Bamboo-zled...

Wanting bragging rights for the best neighborhood garden means making sacrifices- blood loss, limb loss, a spade to the foot, a rake handle to the face, poison ivy, prickers and the whole lot of it.
Months of self-indulgent back patting go into planing the craziest garden.

Of course when harvest season comes around, it's a lot more face flushing shame and dissapointment whilst my neighbors are dragging heavy loads of veggies through their back doors and I scuttle timidly back to my kitchen with my pencil sized carrots and barbie-toy sized produce.
But if all else fails in my garden this year, I am still going to have one wickedly awesome bean teepee, thanks to my Aunt, and her generous neighbor.
We went bamboo hunting.

It's easy enough to find, but much harder to chop down. Which is why I brought this very cool blade.

......Whhhhhhich didn't really work at all on the hollow bamboo, but is great on probably anything else that doesn't want to shatter and splinter into a thousand peices when you hack into it... but it was Oh so much fun to try...

After my Aunt did all the hard work of chopping the bamboo down (with her practical, plain and ordinary saw that worked just brilliantly) and dragging it out of the thicket and sawing it into the proper sized peices (except for maybe that one, but the tape-measure was to blame) :)

The bamboo was tied into easy to carry bundles.

 One of the best things about bamboo is that it's super strong, incredibly lightweight, and filled with nothing but air. Like me. ;)                             Kidding.
But it does make garden structures really easy to assemble if you're not an amazon woman, or don't have a man around to do all of the grunt work. (Am I setting a women's movement back or something? I like playing the damsel in distress to my buff hubby...especially when I'm feeling lazy)

All that was left was a bit of tricky finagling, elbow grease, kicking and shoving and then my Aunt's smarts and ta-da!

Bamboo hunt successful....

Seedy, Underhanded, Dirty Practices...

If you should happen to be frolicking through a grocery or supply store, you might see, under the soft gentle aura of lights, a beautiful display of seed packets- each lined up in rows, bright happy pictures staring up at you like a pathetic little grinning child covered in chocolate and rainbows and baby bunnies. And you think to yourself, "how can I resist?"  Especially when that child grabs onto your leg and the baby bunnies go all Monty Python Holy Grail on you...

And before you know it, you are pushing a cumbersome cart of garden supplies through the store, because everyone knows you need new gloves with that packet of seeds and those cute seed trays to start things indoors and a mat to put under the trays and a watering can because the one you left outside exploded in the winter (that'll teach you!) and then those little plant labels for the dirt and etc, etc, etc...

And then you're straining around every turn, attempting in vain to avoid the customers. (Sometimes it's like they jump in front of the cart on purpose!) It's a bloodbath. And all because you got sucked in by the pretty display. It happens to me every year. Except for this year. Mostly. (I'm weak!)

This year, in an attempt to grow as organically as possible, I searched high and low for good (cheap) seeds with a bit of variety, of course after I planned out every inch of my garden and what would go in it.
I love most of all High Mowing Organic Seeds.

They have a huge selection, but they have a lot of special varieties too, not just the plain jane herbs or veggies. They throw in a lot of fun heirloom types.

Then there's Burpee. I have wasted many a dollar on that site. They have a fun organic selection and the offer a lot of gardening tips as well. Of course, most of the seeds you find in stores are Burpee.

Perry Morse is pretty good. I had success with them last year. The plants grew really tall and full, even though i forgot to water them and they bolted and became inedible. My bad.
And of course I have exhausted every crazy seed catalog to come my way for those fun untried brands. My father-in-law gave me this fantastic one. It had an other-century feel, with drawn images and old-school fonts and advertisments.

And now that I've spent most of my husband's money on all the seeds I'll ever need (don't tell him), I can move onto bigger and better things- like garden hods and hand tool totes! Though the only thing a good gardener needs are a handful of tools and good dirt. Too bad I'm not that good. Poor hubby! (I told you, I'm weak!)

If you still feel like you need to spend more money but have no idea how or where, try this great site for free seed catalogs!
http://www.egardenersplace.com/catalog/catalogrequest14j.asp

Where do you get your seeds? Tools? Shiny distracting objects?

Driving him Cuckoo...

