Peaches and Cream

We looked at the calendar this weekend and saw that the kids are heading back to school this week, all our summer shows were over, and we are already almost late in planting some fall crops, so Sunday, we got busy outside.  We put in four rows of peas and three rows of round carrots.  We planted a row of spinach, then broadcast other salad greens and a small patch of basil.  Nicole weeded and trimmed down some of the more exuberant perennials.  I want to get some new beets in the circle bed, and then we should be set for fall!

This weekend, I went out to mom & dad's and got some peaches.  They are delicious this year, but we don't really need to process any more -- we have plenty of canned peaches, peach preserves, peach pie filling, and fruit cocktail.  I'm going to try to can some peach rum sauce.  We are running low on that, and enjoy it on ice cream.

We also got some of the last of the fresh sweet corn.  It was also fantastic this year.  We discovered a new way to prepare it that we really like: coat in olive oil, salt and pepper, on the grill for 2 minutes per side.  Delicious.

"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.

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.

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.

"I'm dreaming of a White Palm Sunday..."

If we look at the larger picture, we're still more than three weeks from our average last frost date in this area, and it's hardly unusual to have a late dusting of snow.  But yesterday, it snowed all day long.  There were some area schools that had a delayed start time today.  Last year at this time, the trees were all in bloom and we were actually planting some things outside.

Our seedlings, however, are doing splendedly.  The tomatoes are especially tall (perhaps even a little leggy), and I took some time yesterday to thin eveything out -- no more than one plant per cell.  It always bothers me, throwing away perfectly good plants, but I know it's for the best.  It bothers me most when some cells have two or three plants, and other cells are empty.  Ugh!  We had that with some of our bell peppers, but we should still have plenty to plant.

Looking ahead, we are going to have to get at least the tomatoes planted in larger pots to allow them more space to grow.  The timing of this is going to be tricky.  I usually do the potting at the same time as we start hardening off outside.  With it still very cold (and snowing) outside, I'm wondering when the hardening off period will be.  There's not enough room under the grow lights in the greenhouse for all the potted plants, so if we have to pot before setting out, we'll have to get a little creative.

Think spring!

OK, so yes, it was snowing yesterday, but we still did some planting.   For the start of the 2013 gardening season, we started a number of seeds in our indoor greenhouse.  Actually, I'm cheating a little bit... I planted four varieties of bell peppers last weekend, but then forgot about them and didn't get the greenhouse set up.  Whoops.  Anyway, now, safely in the greenhouse on top of warming pads, we have the following seeds planted and ready to go:

• Bell Peppers (King Arthur, King of the North, Golden California Wonder, Orange)
• Sweet Peppers (Banana, NuMex Conquistador)
• Hot Peppers (Cayenne Purple, Jalmundo, Trinidad Scorpion)
• Eggplant (Pingtung Long)
• Cherry Tomatoes (Sweet Million)
• Plum Tomatoes (Opalka, Polish Linguisa)
• Herbs (Rue, Thyme)

Also, despite my week-long neglect, it appears I didn't hurt our bell peppers too much.  Several have popped up through the surface and are leafing out nicely.

So, I'm excited to get going this year.  We're still enjoying the fruits of our labors from last fall (we had friends over for games and Mexican last night, with refried beans made from our dried pintos!), but it'll be nice to have fresh-from-the-garden produce again.

Harvest moon

We are deep into harvest and canning season now, and while this summer's drought did hurt, there is still plenty to do.

Our beans were a huge success -- we have several quarts of dried pintos, yin-yang, turtle, and black-eyed peas.  In addition to the fruit cocktail we canned (below), we put up three quarts of peach pie filling.  We also canned 14 quarts of tomato-basil soup.  We opened one of those on a cold, rainy night last week, and found it delightful.

Last night, we just canned our second batch of whole tomatoes.  We did pop a jar by putting it into too-hot water again, but fortunately, were able to save the tomatoes.  A little over 20 pounds of Opalka and Polish Linguisa tomatoes = 6 quarts.  This week, I hope to get some of mom's tomatoes and make some salsa.

For future planning purposes, this year, in our new raised beds, we put in six pepper plants and sixteen tomato plants.  While it looked good for the beginning of the year, by the end of summer, things were completely overrun.  The tomatoes completely engulfed our peppers, killing some of them, and spilled out all over the lawn.  Stronger cages are a must, as is a more spread-out plan.  A few tomatoes sprinkled in several places might be better than a solid block of them.

Also, the two pots of basil (sweet and purple) have been fine, but the basil we put in the tomato bed was covered and smothered.  We may not be able to freeze much basil this year.  Next year, we should definitely get some in the garden as well.

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.

Weekend plans

It's been rainy and windy for the last several days, so we haven't been outside to do much this week.  Nicole and I walked around a little bit tonight, though, and checked everything out.  All our plants are doing well, except for the broccoli (stupid squirrels dug it all back up).  This weekend, my plan is to finish cleaning up the upper and lower beds and get seeds down for all our beans, broccoli (again), carrots and parsnip, herbs, and the second round of leafy greens and radishes.  If we have time, my folks have some onion sets for us, and we should plunk those down as well.

"Burninating the countryside..."

Busy, busy weekend, what with Easter and all. Between orchestra rehearsals, shopping for the holiday, and celebrating with family, we didn't have a whole lot of time to work outside.

