A perfect little sunflower on my back porch.

Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails. Proverbs 19:21

We got a late start on planting this year but finally got the beds in and some seed started. So far we have a few strawberries left from last year and are hoping to expand those when they start sending out volunteers. The blackberry bush looks full and happy, hoping to see some fruit soon.

This year we top-dressed the beds with compost over a thick layer of newspaper. We had great success with the beds we tried this method on last year. This year, however, we're skeptical. We waited so late to plant, the weeds had already taken a good hold before we could get the work done. So, after we finished our work, we stood back and looked at the beds. This was our conversation (which you may recognize):

"Think it'll work?"

"It would take a miracle."

Other than sunflowers that self-sowed from last year's composting, this is what we started:

• corn
• cilantro
• jalapeno
• green and red bell peppers
• lettuce
• cabbage
• cucumber
• leeks (this was an accident--I don't even know what to do with leeks!)
• green onion
• tomatoes
• butternut squash
• watermelon
• pumpkin
• radishes
• carrots
• bush beans
• snap peas

We left about 1/3 of the garden fallow this year and are still totally organic. All the beds need so much work, and we need to get some grass seed started ASAP. Sadly, because my foot is still healing and I'm not really able to walk on it yet, I'm not able to get the garden/yard work done that I so love to do. But I trust this interruption to my plans and that an appointed time will be provided to do the work, as the Lord wills it.

We've done little to treat the weeds so far (other than put down newspaper and top-dress the beds which is only helping minimally). And the weeds drive me nuts! So much so that I often want to just scrap the whole thing, plant grass and go back to treating the yard to get that perfect green, thick, weedless lawn back. I can't stand it when I pull a weed and it snaps off at the base--leaving the root firmly lodged in the ground. I have to take a deep breath and remember that it will all be worth it when we're eating fresh produce (minus the miles and the unknown chemicals of store bought goods). I also love preserving what we can, giving away as much as we can, and picking the fruit in the early morning hours with whichever girl gets up early enough to discover me in the garden. That makes living with the weeds worth it in the end! My future plans include eventually converting to raised beds and treating the weeds with vinegar, so that should help some. We'd also like to start a small worm farm for fertilizer and composting.

So many plans. If the Lord wills it.

Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit." Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord will, we will live and also do this or that." James 4:13-15

Fair are the meadows . . .

This has been the best spring on record since we've been in this house. Never have I had this many tulips (which I planted 5 1/2 years ago). Never have they made it through the spring without the bunnies eating off their tops or the frost stunting their growth. This has been a nice slow progression into spring and everything promises to give a full bloom (barring a late hard frost which we may be able to avoid). My front crab apple just might open today! This week I hope to plant carrots and radishes, maybe some lettuce if I have any seeds left from last year. We'll wait for the rest after mother's day.

Fair are the meadows,
fairer still the woodlands,
Robed in the blooming garb of spring;
Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer,
Who makes the woeful heart to sing.
--from Fairest Lord Jesus, trans­lat­ed from Ger­man to Eng­lish 1873

To Garden or Not To Garden?

By the end of the season I deemed our gardening attempts a failure and declared my intentions to level it and plant grass. After some time, I'm ready to reflect on our successes and our failures and (you knew it all along) plan next season's beds.

We grew corn. And lots of it. Did I tell you that? I dreamt of how much we would eat, freeze and give away. Then one thing led to another and I waited too long to pick it. When I finally made it out early one morning with basket in hand, I was so disappointed to find it beyond eating, the kernels dried and shriveled. I hacked it down in tears and added it to the compost.

My pumpkins didn't do well either. The mini gourds grew thick vines and produced 50 or so pumpkins, but the vines of the large standard variety languished and died before the pumpkins reached full size--either too dry or too wet and the the vines rotted. I'll do more research on the subject and this coming year will only devote one bed to the experiment until I figure it out.

The watermelon flourished, slow but sure. Funny, I learned that the kids don't care much for watermelon. So maybe one one or two plants next year for me and for sharing.

I didn't care much for the variety of tomato that we choose. And freshly disgusted with the corn fiasco I left a lot unpicked. I should have made sauce but didn't have the inclination at that point. Surely a desperate desire for a real tomato in the spring, mixed with a friends favorite sauce recipe, will inspire fresh commitment and I'll plant too many plants again with renewed vigor.

