If at first you don't succeed....

 If at first you don't succeed, chances are you will have great success the next time, or you may fail again,and again, and again.You may have significant heart wrenching failure where you once succeeded or you may not realize that it was entirely a FLUKE that you succeeded in the first place. Perhaps it was merely incredibly IMPOSSIBLE to fail and once you think you might have figured it all out to within some unknown margin of error, for some bizarre confounding reason  mother nature just chucks a wrench in the works mucking it all up just for fun....That is kind of where I am this week. Truth be told, I have some amazing successes in my garden right now, some disappointing performers and some sad little peas who would like to lodge a complaint about the impromptu heat wave.

I started this Memorial Day Morning perusing the kitchen garden and flower bed. I harvested more dill and cilantro to hang and what I believe to be sage and thyme. I will have to use the University of Google to confirm and  there will remain the distinct possibility that I could be seasoning some future errant meal with a happily cultivated weed. You win some, you lose some.

I noticed my nasturtium are about to flower,they have been doing "something: for so long now it will be nice to see a flower;) Sad disappointments in the oregano, marjoram, black eyed susans and lavendar department. The level of frustration is maddening, I REALLY want the flowers. I will have to buy them as small plants if I can not get something started in my future greenhouse. Meanwhile, the cosmos....oh the cosmos, are trucking along just fine on the journey to wild treedom. I am not entirely sure that pruning is doing the trick they are just tall now instead of tall and bushy. I am holding fast to the promise of the late summer pink beauties that will bloom on the godforsaken thing. I will learn to love the cosmos, I will learn to love the cosmos.

Which brings me to the garden. I started my daily assessment with the lasagna experiment and there were three distinct area with corn seedlings at least two on each hill. The dragon tongue (DT) beans likewise had sprouted and the squash as well. Let us see if they make it! The beans are getting hard hit so I will have to spray the neem again tonight and perhaps consider slug baits in that area. I suspect the slugs are the culprit though not cabbage worms. But I am addressing that later in this blog. I noticed right off the bat the the 'maters grew A LOT over night. My husband and I had taken some time yesterday evening to tie the first of the plants to the fence and now I see they all could reach the lower wire today. AND (drum roll please) One of my Mortgage Lifter's has a flower....that means TOMATOES!

The beans are just hopping along however the Taylor's are getting munched on pretty hard and they have yet to send up strong shoots, the Kentucky poles are looking really healthy and have strong shoots winding along the poles and the dragon tongue (planted about 3 weeks after the other two) are not far behind the Taylor's. Lesson here is, wait a little longer on the beans and maybe we can miss some of the pesties. I also want to note I planted savory along the bean trellis but it only took on the DT end and the DT beans are really pest free. It could be the savory or something else, I don't know. Aren't you glad it took three sentences to tell you "I don't know?" It did help the layout a bit so smile.

                                       

Aren't Perennials peaceful?

        

Cute fencing at Lowe's .69 a section this cost me about 15 bucks but it helps the boys remember where the path is and keeps a border between weed and beans;)  If I go missing I am probably  under a mound of weeds.

Pea...oh dear peas... I really had no idea August would hit in May. Suffice it to say that I am very good at growing pea plants but not very handy at growing peas. I started them early they grew big and tall they started to flower and bam...they are dying wholesale. Hence maybe I should embrace the second "try" in "try try again?" I am hoping to get at least a little bit of a real harvest from them. It is just sad to have 16 pea plants and about 10 peas. The Wando peas, a shelling pea grew the largest and succumbed the quickest. I will check again tomorrow for some hope of a harvest, If I keep pulling a few maybe that will prompt some more peas to grow.

I did harvest a few radishes today which means, I need to plant some more. I have some "brassica" seedling in the turnip area that I thinned this morning, I honestly can't remember what I planted but probably kale or more turnips. Yesterday I harvested turnips the size of baseballs. I took down one mustard bolt because the peas were trying to climb it, I have a few more to gather seed from. I inspected my cabbage and broccoli and found another joyous discovery! When you have bad news, "they" say the proper way to break it is to wrap it in good news before and after. Well Hotdam I.have.cabbage.heads.... AND BROCCOLI... (I immediately felt better about the pea-ageddon) So let's be clear, I have heads! not just leaves but actual healthy looking plants forming heads! Was it the neem oil? Was it the vigilant care and spacing of the happy plants. Was it planting all the companions, the radishes? The perennials the beneficial bugs. PRAYING, talking to my dear plants, shaking my fist at the cabbage moths, laughing hysterically at the slugs while put out the bait? I don't know and yes I suckered you again. Now look at the pretty pictures.

