Trying to get a head start

You know it's finally spring when Costco has the spring bulb packages for sale. Actually a mix of bulbs and dormant perrenial plants. I couldn't help myself, I had to buy some this year even though my purchase last year was a failure. The double-decker coneflowers that I planted in the front never came up. I think the plants went bad sitting inside while I waited for the weather to warm up sufficiently. Obviously I waited too long, and I think the hallway was probably too warm. I overcompensated last year by seeding regular purple cone flowers over the top of my plants and some of those did come up so I'll still have some this year. I really want some white cone flowers, and almost bought some at Costco last night, but I held off. Partially because I didn't want the other plants in the mixed selection bag, and because I have a neighbor/friend who has a really big white coneflower and said I could have some. Free plants are best. I really hope that starting this year I might have enough established plants to start offering something in trade. Everything looks so barren still, but I know it's filling out. And, I should be getting some of that third-year growth spirt on some of the plants.

It may seem crazy but one of my new plants is a seedum. Normally I wouldn't buy these because they are so easy to divide and get from someone else's yard (like my mother's) but this one is new and exciting. It's a new variety called Elsie's Gold and is really similar to the Autumn Joy, but has variegated leaves. I think I'll plant all the little plants in the package, and once they come up and look established, I'll give away half of them. I don't need 10 plants, but 5 or so will help fill in some gaps (like the one left after the plant theft of '09). I love how low maintenance they are and they're one of the few things in the front left standing after the first freeze. This winter's super early hard freeze actually did bad things to everything including the autumn joy seedum, but that is rare.

With the mild winter we have been having on the west coast - which is only fair after the 93+ of snow last year - I've already been out and pruned and started weeding the yard. There were still some frozen patches, I though they were just rocks at first, but I got a good head start. Of course when I say "I" I mean that I was out there, but had some help from my family last weekend too.

2010 Plans for the outdoors:

Font

Put in gravel pathway across front yard.

Plant more groundcover along front path and driveway.

Till parking strip, remove lots-o-rocks, replant w/ ? (the vinca vine is doing okay, but I"m impatient. If it was all filled in I think I'd be happy but there is still too much room for the weeds.

Back

Finish fence on south side of yard.

Rototill the entire back yard.

Install patio, pathway, planting beds according to plan.

Seed lawn area w/ drought tolerant no-mow grass. (You stil have to mow it 1-2 times a year to eliminate the seed heads in mid-summer.)

Plant vegetable garden.

Ambitious

Build chicken coop.

Build garden fence.

Remove concrete back steps / re orient and re build wood steps.

Build fence on n. side of yard.

Spring hasn't even started yet, but I look at my list of plans and feel overwhelmed, and behind schedule.

Read More

Garlic planting

This spring when we were shopping for annual vegetable seeds I grabbed a head of garlic that was by the register. I thought I'd give it a go. Apparently around here garlic really needs to be planted in the fall (like right now) to get a head start on the growing season. That head of garlic I grabbed in the spring was planted, but wasn't doing very well when it was accidentally tilled this summer. After my experiment with this Sunset vegetable garden plan (it looked like a good idea) we're going back to raised beds in the garden. In fact they are the same raised beds I built 4 years ago. I went back to the old house and disasembled them this summer. They look so big in this backyard. I'll probably need to make new ones in a few years as these are already starting to rot out (they were made from 20+ year-old fence panels). This year we're also going to start the garlic in the fall. I don't know the exact varieties. The bulbs are purple, there are two different kinds, and they are a hardneck variety. That means we'll get the garlic scapes in the spring and I can make more of that pesto. Remember, I'm still excited that anything will grow for me.

UPDATE: I started this post a month ago, planning on getting some pictures when I planted the garlic. Well it's in, no pictures, and I still haven't found mulch for the bed which means they've probably already frozen and died. We've had several severe freezes and a few light snows. It might snow more this weekend too.

I started installing the new porch light but now it's been 2 weeks and I'm not done yet. Of course that means we've gone 2 weeks with NO porch light - and i'm one of those people who leave them on all night. For me, dark houses make an unfriendly neighborhood and that can lead to an unsafe neighborhood. I guess it's time to stop procrastinating and take that trip through the knee wall in the attic (I have to install a new junction box in the porch ceiling). I took some pictures of the porch project so maybe I'll finish and get those up this weekend.

Read More

And then there were two

On Tuesday morning I took the dog out for a walk before work and I noticed a shallow hole in my front yard. It looked like a dog had been digging in the yard (or an army of squirrels). When I looked down I saw a lot of dirt on the sidewalk and it was the good dirt, the birthday present dirt* so I kind of scraped it back to the yard best I could with my flip-flop, then continued with our morning walk.

