Fruits, flowers and bugs, oh my!

The plants are growing! Each day, David and I walk around our little backyard garden, inspecting for intruders, new flowers and growth.  We were happy that we had a few days off from watering, but are back to watering each evening and dreaming about soaker hoses and drip irrigation for during the summer.  That, and building bamboo supports for the plants, are high up on David’s project list for this summer.

Here’s a look at the back yard garden, formerly known as the morning glory jungle, now:

The aisles and edges need more mulch (as well as the front yard flower beds), which David picked up yesterday and I’ll be spreading today. We’ve used the firepit once, and plan to use it again soon!  The squash and melons are slowly getting planted in the front right bed.  I may end up directly seeding the Malali watermelon, as the two seeds that I planted in the nursery have yet to germinate.

Here’s the temporary nursery at the end of our driveway.  The cage on the right has our praying mantis cocoon, which we check daily. The warm driveway and full sun has been working well for the plants. We have been anxiously checking the perennial flowers that we started from seed.  This week the Munstead Lavender, Chamomile, and Verbena have finally started to get bigger!  The purple tomatillos, eggplants and tomatoes are nearly ready for planting- we’d like them to get a little bigger before they go into the beds.  The squash on the front right, buttercup, was planted right after I took this picture!

I hacked backed this flower and posted a picture of it in my first tour blog. It’s great to see the plant recovering nicely and shooting out lots of new leaves.

The plants all around the garden are growing bigger and bigger, and slowly climbing the fence.

The sweet peas are climbing quickly, but have yet to produce flowers. I’ve been training the strays to go up the fence as well, and to fill in the back corner.

On the other side of the fence, the asparagus beans and scarlet runner beans are slowly getting closer to being climbers. I know that once they get a little bit bigger, they’re going to take off! We’re already drooling thinking about our fresh green beans and canned dilly beans.

The bush beans are growing rapidly and starting to look like flowers are coming!  I planted tricolor beans, and am excited to see the purple stem on this purple bean plant.

The Safari zucchini, pattypan and crookneck squashes are all full of buds!  David and I love eating squash blossoms and are hoping to start having male flowers that we can pick and stuff with goat cheese.  Well, I want to pick and stuff them with goat cheese and he wants to let the plants keep their flowers and buy the blossoms at the farmer’s market. Either way, we’re keeping an eye on these buds and hoping to see them blossoming soon!

The tomatillos are getting taller and taller and are now full of flowers!  We haven’t put cages, or any sort of support on these guys yet, and it’s probably time soon.  This year we planted two tomatillo plants (and have two more purple ones in the nursery).  In the past, we have both had just one tomatillo plant and very little success with fruit.  I recently read that the plants need to be in pairs, as cross pollination is necessary.  We’re hoping that we get plenty of tomatillos this year, and have enough to make jars of salsa verde for the year.

Our four cucumbers are all growing well.  I as a little worried they’d be eaten by slugs, like last year, but they seem to have cleared that hurdle. This one, in the back yard, looks like it’s waiting for something to climb up.  We were planning on having them trail on the ground, but it may be worth trellising it.  Check out that tendril!

In the front yard, the peppers are full of flowers!  We ended up with an extra pepper plant that we didn’t mean to buy, so we will be finding creative ways to use cayenne peppers.  The thing is, I don’t like spicy food.  I’ve always loved growing hot peppers because the plants are so beautiful when they are full of colorful peppers.  I’ve never really enjoyed eating them.  Perhaps our friends like hot peppers and will take some off our hands once these little suckers get going.

Speaking of suckers… I’ve been pulling suckers from the tomato plants and shaping them as they fill their cages. And this week I discovered…

BABY TOMATOES!!

The Indigo Rose is already showing her purple. And she’s tall, lanky and has a glorious purple trunk! She also has lots more flowers coming.

We also have baby San Marzano’s!  David and I have been finding ways to use up the last of the sauce we stored in our freezer this past year.  After we use the last bag, we still have about 5 jars.  I have a feeling we’ll easily replenish our stock.  We also plan to dry, and roast them, and I’ve been looking into canning whole tomatoes also. Can’t wait until they come in and I’m on summer vacation (without graduate school or a wedding to plan like last summer).

The tomato plants are healthy, and host to many insects.

This crane fly (I think) was found resting on a tomato leaf.

I spotted a few of these little bugs on our flowers.  Anyone know what they are?  I grabbed my bug book, and know that they are true bugs. I hope that they are minute pirate bugs, as those are beneficial but I’m not sure about that being a correct ID. I really do need a better Insect ID book, as Peterson’s and my college textbook aren’t helping too much.  Suggestions for what these critters are, and for books, are welcome!

All of the tomatoes are doing really well, except for this one:

The Riesentraube has been battling insects and possibly disease.  I am a little embarrassed for the plant to show it to you, looking like this, but I feel that I must be honest about how the plants are doing. We’re keeping an eye on it and hope that it recovers, but we’re not sure what we can do to help.

It has neighbors that are getting munched also.

Most of the basil is looking great, and a few are even preparing to flower.  Our first batch of pesto will likely be prepared next weekend. This plant is the one that has made the most “friends” and hopefully having it next to the tomato is helping protect the tomato.

On the other side of the raised bed, the radish tops are also getting eaten. We have three different types of radish growing, and I’ve also been bringing some home from school.  I’m learning to like radishes, which David thinly slices into my salad.  He’s happy to eat the rest of them.