I had total, complete, utter and confidence shaking failure with both broccoli and cabbage last year. This year has been an unending battle of worry and internet browsing, I plucked one worm, I sprayed the neem. I pondered buying floating row covers. My plants are a tad gnawed on BUT we made it this far on faith, companion planting, neem oil and slug bait. It remains to be seen if those heads actually become something that makes it to my table. Mostly I have to get them before bolt or something else eats them, either of which I am not very good at. I am a pro and letting things go to bolt which is not so good for eating but good for gathering seeds. Perhaps learning to grow a farm in your yard is about learning what not to do! This I am all over, the self esteem digs it too.

I noticed some of my onions were blooming and no not Aussie style.  This is not ideal, it means I will not get bulbs..now I must resist the urge to pluck them. On the bright side I can collect some seed.  Every dern onion last year bloomed, at themoment I see about 5. I suspect I did not plant deep enough.  Here is an actual bulb forming to the left so there is hope..

Lettuce is still trucking (let's see what I say about that tomorrow), I have a large mesclun plant that looks like it is making a head,i have no idea if that is what it is supposed to do so I will google it this afternoon. Onward, I have quite a few squash plants and some pumpkin seedlings peeking out. The sunflowers are rockin' (see the very  paragraph about being "impossible to screw up"), my potatoes are overdue for another bag raising AND my peppers are straggling along but the heat will be their best friend.

A lily among the thorns? Or a a cuke among the peas is that  ironic?

                                            

WHEW!

All that said, it is about a hundred degrees out, I am quite certain my lettuce will bolt and  I'm praying for my cabbages which have some shade under the mustard plants. It was a marginally productive walk today and I currently have some herbs for drying, some radishes and a few peas.

I did see quite a few cabbage moths today, so I will spray the neem again. Slugs seem to be the number one enemy at the moment so I need to lay some more bait near the newer plants that did not get baited before, mainly the lasagna bed. I did see a lot of ladybugs and a potter's wasp...here he is:) Welcome my little beneficial buddies!

I have not done much blogging about the "orchard" area (my front yard) but we have many strong healthy strawberrry plants although a few have shown indications of a rust. I removed those leaves immediately and neemed them (I am finding that neem is the answer for just about everything most of the time) The raspberry is rocking and the blueberries are poking along. I think I will need to stake them soon. I am still pinching the flowers until June 15 then it is on little strawberries, you are mine!

                                                                                                                                                                  A wise old bird said, "If you water the weeds they will grow."  Note the shirt, it reads "AWESOME"  He truly is.

On a final note, we have been blessed with a 120 gallon pond that will go in the orchard area and hopefully we can farm some fish for the table and in the fall we plan to plant two dwarf apples trees. This is the area that will be home to my top bar hive next spring so, here I am already planning for next year...WOW.

That is it for now, happy farming!

Pictures;)

My first real harvest two weeks ago. That radish i think made it all worthwhile! Clearly the largest most beautiful thing I have ever grown.










This is the salad I made with it. Yum.....










My mother's day gift, three cute little sentries for my garden.






Note the yellow cluster of eggs on the spinach leaf in the middle, those are some sort of beetle whose heathen offspring will not be chomping in my garden... if only it were so easy to stop the rest. Now, I search under each leaf with a sort of trepidation that I will actually find something there, which ironically is the point. Double click on the pic for a closer view.





There is a reason why momma can never find her gloves.....we will call this left glove...










Potato bags continue to progress, and the round bed is growing sunflowers with dragon tongue beans and pumpkins planted yesterday.









The main garden Bed 2 and 3 in the foreground Bed 1 and 4 (the lasagna bed) are in the back by the sidewalk.








Brazen hussy, I am over you, I have learned to garden one handed so HA...go ahead and mock me left glove.

Good things come to those who....

Good things come to those who wait? Who am I fooling, I was planning the garden in October! I still am perturbed by my apparent "behindness" (that is an Ericaism, kind of like a Bushism because I respect the heck outta people make up cool new words) My strategery (my favorite Bushism) was not so successful. I am suspecting that the whole bloody world must buy already well established plants at the local box store and that perhaps my window simply can not compete with mass production. I am truly stymied by this. I have resolved to build a greenhouse on my little 1/10 of an acre.