When Yoshi and I round the block from the other direction I happened to look at the yard again and noticed that one of my plants was GONE! That hole, that's where the plant was. I had three 'Autumn Joy' Sedums in the front about 8" apart in a triangle and now, there are just two of them. First, "who steals plants from people's yards?" Really, who just pulls an entire plant up? They aren't little anymore either, about 8" across and a foot tall. Then, "Who steals 'Autumn Joy' Sedum?" It's a great plant for zone 5 (where we live) and probably a lot of other places too. It's easy to grow, easy to maintain, looks cool in the winter, and easy to propagate. Just take a shovel to the plant every few years for a whole new plant. Ask anyone with an established clump and they could give you some without disturbing their landscape. So, people give this plant away, but someone stole one from my yard.

There isn't much I can do about the thievery. Nothing else had gone missing, and I can easily replace the missing clump by dividing one of my remaining ones. But it's the principle. It's things like this that make you want to put a fence up around the front yard.

*2 years ago my parents gave my a truck load of dirt for my front yard to amend the dead soil under the compacted lawn.

Read More

Autumn

We are starting to harvest the tomatoes and zucchini and even a few peppers from the garden already. Earlier this summer the one raspberry cane that survived transplanting and our heavy snow load produced a surprising number of berries and the new canes are already over 7 ft tall. I definitely need to build something to contain them for next summer and maybe prune the excess cane height to a more manageable 6ft. The thornless black berry, which looked so sad last summer, actually survived also and even has some berries coming to maturity right now. I'm glad the blackberry season is 6 weeks after the raspberry season. It makes it more manageable to harvest, eat and store the berries.

I've done little work in the garden during the summer except water and watch the yellow pear tomato plant grow to monstrous proportions. In fact my experiment of staking and tying the tomatoes(instead of using cages) this year - failed. Once the plants started setting fruit the heavy plant just pulled the ties down. I'm sure they would have pulled the flimsy wire cages down too, so next year some sort of wood tomato trellis is in order. I'd really like to build this pretty one that I found directions for, but I couldn't afford the cost, or space to build one for each tomato plant. Maybe someday I'll have one, as an accent, but build a more communal trellis system that can accommodate 6 plants at a time.

I've learned some lessons from our guerrilla garden experiment this year.
1) The hand-me-down tomato trellis has some engineering flaws that will help me build a more successful one next year. The first rung was only an inch or two off the ground so the second rung was too high to tie the plant to until it had already started creeping across the ground horizontally. Even now the tomatoes aren't tall enough to reach the third rung but have already started producing and getting heavy and our of control.
2) If we use the space again next year, I definitely have to use some sort of weed barrier/mulch because even after removing all the weeds when the plants were young, new weeds appeared and the vegetables are all much to large to effectively weed around. Some sort of climbing weed is strangling my eggplants.
3) The sun is great in the vacant lot, but it is hard to water evenly (especially without also watering the weeds). A soaker hose is a definite must next year. I just wasn't prepared this year with the proper materials - because I procrastinated - and the poor watermelon and pumpkin plants are paying for it.

My sister was visiting this week and I got to spend some time with her on Saturday (my only day off from work & the theatre). She gave me two of her handmade glass cloches for the garden because they weren't so effective in her patio garden setup. I have to figure out what I'm going to try them out on next spring. Maybe direct seeded basil? I tried to start basil inside this year, but right after our last frost date we had a week of scorching temperatures and the immature basil seedlings just fried in a day. So if I can get them started a little earlier outside, maybe they'll be stronger when the rouge weather hits.

Katie also asked about growing garlic, specifically how you get the garlic scapes. This year was the first time I've tried both onions and garlic - and both failed. I didn't water consistently, some of the onion starts got mouldy before I got around to planting them, and guess what, you are supposed to plant garlic in the fall! Well I know better this year. I did a little reading about growing garlic and found two great resources for our area (one in Hood River, and the other in Canada). First, I found that only the hardneck varieties of garlic produce garlic scapes. Softneck garlic is the kind you normally find in the grocery store. So if you want garlic scapes, plant the hardneck varieties, plus it allows you access to garlic that is harder to find. I don't know about you, but that is one of the main reasons I grow food. oh, and harvest the scapes when they've made 1-2 complete loops (but before the flower opens).

I pledge to be on top of things this fall and next spring so the new raised beds are built, cover crops are planted and garlic sown.

Read More

...and now it's June.