My husband inspires me --usually to prove him wrong-- but often he just inspires me to try things I wouldn't normally try. Or, to try things I would normally ask him to do, because half a dozen requests later he gets that little edge of a "sigh" in his voice where I can tell I'm pushing my luck and he's really just helping me because he loves me so much but there are a THOUSAND things he'd rather be doing. And that's why I built a bird house for my bird sanctuary, ALL by MYSELF.
Except for maybe those half a dozen things...

I was inspired by a bird house I saw while wandering through amish Paradise. No really, the real place, not the song. My father-in-law gave me these gorgeous, really tall spindles under the guise that he was cleaning out his house.
Of course, my husband LOVES when I bring more clutter into ours, so naturally I accepted. ;)

I did buy a few things from Lowes- the little matching spindles, some wood, some glue some other things that looked pretty...
And naturally, the living room hardwood floor is the place to pound nails and screw screws. (Of course my hubby wouldn't agree that I could just glue the whole thing and be done with it)

My hubby WAS kind enough to cut a few (most) of the bigger pieces of wood. Hey, this girl can work her way around the miter saw, but if the board is too fat, well that other saw thingy... the circle shaped one... we don't get along.
So after a few dozen bent over nails and a lot of splitting wood chunks and things falling off after I was absolutely convinced they were secure and things flopping over that were supposed to be holding other things up, (and secret blobs of glue) I got this...

Yeah it's a little rough. I've got some sanding and painting to do. But I give this a really proud "Ta-Da!"
My hubby isn't home yet and I'm sure when HE picks it up, it will all fall over, but for now, it seems to be stable. Stable like Charlie Sheen in the 90's - ya know, there's the potential for disaster, but hopefully it's far down the road and you'll get a few good years out of it before catastrophe strikes.

I can't wait to put this outside and see what happens. Once my hubby digs the hole in the ground of course... :)
Anyone ever try to build a bird house? Success? Bird massacres?

Weather-- you like it. Or not...

It's one of those days. It's almost warm, but then there's the rain and the slow melting snow that's turning into the ugliest color imaginable. You know, that color between mud and smog residue? You're afraid to play in it and it's too old and yucky to make snow ice cream. Which means once again, I find myself trapped inside, staring out at the mounds that are my garden, wishing away the days and hugging a hot mug in my weather chapped fingers.

Thank goodness for books.

I've exhausted all the seed catalogs- all 11 of them -and my paltry garden fund- so I turn to my second option. Books.
I always hated garden books when I was younger. Ugly 80's styled photography with gritty, grainy pictures that look like the plants were caught by the plant papparazi with their leaves down. Oh, the horror! But lately I have fallen in love with the plethora of books that are out there today.

Most of them have bright, eye catching pictures with clear descriptions and just enough information to peak the intrest without giving the feeling that you've suddenly got to have a degree in horticulture to understand what it is the author is talking about. These are my favorites right now. I also LOVE Organic Gardening magazine. I find myslef paging through them again and again, finding new little details each time. The others I return to almost as often and several of these are always in reach near the couch.
Of course, I've got my own little Garden Journal, which has kind of become my sketch pad as well.

Right now, it's pretty empty save for a few bird house sketches I'm working on (with my hubby's help). I'm hoping, that by the year's end, it will be filled with notes on veggies that worked -or didn't- in my garden and what I can do differently to guarantee a more successful crop the following year! Then I can prove to my hubby that my hobby IS actually productive and not a giant money pit. ;) I'm not sure I'm convinced just yet either....
What gardening books and magazines are your favorites?

Ugh.... Winter. Yay?

Winter is the bane of my existance. While most gardeners appreciate the time to recover and plan, I'm ready to make a foray into my garden and attack the weeds with vigor. Of course all the weeds are dead and buried under a thick blanket of snow and the earth is hard and unyeilding and mean.

Winter also makes me grumpy.

My hubby hates winter too. But that's my fault. The longer I am trapped inside, the more I plan, replan and add more plans. Poor hubby. He's probably still a couple of months behind my current yard plans. On which I've permanantly settled. For now.

But, while being trapped inside, away from the tundra like winds ripping across the landscape and the looming death and decay of winter, one has no choice but to stay warm with a bevy of hot liquids. And when coffee is unavailable -say it ain't so- one must turn to tea.