I can't be too upset though, I am actually getting no less from my spring crops, my peas are super ahead of everyone else's and I have all those happy beans growing. I check my "children" daily. I was very upset to see one of my smaller broccoli plants was a buffet last night for some errant bug. It was a smaller plant, one of the two I set out early. The three others went out about 3 weeks later and are superior in both size and progress. All five were started from seed in my modest little picture window. Alas my issue is with peppers, I know now that starting indoors is not giving them enough of a jump, I barely got knee high plants last year. What is a girl to do? How do the box stores get them so early, it can not be a natural environment and while green house is dandy it still will not be warm enough I presume to germinate those warmth loving seeds. Perhaps I just long for those Alabama bushes of my youth that had peppers on them year round. Perhaps I should just give up and resort to containers.


I waited and I got everything out at the first possible recommended moment. I should get a ribbon, I am always late! I meticulously separated my seed by date to plant and then, for what seemed like 40 days and 40 nights.... it rained.....and it rained.....and it rained...... I am furiously spraying between showers to avoid powdery mildew and all the other scary things that all this rain will bring. But yet the garden grows, and still it rained. I somehow completely missed the month of May it seems and I had lots to plant. I ran outside in the glorious evening break in the week-long rain and I planted, planted,planted...two pepper plants tomatillos, radishes, dragon tongue beans, greens ( to catch the end of the cool season) lettuce, spinach, mustard, kale and leeks, natsurium. I planted pumpkin and beans around the sunflowers and then I got really brave.

I looked longingly at the lasagna compost, I was planning to grow my corn there. But I really had no idea if it was even progressing beyond stuff I methodically toss their. It has been dubbed "the field" the compost bin is "the worm house" these terms are vital in my backyard when sending the male inhabitants to the either area to dump the scraps or the grass or whatever. "take these to the field honey", "put this in the worm house please" . Although they are wholly my creation, I am not fond of tinkering in either because I am no fan of slimy slithering nocturnal things as a mom of boys, really there is just no better way for them to help out.

I really wanted to plant in that bed. So I took out my shiny new pitchfork and tooled around a bit, made 4 mounds and dropped in the center of each mound, 4 corn seeds. Then sound that dragon tongue pole beans, and finally squash. I have no idea if it is verboten to drop seed in cooking compost but I did and it we will see (I did google it for good measure and I have a lot more hope now, as apparently many people do exactly the same thing in their lasagna beds...a bit of a prayer doesn't hurt either).

Today I must get some fill in the potato bags, another item that keeps me restless at night, it just did not seem prudent to be digging in a torrential downpour and those plants are rocking tall so I have to get them mounded or I will not have any potatoes. Oh the worry is unceasing. I did manage to start edging the garden so my husband could mow and there would be less weeding, I plan to pick up some mulch tomorrow and make it look nice. Maybe plant some bush beans on the perimeter or something pretty...but then I would have to edge again so he wouldn't have to weed and this is I suspect how I will wind up with ever square inch of my yard cultivated. Lowes did have single petunia sets....

That brings me to another beef, all of the petunias this year are being sold in large containers for twice as much, where the heck are the flats of 6 individual plants at? Good grief it is a freaking annual. How much money should I pay for plant that is destined to die? This is another great reason for a greenhouse. This phrase.... "doesn't do well from seed." Poppycock I say. It had to grew from something. Marigold, lavender, marjoram, rosemary, mint all little hussies that "don't do well from seed" but yet there at the ole box store are bushy thriving varieties of each. I will conquer this, I will. I feel in my soul the answer is a greenhouse. We will see...we will see.

Next week I will have pea and will most likely be a fixing my first tomato plant to the tomato fence...Joy, that is unless the world ends Saturday in which case I will pray for God to please water my garden.

Happy growing:)

Absence makes the Garden grow fonder?

I do not generally squeal with joy but you can be sure that when I do it is for something relatively simple, pure and well amazing, to me anyways. This was indeed the case last week when I ventured out for my daily tour of the garden and saw bean plants peaking through the dirt. WOW. I had just planted them a week earlier. YAY I exclaimed. my neighbor and unknowing mentor, heard me and thought I had won the lottery or something. A bit embarrassed by the audience I did not think I had, I flushed red and then gushed all the wonders and glories in my head about the beans..the beans THE BEANS. Last year I had such failure with beans. Only a few even made it out of the dirt and I only managed to grow one surly sad little bean that I did not even bother to pluck.

