Getting to the root of the problem

Digging out the north raised bed was a huge ordeal.  The Pippin apple tree next to the bed has spent the last 3 years excitedly exploring the bed with its roots and sucking out all those rich, juicy nutrients.  Last year's tomato harvest was pitiful, and now I know why.  It also explains why the tomato closest to the tree would always die... that side was nearly a solid knot of the bossy roots. 

A bed's worth of apple tree roots.  Uh, plus a random parsley.

We had to get in there with tree branch clippers, but Ryan violently chopped most of it with a shovel.  I would highly recommend the shovel method if you need to work out some angst against those soul-sucking roots.  Here's hoping that the landscape fabric we used is strong enough to deter the tree roots!  We picked a really tough fabric, but theoretically you only need a mild barrier because the wee baby rootlets will turn around when they meet the resistance.  And here's hoping that the apple doesn't get too mad at me.  I fertilized her around her drip line at the same time in an attempt to draw her attentions elsewhere. 

I got 99 plants and the greens are fun.

Forgive the punny title... but I really did I plant 99 things!

Pungent bowls of potential yum.

The Total: 

• 70 garlic cloves
• 27 pearl onions
• 2 sage plants (moved from my pots to raised bed)

I bought a big bag of garlic from Costco a month or so ago, knowing that I would be planting all of the largest cloves.  Many have begun to sprout, so they look nice and fertile.  I am totally aware that it is about 4 months too late to plant the garlic because they won't produce large roots now, and that the pearl onions aren't the right type of onion set to plant.  But garlic and onions are cheap enough at the store... what I really want are the greens! 

Soon there will be a row of garlic along the backs of 3 raised beds, and a wee forest of onion near the mint and sages.  Even in years with the worst of gardening luck, the garlic and onion greens have never let me down. 

You know, I should just make it a round 100.  I must have another garlic clove in here somewhere...


Grow some.  Doooooo it.  You know you want to.  

Exposed: the raised bed guts

Garden stuff has been coming along slowly due to all the rain... wet soil is heavy soil, so we've been trying to wait.  We've had a bit over 4.5 inches this month, which is already more than the last 5 Januaries combined!

That didn't stop Ryan from totally emptying, lining, and refilling Raised Bed #2 though.

He was shirtless out there... but sorry, those photos are just for me.  

A bigger project awaits.

Do you see how the rock wall is kind of, um, hollow on the inside?  The outsides and the tops are lovely, but they are almost only supported by dirt and luck.  This is why stones keep falling out of the 2 taller beds which are even thinner and in worse shape... and the company who did it (and who also failed to line the beds that were right next to hungry fruit tree roots!) will not fix it.  We're leaving those 2 taller beds for late summer and will likely have a different company take them apart and re-stack them with mortar and extra rocks to keep them safe.  

We will probably just patch up the shorter two beds (which Ryan finished lining) with some sort of filling between the rocks since they are stable enough to lean on.  In the meantime, Torin isn't allowed around those tall wobbly beds, but they will be useful for growing some tasty greens and herbs since they are in shadier spots.

THE PLANTING CAN BEGIN!  WHEE!!!

. 

Perfect Rice

I did it!  I finally made PERFECT rice!!!

Standing tall.

Well, it didn't taste or feel any different.  And I don't know how to reproduce the results.  But I've been told that when the rice grains stand up vertically like that, you've made perfect rice.

Yes, I am proud of myself.  Any excuse to celebrate, eh?  I do believe that I will make some special fried rice out of this.

Basil seed.

Last year I battled the basil's flowering tendencies for months, and then finally let them go to seed.  The tiny black seeds pretty much fell out before I had a chance to harvest them, so it'll be interesting to see what pops up in that raised bed!


Here is the aftermath, before I rip out the dead plants.

Spent basil.

I left them up all winter because they were kind of pretty in a desolate way.


Did you harvest any seed last year?

Random Iris

An awesome friend gave me a ton of random iris bulbs from her garden, and I stuffed them in the ground in random corners that have random light and water levels.  The goal was to see where irises will grow with absolutely no help from me (besides the existing automatic watering and some liquid fertilizer).  Plus, I love irises.