Blame winter, dear sweet hubby, blame winter...
Now I want to start a tea garden. Or maybe it's a tea additive garden, I'm not sure, but I'd like to grow things that can be added to tea leaves (which can be bought on amazon in bulk) to make my very own delicious tea blends. Epcot did this brilliantly and the last time I trapsed through I was striken with tea garden envy.

I don't have large teacups to plant tea blends in, but I do have this tremedously large window box which gets a decent amount of sun. I'm planning to pack it full of citrus mints, spearmint, chamomile, lavender, pineapple sage, lemon verbena and whatever else will survive the northern climate. I love loose teas in unusual combinations. I can't wait to mix my own dried blueberries, spearmint, lemon peel and kiwi combination. Did you just shudder? The combinations are endless! If I can combine my love of dried fruits with my love of fresh herbs in a potable beverage derived from my very own garden, then the world, or my yard, is a better place. Hundreds of combinations of organic teas, a lazy stroll away. Can you imagine?
I've got lots to research. I'm almost glad I'll be stuck inside. Almost, but not really. I still hate winter.
Has anyone ever tried to make a homemade tea blend? Successes? Dismal faliures?

Po-TaY-to... Po-ToTotal-disaster

Mashed into fluffy piles with butter, sliced into wedges and smothered with butter, or sliced thin and sauteed in butter, sweet potatoes are yummy no matter how you serve them up, which is why I tried my best to grow them last year. Well, okay, I putzed through it with all the gusto of a 90 year old sitting on her front porch with a glass of lemonade on a blistering summer day. But the point is that I did TRY it.
I went with the trash bag method.

Time tested. Nature approved. Except when nature doesn't approve. In fact, nature seems to get very vengeful when I sneak out into the yard, black thumb covered in still-wet green paint slowly dripping into my palm. She's not easily fooled. If she was real, I'd probably think of her as the popular kid and she'd think of me as someone to stuff into a school locker. A really small school locker that smells like sweaty gym clothes. Thank goodness nature is just nature. But this is what happened to my trash bag of sweetness last year.

That is my back yard. And somewhere under the massive tree lying across my property is a sad and pathetic little bag of baby sweet potatoes, pre-sliced into french fries by the limbs skewering it. Coupled with the bizare fall snow storm, my vines died a horrible death. I did tear the bag open and pull out the pittance of potatoes inside. So much potential all in the size of a potato large enough for 4 little fries...
But this year, I go big or I grow home (fries). (I'm sorry-that was horrible; it doesn't even make sense.)

I'm going to try the straw method. Seed potatoes get tossed onto good soil and covered with straw; and then some more straw; and then some more straw. When you have a fluffy pile and lots of time has elapsed, you drag away the straw and VIOLA- french fries for life- or a few weeks at least in my house.
 Has anyone ever tried potatoes at home before? Success stories? Faliures...? Warnings? ;)

Two weeks of it...

My poor husband. My birthday is two weeks away and since I've been doing nothing but staring at seed cataloges and gardening books, I've got quite the extravagant wish list. It ranges from gardening tools to lumber and fencing and half a dozen other crazy ideas that make a person sputter out his drink with a "Say what now?" I don't get it. What's wrong with wanting a truck full of manure?

Speaking of odd things on my wish list, I found this arbor/trellis idea on another blog and am planning on stealing it for my own garden. I've got two places I'd like to put this, at the begining and the end of a path in my "lower" garden. Then we'll find out if winter squash will be the winner in this gamble or if I will come out victorious. I have this sick preoccupation with hanging hefty things over people's heads...

Anyway, now has been a good time to go over all of my mistakes from the past year. Don't worry. The winter is young and I have plenty of time to recount them all. :)

Last year was the first year I tried to grow seeds indoors. Last year most of my seedlings died. I did get a few timid eggplant, but everything else withered and turned to fungus.

Most of my seeds caught a disease called damping-off. They got cute and green and the next day they all fell over dead. Or maybe it was because i didn't water some of them regularly and they all fell over dead. I like to think it was disease in the soil. But logic says it was my watering irregularity. Anyway, this year I'll be sure that my planting medium is safe and I check my plants every day to see if they need water.
What was your worst indoor seedling transplant disaster?

For da birds, dats for shure!

