pace.  We may have actually lost some of the grasses that we bought at the plant sales last weekend.  Our Disneyland rose has its very first (beautiful) flower on it.  All three roses are doing incredibly well, and our transplants seem to be doing splendidly.

Upcoming projects: tomato beds need to be built as quickly as possible.  I'd like to get our remaining herbs in the ground, and continue working on our kitchen garden.

Mother's Day Gardening

I was sent out of town on a business trip for much of last week, so I was not able to do much gardening, but I think we made up for it this weekend!  We hit lots of area plant sales, and picked up a tremendous number of plants and seeds.  Here's what I can remember, off the top of my head:

• Impatiens
• Vinca
• Milkweed (butterfly and red)
• Orange and Yellow Poppies
• Hostas
• Tomatoes (Traveler?  A slicing variety)
• Peppers (A sweet Italian stuffing variety)
• Herbs (more basil, black cumin, anise)
• Potatoes
• Pink Nodding Onion
• Shooting star
• Blazing star (Liatris)
• Purple fountain grass
• Bunny tail grass

Additionally, we even got some of it in the ground!  I believe Anna planted the orange and yellow poppies and the milkweeds, while Cole and I moved a couple daylilies around, and put in the shooting star and hostas.  Also, as part of the children's Mother's Day Slave Labor, they completely eradicated the patch of ajuga from the back bed, so it looks much cleaner now, and we won't have to continue trying to keep it contained every six weeks.

Hassenpfeffer

Not much to report today.  We did some garden and flower bed clean-up -- the Rock Island school is looking for plant donations to put in around the building, so Nicole is cleaning out various plants from various beds, mostly hostas and iris.  I put in two different types of cabbage (Savoy and Ruby Perfection) in the very bottom garden bed.

All herbs in the herb pots are now up, and the carrots in the carrot pot also look pretty good.  I'm a little disappointed that more cucumbers didn't come up, but we still should have plenty for eating.

The rabbits have struck again.  Like last year, they tried to annihilate our edamame plants, but this year, they also took a swipe out of our beets.  I ground up some of last year's dried peppers and dumped it on the edamame, and will set up the scarecrow sprinkler to protect the circle bed.  Stupid varments.

Finishing the foot

It was great to see Nicole's father yesterday -- we had a great time, and all went out to dinner before retiring back to the house for the final episode of Enterprise -- but today, we spent outside.  Landscape-wise, we finished up weeding and de-grassing the front beds, then put down cocoa mulch in the remaining "footprint" bed (see photo on left).  It wound up taking about eight bags of cocoa mulch to do the two footprints, the circle around the center tree, and the gas lamp.  We also ran into Menard's and bought another ten bags of the stuff (along with some steppable moss and a couple pretty flowers).  This should be enough to do the front house bed, and the back beds, with (hopefully) a little left over for key areas of the veggie garden.

Vegetable-wise, I re-potted the last of the peppers and got them sitting out, and planted the celery in the upper bed.  This year, I did not trench the celery, but that's one area I want to mulch if possible.  Also, we increased from four celery plants to twelve.  That should increase the amount we can use and freeze.

The black-eyed peas never did come up.  I'm not sure what we did wrong, but they're not happy.  I may have to replant them.  Everything else in the garden looks like it came up well, though.  We're still waiting for the newly-planted carrots and herbs in pots.

We harvested fresh salad for the first time, too.  We supplemented with store-bought spinach, but our first salad greens came out of the garden today, along with some wonderful early scarlet globe radishes.