I searched that ubiquitous free information bizarre we call Google for an answer to my bean failure and learned this wonderful bit, when planting beans seeds, plant one for the birds, one for the bugs and one for me. I also switched from bush beans to pole beans so I cannot say for sure what the deciding factor was but I dutifully planted three beans in each hole and for my trouble this week was rewarded with a plant at each post prompting an encore gleeful dance of joy!

Now to backtrack just a bit, I have been in Georgia these last five days watching my beautiful sister get married to a pretty cool dude and discovering exactly how miserable one could become sneezing and snotting pollen particles the size of Volkswagens, and while it was neat feeling my nose and eyes swell to the distinct rhythm of my ceaseless sneezing, I felt this one thought tugging at my the back of my mind in between the want to breathe and the desire to be in a drug induced Benadryl coma. I was worried about my garden, it was separation anxiety at best. I found myself inspecting my mother's garden, the happy little squash flowers and big basil leaves the size of my hand and woefully thinking, I wish my basil had big basil-ly leaves on it (because in all seriousness, I believe I will be on social security before my basil gets that big and winter will have long been and gone killing this slow growing temptress in my kitchen garden)

Nope I was obsessed over missing my garden, I had made arrangements for the cat, the mail but NOT my garden, I was remiss. I prayed for it to rain in Maryland and I hoped I would have a garden to return to but most of all I mourned my poor tomato plants and my poor pepper seedlings in the window, I thought for sure I would be returning to gardengeddon.

We pulled in at 9 pm last night and I hobbled my numb rear end out of the car, pushed the drowsy toddler out of the way (priorities right?) and....... the stupid street lamp went out and I could see nothing. That damn street lamp....its decidedly unhalcyonic halogen beam is only ever on just long enough to make you wish it weren't and turns off every couple of minutes or so for some bizarre unknown reason, think of it as a reverse motion detecting light, if it knows you need it, then it turns off. I generally curse this beacon of suburban paranoia while fumbling for the gate latch at which point it usually plays its insidious game but last night was just torture. Defeated, deflated I sneezed sniffed and then I wandered in to my house and went to bed. I would know all in the morning, the good, the bad and the ugly.

Morning came and I ran outside in my flip flops and exclaimed pure joy! I didn't even freak out at the Mr. Slug on whom I almost trod. ( ick) The bean garden was full of gloriously leafy plants! Not seedlings at every post. AMAZING. Further inspection showed, great pea progression, a radish the size of a golf ball (lunch) and lettuce abundance, spinach flourishing, the second planting peeking through the dirt and about 2 years worth of weeds to pluck.....ACK the weeds. But alas, the seedling in the window were pretty sad though, I fear I have some pepper casualties, but I will have to check back tomorrow to know for sure. About the only real disappointment was my anaerobic lasagna compost pile, so I have resolved to buy a pitch fork finally, I will just do it and be done with it.

So, with a bounce in my step, I did a little weeding this morning, fertilized the tomatoes and beans with some GardenTone and laid out my slug bait through out the strategic places in my yard ( the whole dern yard..its mine I tell you) I did leave them free refuge in the compost bin but Mr. Slug, I fear that you probably should have just gotten it over with and gotten stepped on today, I am however glad you did not because I really may have barfed. All in all, I hope I get a big bump from the fertilizing.

I am amazed at the overall progress in the garden, it seems that everything is doing better than last year, the broccoli is coming up well with no sign of powdery mildew, the cabbage is whole, the radishes are taking the bug munching for the team and it seems the soapacidal spraying may be working. Again, until my plants provide me with a print out of the profit and loss report, I just think best guesses will have to prevail here...suffice it to say, something is working and I hope it works for you too! But if it doesn't and you feel the need to come to my house with pitchfork and torches, I may knock you down and steal your pitchfork, because I really don't wanna pay thirty bucks for one.

My final thought today is about my kids and husband who spent a whole weekend cleaning out the shed and making a nice working space for me and in the process found 3 adorable little scarecrows that now adorn my garden and scare off the crows. How wonderful! They are perfect although I do not have the heart to tell them there were bird droppings on my turnip leaves this AM...Oh well ya can't win them all! (pictures to follow)