Only close family members will get that title, and I promise you they are all probably muttering it as they read it, in that Forest Gump-esk accent.

But the lack of sanity that runs through my family aside, my stash of fantastic Christmas gifts has led me to ponder the side yard of my property- my Bird Sanctuary- which right now is basically a large shaded soupy puddle of mud.

I know, I know. Yuck! Blobby dirt... That's EXACTLY what you're thinking, and it's very perceptive. My hubby, did I mention he's fantastic?, put in these egress window wells this past summer, but poor weather and looming projects kept anything from being done to the actual ground, which is now quite gross. But Oh, I have plans. Poor hubby!

 I got these for Christmas. So psyched! and I can't wait to add it to my side yard tree area.

Okay, when it comes to flowers, I am a bazillion times worse at them then I am at vegetables, which I am NOT great at. BUT, after aquiring a new book, via facebook, called Treasury of gardening, I am feeling a little bit more comfortable with the idea of turning this into a shade garden with hostas, mamoth ferns, astillbes, bleeding hearts, honeysuckle, etc. I really want to draw the birds into this area. Birds will eat my bugs which would eat my plants which would make me cry. It's a preemptive strike.

I've already got this bird house from my hubby, who loves me and spoiled me with fun things that I love for my anniversary last year.

This came from my mom, who is letting me "borrow it." Forever. That's how I borrow things. Poor mommy!

And this one too, though she already gave me permission to borrow it on a much more permanant basis. Did I mention that I plan on growing bottle neck gourds this year? Hopefully in a couple more years, I'll have lots of brightly painted gourds hanging as bird houses from my trees. I'm looking forward to it!!!! If anyone has had any success with shade gardens, I'd be so happy to see your comments below! I'm going to attempt ferns first. We always had this massive cluster where I grew up. I'd love to try to grow my own.

Just so that maybe one day I can torture my very own kids with horrific pictures in front of them. I loved my Osh Gosh.

Muck Up to Here---

There's dirt in my hair...
...which is strange since, up until that point, I hadn't even been outside yet. Ah, the tragic life of the tragically inept gardner. It has more to do with my haphazerd storage situation with my gardening supplies, which i dug into with vigor today. Things are teeter-tottering on a shelf in the far corner of my garage, behind stacks of patio chairs and the lawn mower. I had to shove a weed wacker out of the way to the pile, but I was the victor in the end. Except for maybe the dirt in the hair. I'm still not quite sure how that happened, just that there was a lot, and perhaps I should have noticed when it all fell on my head.
I was successful however, in pulling all my pots, supplies and seeds from my garage and dragging them up to my living room. I made lots of trips up and down the stairs. I'll need the exercise to prepare for all that weeding. :) I'm on a 10lb weight restriction, (bad back) and since my hubby is bound to be suprised at the pile of gardening stuff now occupying the corner of our living room, I wanted to be sure that I would honestly be able to tell him i behaved. This is my pile. Lemme break it down for ya... (insert your own beep-bop noises)

I've been collecting for the last couple of years. Every time something goes on sale, I get this sick urge to have it. :) But how can you resist a cute tin pail with pepper plants (hot and sweet) for $.50? Or rather, WHY resist the urge?

These are my seeds. I know. It's way too much. But somehow, I plan on cramming all of this into every inch of sunny property my husband will share with me. The way I see it, people don't need to play in my yard when they come over. They could stroll through my gardens. The way he sees it, I'm crazy. Actually, I that is a perception shared by many family and friends. Which is fine. It just means less jars of roasted tomatoes to share. ;)

This year, thanks to cheap cyber monday on Amazon, I decided to get Trellis netting. Everything that spreads out is going up. EVERYTHING. Except for maybe the 200 lb. watermelon. I don't think people want that on a vine dangling overhead. (insert Newton/apple-watermelon/gravity joke here)

My biggest obsession in my garden is undoubtedly my Kale. "My" because I am fortunate enough to have a husband who does not like it. All 4 variations of it are mine. Dinosaur is my favorite, though not because I've eaten it, but I'm really hoping this prehestoric looking Kale plant gets as large as the package promises and I can eat kale chips larger than my face. Though on reconsideration, that might make it difficult to put in my mouth.