The first one is up!

Peeking out from under the apple tree. 

The friend says that some come up later than others, so it looks like I may get to enjoy seeing new leaves pop up until spring.  Sprouting is my favorite part of gardening.

Are any of your bulbs springing to life yet?

Volunteers.

There are a few other things in the garden... Bed #4 has a billion flat-leaf parsley seedlings and a few bull's blood beets that overwintered.

Mmmm, bull's blood beet leaves are my favorite salad addition.  I don't grow them for the roots! 

It looks like a bunch o' weeds, but it's all edible greens... and reds.

Has anything randomly popped up in your garden yet? 

Dinosaurs in the garden.

We have one lonely dinosaur kale which made it through the winter and started regrowing... but out of all of them that I have ever planted, this is the first one that actually looks happy.  I guess neglect is good?

Rawr.

It's a good start to the garden, and such a pretty dark blue-green.  It totally counts as 2016 produce.

Dig, dig, dig.

Today we are tackling Raised Bed #1... digging up the soil, cutting out tree roots, laying down some landscape cloth, filling it back up, and amending the soil. 

Ok, I'll be totally honest here... so far Ryan has done 100% of the work.  I have just been watching the baby and cleaning up holiday stuff and setting up for the indoor seed-starting station.

Oh hey, pipes.

This is not a small project. 

That is a LOT of soil.

So far, only one cutworm was found!  This is excellent news.  Usually this one and Bed #2 are swimming with them. 

We've decided that this year we'll only do the 2 beds that are the most affected by the tree roots.  The other two are tall enough that we probably have another year or two before we feel compelled to do anything about it... and because they are so tall, we will need to figure out how we want to support the rocks without the soil in there before the work begins.  The rocks have been periodically falling out anyway, because the landscapers cut corners and did a bad job... we will probably have to stuff some grout in there. 

2016's preliminary planting plan

I made something beautiful today.

Key:

• Light Blue:  plant seed indoors
• Dark turquoise:  transplant outdoors
• Orange:  plant directly outdoors (includes succession planting every 2 or so weeks)
• Green:  care for plant
• Purple:  theoretical harvest time

Here you can see each type of plant (down the left) and each month (across the top).  I organized the list of plants by the first times they would be sprouted indoors and sown outside, so that they are easier to keep track of across the year.  As you can see by the crazy amount of purple, with luck there should be at least a few things for harvest at all times.


Click to Enlarge:

*wipes a tear from her eye*  So... beautiful...

I should mention that I used the info from smartgardener.com, now called Zukeeni, plus my frost times, to come up with the timing.  I put it into a google drive document so that I can access it on my ipad as well as the computer. 

Baby steps

First things first:

Yesterday was my birthday, and Torin took his first steps!  It was an excellent birthday present.  Today he got his first canine tooth, and bit me enough times to remind me that my birthday was over, haha.


The New Year's varieties:

The order for new seeds to try included:

• Cucumbers
• Boston pickling
• Mexican sour gherkin
• Greens
• Arugula
• Purslane
• Collards
• Crimson forest bunch onion
• Wild thyme
• Peppers
• Chinese 5 color
• Biquinho
• Tomatoes
• Black vernissage
• Gold rush currant
• Sweet 100
• Sungold
• Squash
• Crookneck early golden summer squash
• Misc
• Sun spot dwarf cola sunflower
• Rat's tail raddish (you eat the pods)
• Golden sweet snow pea

I went with some yellow summer squash and peas because I have a bit of a problem with skipping over a few of them when they match the green leaves.  The veggies get too mature so they are less pleasant to eat, and the plant thinks it is done producing offspring.  Hopefully the bursts of color will make the veggies too obvious for me to ignore, and they should also be more exciting for Torin.

The wild thyme is to test for growing as a ground cover or between stepping stones... we may still cover the lawn with it, and growing from seed will be infinitely cheaper than buying plants.


Tattle Time:

Also, Ryan is an enabler.  I tried to get him to help me narrow down the list, and it just made me end up adding on a couple of tomatoes, another hot pepper, a pickling cucumber, and a toddler-sized sunflower.