I’ve been spending more time outside now that the weather’s nice, although it’s been a little warmer than I prefer. Normal high temp should be 70 degrees, and we’ve been hitting 80-87 in the last week. But all the plants are in the ground for the year. I even planted all my seeds last night after work, some annuals and some perennials. I’m never confident that the seeds will come up, so it’s extra exciting when they do. The purple double coneflowers that I got from Costco this spring had a 20% survival rate. I actually surprised that the one did survive since I’d resigned myself to the complete failure of that planting. I keep thinking I should take pictures of the yard to document it’s progress, but never do. I can say there’s a lot more plants now than there was before and most seem to be doing fine. Remembering to water is important, of course. I’ve buried soaker hoses on both sides of the house and the parking strip, using a sprinkler in the front and hand watering the vegetable patch. I just got a micro irrigation kit from my mom and I’m really excited to set it up in the vegetable garden and the front yard. I’ll still have to attach the hose and set the timer, but I think the quality and coverage will be so much better. Right now I find it hard to water the corners of the yard without completely soaking the sidewalk.

I have a lot of projects I want to work on, and just found a new one today. But I need to prioritize. I started the back yard fence a month (or more) ago and I’m still not done digging all the holes. The hole are the hardest part. I expect installing the posts will only take part of a day and attaching the wood will take a day. Darn posts are taking a lot more time. The most I got done in one day was three holes and I had to quit because I was feeling faint and a little wobbly. It was the heat, not the physical exertion, but I’m still only 50% done. Other planting activities have taken priority because if I didn’t get the food garden started we wouldn’t have gotten anything before the frost comes in the fall with our short growing season. Now that the plants are in though, it’s back to the fence. Except for the projects I still need to complete to get our 50% kitchen remodel done on schedule.

The new cabinets are done and primed, but need to be painted. They’ll be installed the week of the 22nd, so everything has to be ready by then.

• Paint Cabinets (2 coats paint, 2 coats poly)
• Install new 20Amp outlet for microwave (we will be able to use the toaster and the microwave at the same time if we want!)
• Board up doorway to create new broom closet ( I keep forgetting about this task)

Read More

Cook & Clean

Not so much cleaning as yard work (gardening?). I made a simple lamb stew, with very little effort this week. Before we went on the weekend hardware store trip (1pm) I threw 2 small packages of lamb stew meat (neck bones) into the crock pot with a bay leaf and covered 2/3 with water. I turned it to low and we left. This weekend was the first nice weather we've had so far this year so I felt both obligated and determined to get stuff done outside. If a fit of laziness I got nothing done on Saturday, so Sunday was my last chance. The lumber yard is closed Sundays, so we went to Lowes to peruse the fencing materials (super disappointing). I did however get one potted plant marked 1/2 off (a pink heather plant) new garden clippers that promise to stay sharp 5x's longer, a spading fork (i broke both pitch forks on the rocks in the yard already) 1 cu ft bag of compost, and some bright colored string for marking out fence levels and such. We made a trip to the new Winco (grocery store like Costco and Walmart in one) and stopped at the Tacos Tumbras to grab some tacos (real tacos, not american tacos). The last stop was the NW seed & pet for the annual seed purchases, a mix of flowers and food stuffs. I also noticed the price for bagged compost was much better here (of course it was) so I'll come back for a bunch more when we plant the vegetable plot. We still have to wait 5 weeks to plant seeds outside so maybe I can get some started inside this year.

After we returned home I was determined to get some stuff done outside because it was so nice and still so light (~4:30pm). I cut down a 10 section of our pointless wire fencing (it doesn't keep anything in or out of the yard) and made a 3' diameter compost bin. I moved the fritillary to the front yard and divided it in 2 sections in front of the clematis to hide the ugly parts and shade the roots. We also planted the heather, some purple coneflower plants I got as Costco a while back, and moved the current bushes from the back to the front.

Of course after all this, it was 7pm when I got back inside to finish dinner. I chopped up onions, carrots, potatoes and celery and sauteed the onions and celery before adding the rest of the vegetables to a big pot on the stove. After skimming the fat off the top of the crock pot and removing the bay leaf, I added the broth contents to the stove pot along with 1 can of minced tomatoes. I let this simmer for 20ish minutes to cook the carrots and potatoes. While the vegetables were cooking I scraped off the meat from the neck bones. Uh, don't do this. It's a pain in the but and the meat is mostly fatty and not worth it. IN the future I'll probably pick up some shoulder chops at the same time and chop and throw those in with the veggies to cook (and just toss the neck bones meat and all when you're done with them). After adding some salt and pepper, it was done! Because the bones simmered so long all the good collagen stuff came out and thickened the stew and gave it that buttery mouth feel.

It really was easy and I even got some more work done in the yard at the same time.

Read More

Spring Cometh...almost

I did yard work 2 weekends in a row. Both times it rained. This Sunday it started snowing again. Just little bits, but after spending several hours in the rain digging dirt, moving rocks and transplanting bulbs, I wasn't going back out in the snow. So I didn't get the compost cage built yet but I have a big plastic bag full of yard waste just waiting to be composted. Last weekend I decided the grape arbors had to go. They were both falling down and really the vines were just out of control. Using only a small pair of clippers and a 2.5 lb sledge hammer (I found it faster than the hammer, which would have sufficed) I reduced everything to a pile of decrepit lattice and a separate pile of grape vine branches. I left the stumps in the ground because I don't want to completely remove the grapes, just redirect them. Hopefully the root system will use its energy to send up new suckers that I can train and control.