I'm really going to try and go bigger with my herbs this year. I put them in a pot and forgot them last year and got many pretty bolted flowers, but not much to eat. Whoops! But, I have an idea lurking around the edges of my mind, linking my compost pile and my herb garden together using this brilliant idea a friend shared with me...

I've seen people use pallets for a compost pile, and when a friend mentioned she'd seen people garden with them, and i found this photo, I thought, I'll build a compost pile with this on three sides, grow herbs around the outsides, and put a little door on the rear facing open side. Hopefully the herbs will mask the odor of rotting fruit and scraps, and it'll save space. And i'f i walk back to the compost pile with my scraps, hopefully I won't be to lazy not to pick the herbs before they bolt. I just have to nail down a sunny spot. (My poor hubby)

And I can't tell you how glad I am to have this- care of Organic Gardening. It's the cliff notes of gardening, without feeling like you've cheated. It has everything from interplanting strategies to the month by month "to do" (or right now, "to don't") list. January is looking pretty bleak, but thumbing forward to February and March gets pretty exciting. I get downright giddy flipping the pages back and forth.
The weather is obscene out there right now, muck up to here, off and on rain and mud strong enough to suck your boots down to China. (where they probably came from) But it's still nice enough to hop and skip up and down the path, imagining where exactly that row of dinosaur kale will go, and suddenly the weather seems just a little bit less yucky. :D I can't wait for spring!

Unseasonally Awesome!

Okay, it's bitter outside today, a day for eskimos and polar bears in my opinion, and maybe for people who are masochists. But yesterday was 50 degrees. For a PA January winter, that is unusually warm. So yesterday, despite the rain and mud, I went outside to play (In my hubby's shoes, not my pretty sneakers. I'm not crazy!) This is the result. :)

I can't wait to turn in some great manure and organic compost from a local farmer! Side note, find a better place to put cages, it's super windy today.

My bean teepee will go on the right and squash plants will fill in the gaps. I pulled all those weeds the other day. They never got the memo that it was winter.

I don't know if this will work, but i had these four pathetic little brussel sprout seedlings growing that a friend had given to me when i was in the middle of building my garden for next year. They fought in little tiny outdoor pots for the last few months, and since they refused to die, i tucked them into my coldframe. If i get one sprout from them, I'd be shocked, but they seem like little fighters.

Also a new addition to my yard, a beautifully painted wagon wheel, care of my brother who gave one of the best Christmas gifts ever! (Thank you brother!) Though any gift that is able to go outdoors (practically all of them) where great gifts this year. :)

And last but not least, I finally got around to tying up/training my grape vines. I'm not sure i did it anywhere near correctly, but it looks like the diagrams on the internet. I know I'll need to reenforce my trellises soon, the vines will probably snap these like a dry dead winter twig, but I'll figure that out eventually. 

5 Goals

I'm setting 5 goals for myself this year in my garden:
(I'm too realistic to set 10)

1. Build a Bean Teepee- like i need a reason to invite my nephews and neice to trapse through my garden... hopefully they'll stick to the path i just put down. I saw this done on a very cool blog and I'm psyched!

2. Start the compost pile- every year I tell myself I'll do it and every year I cringe as i throw away perfectly good food scraps. No more! I will re-eat those scraps as dirt crumbs on the flesh of my freshly picked produce!

3. Invite critters INTO my garden- to eat the other critters in my garden. :) My husband is finishing off our attic and he found a dead bat. It had long since been crushed under a board by, we suspect, the previous owner. Such a waste! I'd love to build a bat house to draw those bats so that they will eat those bugs that eat my produce. Let nature eat itself! Last year my hubby bluggend a groundhog to death (SHUDDER). I can still hear the screams. To be fair to my hubby, we came home and I saw it eating it's way happily through my long row of snap peas. I jumped out of the vehicle yelling "I'm gonna kill it!" My hubby hates to see me sad, even worse sad/angry/weilding a weapon. He took it as permission to protect my garden. I don't know how he'll take the bat house. Maybe I'll tell him it's a bird house. ;)

4. Use collected water- we are on a well, so i don't feel like i'm spending thousands of dollars watering my garden in the summer, but there are so many other places I can get water from. We just drain dish water down the sink and just let the rain water escape to nowhere. Now that I use an environmentally safe, natural dish soap (and not globs of it like I used to; the price of organic products really gets me thinking about waste!) I could spread it around in my garden. I'm not sure yet about water from the roof. I don't know that I trust the water from the shingles to be non toxic. (remember to research that) But My hubby has a large rain barrel lying near our driveway, unused. I'm going to steal it from him. (My poor hubby!!!) Organic Gardening did a great little article this month on rain barrels.