Nicole did get two new roses planted (a new Disneyland rose, and a new one, called Julia Child), and moved a few other things around to make room in that back bed. I burned off the dried-out stumps from those back yard "vector" evergreen bushes and the remnants of the Christmas tree. We still have some of the trunk left, but it's coming along. Maybe another burn or two remaining. I also stapled up a net on the side of the shed to serve as a bean trellis for our pinto beans.

Elsewhere, we've really been enjoying our perennial flowers. It was worth the trouble and effort we took over the past few falls, cleaning things up and planting bulbs. Our tulips and crocus and daffodils were beautiful this year, and in our woodland bed, the lily of the valley and bluebells were breathtaking, and we even had a little Dutchman's breeches!

Inside, our tomatoes are coming up in the greenhouse. Most of the Supersweet 100s and Opalkas are up, and a few Polish Linguisas are coming up, too. No peppers yet, but those do take a bit longer.

Running late

We're running quite late this year. Between taking a family vacation over spring break, and a dining room renovation that ran a little late (plus, just being lazy about starting), we're now in April, about two weeks before average last frost date, and we still hadn't set up our greenhouse.

This changed tonight. We cleaned out one of our greenhouses, set up a tray of dirt discs, and put them on a heat mat. We've started lots of tomatoes (Opalka, Polish Linguisa, and Super Sweet 100s), bell peppers (King Arthur and Canary Bell), banana peppers (Jepeto) and hot chili peppers (Sandia and Vaquero).

I'm not sure if we're going to grow Bhut Jolokias this year. I've got seeds for them, but between our late start, always-limited room, and not really using them much last year, it may just not be worth it. Perhaps as a container plant or something.

And so it begins (again)...

Um, yeah, I sort of faded away early last year, didn't I? No posts after May? Sheesh. I'll try to do a better job of keeping up with the blog this year.

Anyway, this year we've gotten a very late start to our gardening year this year. Which is even worse, in that it's been an incredibly warm year (several record high temps), and we could have started early!

For the past couple of weeks, we've mostly been cleaning up from the winter, watching the spring bulbs come up, and enjoying our early flowering trees. Cole attacked the Siberian Squib last weekend, completely eradicating it from the lily-of-the-valley bed, and making a good start around the Norwegian maple. She also moved around hosta in the back of that bed, by the fence, and removed the shade-loving perennials from the part of the patio bed that no longer is shady without that ash tree. I burned off most of the dead wood from over the winter and turned over some of the veggie beds.

Today, the season began in earnest for me, as we laid out and began planting the "Mother's Day" bed. This year, we're going with a quarter-circle layout, with eggplants and bell peppers in the center. We put up cages for them, although it's still too early to actually plant those yet. We planted radishes down the sides of the quarter sections, garlic in a circle, then in two of the quarters, we put in radicchio and broccoli rabe and in two of the quarters, we put in beets. Then, in one of the radicchio/broccoli rabe quarters we planted spinach and lettuce, and in one of the beet quarters we planted mixed mesclun (leaving the other quarters for succession planting).

Then we laid out stakes and spray paint for two NEW raised beds that will go in west of the shed. Nicole told me that for my birthday, she's buying me two raised beds for that area -- the sunniest, flattest spot of the yard -- should be fantastic for tomatoes! :-)

Impatient for impatiens

The impatiens have started sprouting! Last night, Cole noticed that approximately 80% of the "Accent Lavender Blue" impatiens have poked up above the surface. We're still waiting on the other varieties, but expect them to sprout soon, as well.

Once these have all sprouted, I will begin a tray of nightshades. 8 - 10 weeks before last frost is about the time to begin all of our tomatoes, eggplant, and chile peppers, as well as various types of basil.

I'm still working on a plan for our garden expansion. Right now, I'm thinking that we use the three existing beds as usual, and use last year's (failed) lowest bed for shade veggies (e.g. greens, onions, beans, some herbs). Since the ash tree is dying, I'd like to reshape that flower bed, and move it slightly east. Then I want to build a pergola or grape arbor immediately south of that -- it would serve as a seperator between our "lawn" and our "garden" areas, and would make a lovely seating area where we can enjoy the fuits of our labors (both figuratively AND literally!). South of that, immediately to the west of the existing garden and north of the crabapple, I envision several trellises for vines and climers. This would act as a natural fence for the garden area, provided I can space it in such a way as to not shade things out.

And so it begins...

Gardening season 2011 has officially begun.

Monday, February 21, Presidents' Day, Nicole planted four complete flats of Impatiens seeds, along with a few blue Forget-Me-Nots. (See our new greenhouse setup above!)

We are now approximately 12 weeks out from the last spring frost, and in looking through the rest of our seeds, I think it's too early to plant veggies yet, but it won't be long now. By the time Cole's flowers germinate and get moved off of the heating tray, it should be about time to start at least the peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, and basil.

The garden plan for the year is somewhat tricky. We've learned some lessons from last year (namely: some veggies can be grown in partial shade, but corn and squash are not among them), so I'm going to try rotating our crops to take advantage of what precious little sunlight we have. I also want to expand the garden again, but we need help figuring out a few things before we begin building (e.g. call JULIE and figure out where our septic field lies).

I know that most of the new area will be for viners and climbers, so I'm also looking into trellis options. That ugly iron grate currently screwed into the dining room wall should make for a superb, heavy-duty trellis, but we'll need more than just that. Also, I have no idea where we are going to have space to put it!