After spending some time in the back yard dismantling the grape arbor I realized that the roaming neighborhood dogs spend plenty of quality time in our yard over the winter. I don't remember it being as bad last year, but there was a lot of decomposing dog poo left when the snow melted. I realized that in order to keep our vegetable garden safe and "clean" the fence needs to go up now.

I've been putting off the fence project. 'Cause fences are big, and hard (well digging the holes in our rocky soil is hard) and procrastination is easy. But the fence is important and will allow us to use the back yard and grow things other than dead grass. I have plans. Plans that involve a lot of digging. Step 1: Build fence. Step 2: Plant Vegetable Garden.

Read More

Introducing Ryan Jr.

Surprise! I thought Saturday was going to be a lazy rainy day, until my dad showed up at the house with a gas-powered sod cutter.



A week or so ago my mom and I attacked the parking strip in front of the house with spades and removed 8-10 linear feet of sod. It was hot, and the dogs were antsy and I stopped every 8-10 minutes to rest or pull the dogs apart and to top it off I got sunburned in the one spot I forgot to put sunscreen - the front of my neck. I knew a gas-powered sod cutter would make short work of the lawn, but they're big, super heavy and noisy and I wasn't sure I could deal with all that. Not to mention the logistical transportation nightmare. My dad just wanted the project (at least the sod removal part) done with and after an hour of the two of us pushing and pulling the monster around the front (and the back of the back) yard we were. The next few hours my mom, dad and I carried all that sod to the side of the house and placed it dirt side up over the grass/weeds in the adjoining vacant lot. It rained the entire time and it was dirty work but look at the results. A beautiful yard of dirt!

So far that's all it is, dirt, and bad dirt at that. It just crumbled in my hands as I lifted the sod. Even though it was raining, and had been raining on and off all week, the dirt 2 inches down was bone dry. Just shows how important a long soak can be for your plants/grass. My birthday present from my parents last year was a truck full of dirt for the new yard so after that is delivered and tilled into the existing soil we should be able to fill the yard with the perennials and groundcover. Maybe I haven't mentioned how much I hate front yard lawns yet. I hate mowing something that I never use, isn't decorative, and something that requires that I water it with a sprinkler that has to be moved every few hours. I admit that I let large sections of our previous lawn turn yellow last summer because

1. Grass that isn't watered grows slower, so I mow it less.
2. I couldn't stomach leaving that water running like that.
3. I'm kind of lazy.

Lawn-alternative front yards are definitely still the minority but there are a few in my neighborhood. One in particular I have admired since before we moved in. It turned green before anyone's lawn did, it has year-round color/texture, and it doesn't have to be mowed. A number of the plants have to be cut back after their blooming season is over, or at the end of winter, but for me 10 minutes cutting tulip leaves to the ground is still better than 30 minutes pushing a mower.

Read More

Taking it Back

It seems so much bigger when you measure everything in pixels but I have a plan to take my back yard from meah, to, well, functional. I really need to get a "before" picture so you can see the state of the back right now. The ramshackle grape arbor and the falling down fence thing under the other grape vine are the only structure currently. For two years I've dreamed of a patio space. A defined outdoor room if you will where I can sit in a chair in the evening and look out on the tame and orderly backyard.

I need to fix the coloring on this rendering because it looks like a lot of grass still and there really won't be much left after the plan is executed. That whole section in the back beyond the path, that's the vegetable garden area and will have no grass, just some sort of mulchness on the ground. And under the fruit trees at the left? Also, no grass. I'm not sure what to do there except maybe some more mulch? There are a lot of spring bulbs already in the ground there (tulips, crocus, and the mystery plant #2 a little yellow flower with a green ruff that came up right after the snow melted) and I"ll leave those in place. I guess I'll have to create a border between the grass and the not grass area.

We also need to fence in the yard so it is more dog friendly. I'm going back and forth on the type of fence because I can't decide how much of a privacy fence it should be. I guess I want privacy, not only from people walking by on the street, but I don't really want to look at the weedy vacant lot all the time. But I'll loose what little sun there is back there in the afternoon and that would be especially bad for the vegetable area. So now I'm leaning toward a lattice* fence. I think it would offer some privacy from the street but still allow sun.

*and just to clarify, I mean a square lattice, not the diamond lattice that is so popular now. The ramshackle arbor and the grape fence both use square lattice so I think it would go well with the historic style of the house.

Read More