The tiny sweet onions starts given to me by my dear neighbor were wonderful and I could have eaten a hundred more (do you remember what those were?). The green onions thrived in the raised box but I never even saw a start from the green peppers or the jalapenos. I didn't use enough of the rosemary, basil or thyme in my cooking but clipped every last leaf from the cilantro. I prefer to start it from seed next year, rather than a plant.

The lettuce thrived but the variety we choose turned bitter too quickly. I intend to experiment with variety until we find one we like.

Between my neighbor and I we ate every cucumber we could get our hands on.

The strawberries look promising and we can't wait to let them produce next year. If we like them we'll let the volunteers root and start a second row.

The blackberries grew happily in their new location. We watched with great hope the small stick with two leaves (called the raspberry "bush") all summer and wonder what promise it holds for the next growing season, if any.

Plans for next year:

Will not start seeds indoors (that was a complete failure)
Will top dress the beds over a layer of newspaper (maybe with some light turning of the old bed first)
More onions
One bed of pumpkins (with some research)
Corn (expanded to both sides and hopefully in neater rows)
Sunflowers (in same location)
Tomatoes (in new location)
Lettuce (new variety)
Green beans and peas
Green onion, carrots and cilantro in raised boxes
Red bell peppers
Jalapenos (another try)
Potatoes?
Cucumbers
Watermelon
Split our ornamental grass and plant around the compost bin (so I can't see it from the house)
Minor rearranging of the layout
Continue gathering rocks as a border for the beds
Learn about organic weed control and formulate a plan of attack

"Practice yourself in little things and thence proceed to greater." (Epictetus)

????

Maya found this carrot growing in the ground by the raised beds. It was so strong I had to get a shovel to dig it up. I don't even know how to explain it except to guess that it is the product of several seeds taking up root in one location. We did not eat it as the girls tried to clean it with a carrot peeler but couldn't figure out how and I was too creeped out by it to even taste it.

My Spice Cabinet

"Let your speech be always with grace,

seasoned with salt."

--Saint Paul

One of my projects this summer included cleaning out the old spices, moving them to a new cabinet, and placing them in my own jars. These are the projects that I just love but don't have much time during the school year to do. The labels on the jars aren't fancy--just scotch tape and a sharpie which is what I had in the cabinet.
I grew some of my own herbs this summer and dried them on my makeshift drying rack (an old ladder leaning against the wall in the kitchen). Today I removed the rosemary from the stems and added it to my cabinet. The cost is just pennies when compared to store bought spices. And it is such a pleasure to cook and bake when one opens the cabinet to the neatly stacked rows of little jars as opposed to the jumble of unattractive bottles and shakers that it was before. Not to mention the satisfaction of knowing just where they came from--my own back yard. I still have a few more left to move over to the pint and 1/2 pint size mason jars. I'll switch them over as I use up the old and my own herbs are dry and ready for storage.

Maddie's Pick

This is what Maddie picked for our lunch today.

And this is a full picture of the garden. We need to plant about 3 times the green beans next year.

From My Garden

I picked the last of the little yellow onions today, which made me sad. But the green onions look nearly ready to pick. I didn't get to the lettuces fast enough and they are getting a bit bitter. I'm still learning. This is just the first of the cucumbers.

This is Makenna cleaning and cutting the rainbow carrots. The purple ones are orange on the inside. I didn't thin them this year so they didn't have the room to get as big as last year. But we still have some time before we have to pick the rest.

These bright yellow sunflowers make a beautiful backdrop to the garden. I can see many of them from the back door while standing at my kitchen sink. But how much more magnificent they look on the mantle and on the bath counter! I'm a bit curious how long they'll last cut. They'd be great things to give to family and friends. And I need to do some research on harvesting the seeds. Of course I'll save some to put out for the birds. We will enjoy watching them peck the seeds out of the dried heads this fall.

I picked this enormous blackberry this morning. We've learned that the bigger the berry, the sweeter it is. They are of course good when they've been warmed by the sun, but it was a nice surprise to find it chilled by the cool night air. Which is something I'd forgotten about fresh produce: we are so accustomed to eating everything super cold from the fridge, I'm still surprised to find a cucumber or my salad lettuce at room temperature when I eat it.

And on a side note. I think I might get some actual corn this year.

Good News/Bad News

So which to you want first?

We won't have any peppers this year.

But we will have tomatoes of magnificent proportions. That is to say we will have heaps of them!

Turns out what I thought were pepper seeds were actually tomato seeds; such are the wonders of gardening.

Magic Combination

Perfect weather.

Gardening.

Jane Eyre on my MP3.

Appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is—I repeat it—a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them. The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth—to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose—to rase the gilding, and show base metal under it—to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him.
—Preface to Jane Eyre (2nd Edition) by Charlotte Brontë

Love/Hate

Maddie picks a few carrots to see if they're ready . . . not yet.

This is the part I love and hate about gardening: harvesting the produce. The first onions are ready as has been the lettuce and the cilantro for quite some time (the latter I've already used up so I need to start more seeds). The thing is, I don't want to start picking and eating because that means it'll all be gone that much sooner.

It's weird, I know.

Maybe we just need a bigger garden . . .

First Garden Blooms

We have learned a lot through our early efforts at vegetable gardening.

Lesson No. 1: the items we planted directly into the compost (without tilling it into the ground) are thriving beyond our expectations. We're getting decent results from the other plants (except the corn is a bit disappointing) but nothing to the extent of the mini pumpkins and strawberries that were started directly into the compost. We'll be making some changes regarding soil prep for sure next year.

We've also grown as many weeds as vegatables. Which we expected because we weren't as careful preparing the soil as we should have been. Nonetheless, we enjoy weeding in the cool early morning hours, checking the progress and tending to the various needs of each plant: trimming back the strawberry volunteers, thinning the carrots, weaving the blackberry vines, and so forth. We also started to spread a layer of mulch over the beds to keep the weeds at bay and to allow the soil to keep the moisture longer. I'm not sure what we'll do with this mulch when we prepare the beds this fall (till it into the ground or rake it aside?) but we'll come up with something when the time comes.

We have planted three selections of pumpkins. Strangely this huge flower is from the mini pumpkins. These are planted along the fence in that supper rich compost. I fear we've started something out back we may no longer be in control of. Everyday it's noticeably bigger than the last!

This is the first sunflower to bloom in our sunflower forest. We've planted over 100 sunflowers which sounds like a lot, but it's not nearly enough. This is a shorter flower, the others are expected to be 12-15' or taller. We also mixed in some teddy bear and some red varieties. It's rather exciting to see each one grow and wonder which type it will be when it opens.

Things are starting to grow!

You can see the radishes in the first planter box behind Charlie and I in this picture. We have carrot sprouts in the next box. And I have chives, basil, rosemary and cilantro thriving in the last garden box. Right now the third box is holding our rain gage and is waiting to be planted with some more carrots. They were so successful last year we wanted to be sure to plant them in stages this year to prolong our yield.

Behind the radish planter, you can see the compost pile. Thankfully, the neighbor closest to this heap loves gardening and understands this pile of what looks to be a lot like kitchen trash (which I guess it technically is as we daily add our egg shells and fruit and veggie scraps). It also is host to yard waste: sod, grass clippings, weeds, tree clippings and one dead pine tree (we thought maybe we'd plant a cherry tree in its place). It really isn't trash, it is a promise of things to come.

In front of me is the strawberry bed. I've been picking off the white flowers to keep them from producing this year in hopes to extend the life of the plants and to get a bigger yield next year. It's all I can do to make myself prune them back in this way, but I'm trying to be a patient gardener. We'll have to get our strawberries from the farmers market for one more year.

One of the raspberry bushes has a nice green start on it. The other still looks like a stick in the dirt. The blackberry bush is coming in strong (pictured left).

We've lost all the sunflowers that we planted from starts but the seeds we sowed directly into the ground are thriving. The girls love to take everyone to the back of the garden and tell them about the sunflower forest that will soon be growing in that very spot. I'll need to plant a few more seeds to fill in the gaps of the lost plants and then it will be a nice full bed for the kids to hide in this summer.

Like the sunflowers, what we lost in the lettuce starts we have more than made up in the seeds I planted. Again, a lesson in patience. Our efforts to get a jump start on the season by starting seeds indoors weren't successful; we were much better off waiting to plant outdoors which is a lesson I hope I won't forget next spring.

So, I think it's time to do some more planting! Today I hope to get the rest of the sunflowers planted, some additional lettuce and carrots, peppers, beans, onions, pumpkins, watermelon, and corn. Yep, we'll try some corn this year and see if we plant enough rows to get any actual corn—I'm a little skeptical so I've already considered how to double the size of this bed next year!