These fast growing white icicle radishes are a hybrid from Johnny’s.  I just ordered more white radishes from Baker Creek and can’t wait to plant them!

Hope you enjoy your harvest!

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Spring brings gardens and blogs

I’ve become obsessed with my new garden.  I think about it as I walk by plants during the day.  I come home from work and wander around, looking for things to plant or weed.  I stare at my seedlings, silently begging them to grow faster.  And I’m getting more and more excited each day!

This time of the year marks the waiting.  Most of the veggies are planted in the ground, and the waiting game has begun.

So I will begin this blog with pictures of our 275 square feet of bed space and all the baby plants that are within.

I plan to keep you all posted of the growth, discovery and great food.

The tour must always begin at the compost bins, built January 2013.

This 7ft x 8 ft garden bed is closest to the compost bin in our new lasagna garden beds. The beds were built with layers of cardboard, grass clippings, straw, manure, dried leaves, dirt, mulch and compost. I’ll write a post about creating this garden out of a patch of morning glories in the future!  Growing here will be LOTS of bush beans (four varieties), cucumbers, acorn squash, tomatoes, tomatillos, chard, arugula, radishes, basil, borage and marigolds.

A close up of the tri-color beans. I love that the stems are different colors too!

Already in love with growing borage.  I’ve never grown this plant before and I’m so glad to be growing it.  Dave and I have been studying up on companion planting and really want to attract good bugs back to the garden. The space formally was a monocrop of morning glories (which the hummingbirds and moths loved) but we’ve found that we have more bad critters eating our stuff than good. Last spring was spent squishing snails and getting slugs drunk.

Speaking of bad bugs, something’s been eating our transplanted chard.  We had hearty plants growing in the side yard, and they had to be moved to make space for the fancy tomatoes in the side yard.  These were the first plants in the bed, and seem to be the first that our hungry cabbage moth caterpillars are eating.  I found a caterpillar the day before this photo, but let it live since we have so much chard, and it was about to pupate.  We have relatively few cabbage moths around, and we kinda like to have them fly by.

As I was inspecting the basil, I noticed these ants communicating with each other.  Upon closer inspection, it looks like they’re passing something.

This growing apricot tree was a stick when it was planted in January.  That’s another story.  Currently this bed holds the apricot tree, irises, daffodils, sweet peas, zinnias, yarrow and nasturtiums (possibly).  This will be our perennial section and we have more herbs and flowers in our nursery!

Yellow yarrow, I think.  I was certain this plant was yarrow while it was sitting neglected and dried out half under a trailer at school.  I fished it out of the spider webs and weeds, and added water.  Knowing yarrow is a hardy plant, my hope is to have lovely flowers to frame the stepping stone. This picture was taken less than an hour after planting.

This pot just got moved from the front yard to the back yard, and then I chopped off all of the flowers and branches!  It has small, pink, mini daisies.  I love this plant when it flowers but loathe deadheading it.  However, I loved that every time that I deadhead it, it set buds shortly thereafter.  I almost threw this plant in the compost last summer; David stopped me. This year, while it was looking sad and in need of deadheading, I decided to take a risk and prune it way back.  I wonder if I should have done that in winter rather than spring. Notice that there are a few little buds and leaves on the branches. Seemed to me that this was the perfect time to prune heavy.

This will be the eggplant bed with beans growing up the fence.  As you can tell from the morning glories peaking out from the garage on the right, the fence was previously covered in vines. We knew we needed something that would grow quickly and up the fence (although we toyed with jasmine, as it’s a flower that has happy memories for me and David) and we thought about Scarlet Runner Beans.  We tabled that idea for next year, as we had three types of pole beans in our seed stash, and opted to plant Asparagus Yard Long Beans, Kentucky Wonder, and Purple Pod Pole Beans. The Asparagus Beans sprouted, see below, but the others never appeared.  As I watered, I noticed that there were stalks for the KyWonder and PurplePod but they had be beheaded! My guess is that there are snails back here (or something that lurks in the morning glories behind the garage).  The next day, I went to work and asked our school gardener if he had any Scarlet Runner Bean seeds, and he gave me 30! Now we wait.

Just like we’re waiting for the eggplants to grow big enough to transplant. The nursery had a slow start this year, and next year we’re building an indoor area just like this grow light shelving made from IKEA shelving.   Currently the bed holds, pole beans, zuchinni, crookneck squash, pattypan squash, Delicata squash, Red Kuri squash, nasturtiums, borage and marigolds.

Young Asparagus Beans growing next to the fence.

Rosie enjoys this stretch of the yard, as do the two cats who love that we made a litterbox just for them!

This area is about 80 square feet and it will be the next area we’re expanding to. There is no irrigation here and we didn’t even have a hose that reached this area until a couple months ago. Last summer David spread wet newspaper here, then covered it with mulch (thank you Pinterest!).  I weeded the thick grass from this area (thank you free city mulch with grass seeds!) and used the grass in the layers of the lasagna beds.

The vision of this bed is still forming, as we don’t want to spend a lot of money and I have access to lots of cuttings at work. At first we were going to fill it with succulents and rocks. Then I was thinking a giant row of lavender, native sages and perhaps grasses.  When David and I were at Tomatomania! at the Grow Native Nursery, we got really excited about native grasses.  But they were expensive.

The planning stage continues.

And this blog will continue in the side and front yard with a second part.