5. BE PATIENT- I cannot for the life of me, wait to eat that yummy sweet vegetable goodness from my garden. I pull up carrots months early when they are stalky and scraggly and bitter, I plant things way to early, (the sooner I plant the sooner I eat, right?) and thus get tiny, undergrown produce, and I will not, will not rip everything out at the end of the season and immediatley jump into next year's designs! I will grown things in places where produce has been harvested. I will get plants throughout the year. I will roll on piles of kale chips and spinach until my birthday (February) And THEN I will start over again.

Best Christmas Present Ever!

My husband built me two cold frames for my garden. I am so giddy. I plan on growing spinach and kale let into the winter next year and I hope to start seeds outdoors, super early. Did I mention how much my husband loves me?  I know exactly where I'm going to put these.

Playing with free software...

I have a free trial software that lets me plan out my garden using the square foot method. So psyched to see a rough sketch of my garden!

The beginings

My family had a garden once. We all picked a favorite veggie- mine was a grocery store-esk radish. It was my job to tend my little row. I got two buckets of radishes that year. I didn't eat another for about 10 years.


Two years ago I planted a simple row garden. I had five rows of lettuce, which bolted shortly after they grew. I suppose i shouldn't have planted them in July. I did get a handful of scallions and a pathetic bunch of carrots, no thicker than a pencil. I can be very impatient.


Last year, my sweet mother-in-law took me to a book store. There in the midst of a hodge podge of discounted books, lay one squat fat book called "Grow Vegetables"

I've dubbed it my "idot guide." I refrence it all the time now. I decided to tackle square foot gardening. I built frames and begged my sweet hubby to tier the side yard for me. I LOVE my hubby. I tell him i'm going to be a farmer one day and he laughs and says "dear" in a way that sound like he's speaking bemusedly to a child. But he builds me things and fixes my mistakes. So he built up the garden for me.

I tried to build myself a garden bench next to a wysteria that I planted. When I asked my husband if he could knock over and old pipe so it would fit, in that patronizing voice, he told me that breaking our oil pipes to fit my garden bench was probably not the best of ideas. He helped me cut it down a half a foot and anchored an old mantle i had gotten for it. I tell you, that man loves me.

Giddy with excitment, I jumped into square foot gardening with full force, even though I'd had such a paltry showing the year before. I went from lettuce, scallions and carrots to heirloom cucumbers,

 cabbages, kale, radishes, tomatoes of all kinds, squashes,

 grapes, beets, peppers and melons.

Last year I still had a few major "fails". I planted my butternut squash way to early and they stayed supper small, even though they were still delicious. I tried for a spring red cabbage crop but didn't get a quick enough jump start on them. They never really grew very large at all.

I learned to thin out plants, as sad and depressing as it can be. To me, it's like deciding which child you love more. But I did learn to never never give up on a plant! Some are hardier than they appear. A grape vine waited all summer long to get a small cluster of leaves, and he's well behind his brothers, but I expect great things from him.

I had so much fun trying to preserve the foods that came from my garden this past year. I made lemon cucumber pickles and canned them. (Another new and fun experience)

and I made my very first batch of kale chips with the kale from my garden. I had never had a kale chip before and I've become hoplessly addicted. I sprinkle mine with just a bit of sea salt and parmesan cheese. They never are much to look at, but Yum!

My kitchen has become an exciting play space. If you've never had snap peas fresh off the plant, you've never had a good snap pea. I once sat on the little wooden retaining wall my hubby built for me on the side of my garden and proceeded to eat each and every one off of that shrub. My poor husband. Sometimes he doesn't get to enjoy the fruits of our labors.

This year, because he loves me so much, he doubled the size of my garden for me. I've invaded the space that was supposed to be a water feature with waterfalls and pools and lush plants. I had begged for that too. I can't wait to see what happens this coming year.

Happy New Year, 2012!