Krumms-O, Mother Nature-1

Well, round one of our garden saga has nearly been a complete failure. The overgrown starts that lined our dining room table for weeks forced our hand to plant too early. The poor little starts hung on through overly wet and chilly conditions but have finally faded back into the dirt (or shall I say mud). Oh, well. We were going to lose them indoors anyway, so it was worth the effort for a chance that they'd be ok outdoors. I was ready to call it quits and plant grass seed but my dear husband laughed and reminded me that to quit before we've experienced the benefits of our hard work would be foolish. And as usual, he's right. So, I guess I'll be planting the remainder of the seeds we held back later this spring when it finally warms up a bit directly into the ground. Next year I will forgo starting the seeds indoors.

We also have a family of bunnies living under our porch (who would have guessed?). The porch floor keeps them warm and dry and the invisible fence that keeps the dogs out of the flower beds also keeps the bunnies safe. So far they've hacked the petunias off at the base in the front beds and have nibbled a bit on the hostas planted at the porch foundation. I've also seen their tracks in the fine, soft soil of the strawberry beds, but, other than that, there hasn't been much else to get into. So for now I wait and mentally prepare my first move when there is more temptation at hand.

The radish seeds we planted in the raised boxes are coming in nicely. Makenna planted them in neat little rows and they don't seem at all intimidated by the cooler than normal temperatures. I haven't seen any action from the carrots in the adjacent box but I can only assume they are not far behind. The boxes have been so successful in the past that I wish we could afford the extra cost to put everything in a raised bed, but that project will have to wait for now. The strawberries are happy in their beds as is the black berry bush. We haven't seen any signs of life from the raspberries; right now they look like two sticks in the mud.

In the meantime we wait for the tomato plants to arrive and dream of that first tomato of the summer, ripened and warmed by the summer sun. I never thought I'd say this in Ohio (where spring seems to leap directly into the hot days of summer), but I can't wait for spring to be over. A little global warming doesn’t sound so bad right now.

Bed Prep

Yesterday we planned out the garden beds and raked back the straw into paths to expose the areas for planting. For now, we plan to use the straw as mulching until we come up with a better plan. In fact, nearly all of our efforts are experimental as we add practical experience to the little reading we've done. We'll use top soil to fill the beds for planting later in the weeks to come. We're being careful not to plant too early, but the starts on our dining room table are looking rather large, even after one week; we're anxious to get them into the ground.

In Bloom!

Crab apples line our street on both sides and this year they are magnificent. I taught the girls to stand under the trees and take a deep breath—now our walks take twice as long. Yesterday we found an unusual nest high in our neighbor’s crab apple. It’s hollowed out with a hole in the side rather than the basic bowl shape, open on the top. We didn’t get to see who was going in and out but we could hear the peeps of babies inside.

This is the first spring for the Rhododendron which we placed at the side of the house. It’s quite happy in its shady location.

Starting Seeds

We got a late start, but we've finally planted our seeds. Here's the list:

Cucumber
Lettuce
Red Sun Sunflower
Teddy Bear Sunflower
Sunforest Sunflowers
Green onion
Sweet onion
Jalapeño Peppers
Green Peppers
Rouge Vif d'Etampes Pumpkin
Lumina Pumpkin
Big Max Pumpkin
Watermelon
Green Beans

Tomatoes, strawberries, carrots, radishes, cilantro, chives, and rosemary will follow in a few weeks. Until then it's daily care for the seedlings to keep them moist and happy. The raspberry bush did make it through its transplant and the winter; we'll see how it produces its second year.

Next we'll amend the soil, lay out the beds and create straw paths for the kids to walk on in-between the rows so we’re ready to go when the tomatoes and strawberries arrive.

Here are the seed cups lined up in neat little rows on our dining room table. We pushed the table to the windows so the seeds might receive the most light. This is all wildly experimental as we've never gardened on this scale before (as meager as it is). I feel confident that we can get things to grow, but our biggest challenge will no doubt be those bunnies! Better start with some marigolds!

Crazy lady?

I'm very close to becoming one of those crazy ladies that cover all her flowering shrubs and trees with sheets when there's a late frost that might freeze out the buds. After my daily spring vigils hovering over each plant and making detailed notes in my garden journal as the first shoots of green emerge, I loathe waking to a frost only to watch them shrivel up before they bloom! I’m anxious to see how they fared through the night.

Humus

"One aker well compast, is worth aker three." --Tusser (1557)

...galoshes, gumboot, hip-wader, logan, mukluk, oxford, waders, waffle stompers...

Call 'em what you want, it's time to put away the snow boots and get out the garden boots! Dear husband has declared it spring, warm weather or no—we've got seeds to start and a garden soil to work!

Just don't wear 'em in the house.