Farmer Brown's Garden June 2, 2011

I am not ready to post what I have been knitting on so I went out this morning and took shots of our backyard garden. We are very pleased the way things have gone so far, but if it doesn't rain soon everything will suffer. Here is what is going on in the garden today.

We have sixteen tomato plants. Some are in this bed and some are in pots around the rest of the garden. There are also carrots that are planted in the bare looking spot to the right. They are struggling but hanging in there so far. Some of our tomatoes are heirloom, some romas, some sandwich tomatoes and some really wonderful yellow pear tomatoes. We are just trying lots of different ones so we can see which ones we might use over and over again through the years.
This is one of two eggplants that are planted in pots. They are both Black Beauties. We planted the little skinny Japanese eggplants but grilling them on the grill was a bit of a challenge. So we are back to the black shiny eggplants.
This is a picture of another eggplant in a pot in the back. The front pot has two tomato plants. The pot you see the edge of has Provence Lavender.
It's really hard to tell but there are five pepper plants in the front of the box. The Jacob's Cattle beans take up the rest of the bed. Jacob's Cattle beans are for drying. So I don't pick them but let them dry on the bushes until the pods turn a light crispy brown. We have planted them two years on the past but really don't have enough to cook. So we are growing them again this year to save them for the winter cooking.
This bed is filled with bush beans, pole beans and carrots that are along the side of the bed. These beans are Haricot Verts. I love these green beans because there are very few strings and the are not as touch as some other green beans that we have grown. They can be tough if not picked when they are small. When I pick them, I leave them in the refrigerator until I think there is a pound. Then I get them ready for freezing. Last year we got over sixteen pounds of beans. Did I mention how much I love green beans??
This bed looks almost the same as the one above. There are more bush and pole Haricot Verts and a squash plant and baby carrots in the open spot.
This bed has eleven potato plants. It's our first time to do potatoes. So far, so good. There is also a pot of two tomato plants. As well as everything in the vegetable garden look, they still need lots of water. We need rain to fill up our water barrels. They forcasted rain for after midnight last night and not one drop. When our local Master Gardeners had the first of their two plant sales I bought this baby Japanese Maple. It seems to be doing really well. We already have one Japanese Maple in the backyard and since it has done so well, I decided we needed another one. I planted the petunias to give the baby tree some company.
I have always wanted to try Hens and Chicks. So I bought three pots of them and planted them in the strawberry pots I haven't used in about ten years. I think these guys will do just fine in them.
The Provence Lavender that I planted years ago is really starting to produce. It's hard to see but there is a bee about mid screen buzzing from stem to stem. It's time to pick the Lavender but I hate for the bees to miss out. So I usually pick about 2/3s of the stems and leave the rest of the bees.

So there is the garden up to date as of today. I am hoping it rains soon. If it rains really well, the garden usually increases it's size by about 1/3. We have baby tomatoes on almost all the tomato plants so I don't want to lose them. So now it's back to knitting. Hopefully soon I will be able to show what I have been doing for the last month. Nothing exciting, but very useful.

'Tis The Season

I talk about how much I love fall and winter and now for some reason my new favorite season is spring. I think I might have had cabin fever during these past winter months. While I enjoyed doing winter activities, hearty foods and football; I have been dying for spring. I have been bitten by the gardening bug BAD. The first day the weather looked anything like spring weather, I was outside thinking about what would be planted where in our garden. I don't have any garden pictures yet because there are still some bare spots but there are still colorful things blooming all over and I just had to share them. I went nuts on a nice day taking pictures. This is not about knitting in any way, shape or form. This about color and the happiness that spring and digging in the dirt brings me. I have never grown this kind of a flower before; Foxglove. I hear this a very popular flower for an English garden. I just bought it to attract hummingbirds. I only bought one plant to see how it goes.
I did research on the Internet about the kinds of flowers that hummingbirds love and this one is on the list; Hibiscus. I have never had Hibiscus before so there is a learning curve on this one. The blooms are so beautiful.
My face is not the only happy face in the garden lovin' spring. This Johnny Jump Up wintered over in a hanging box. Most of the ones that I planted made it. The Petunias didn't. They don't seem to be as hardy as the Petunia, Violas and Johnny Jump Ups.



I love all the color! I admire strength of enduring our 18" snow fall this past winter.
My parsley has wintered over for five years now. I want to put it into the ground but I am nervous it will not do as well. So for now it is waiting for the first caterpillar to come and consume it. I love that I am helping local butterflies. I just wish they stayed around longer so I can see them...
My French Thyme is blooming and soon will be nice and green. I plucked some off today, cut off the blooms and threw it in my chicken stock pot. I love having herbs in the garden both in the ground and in pots.
I think these two basil plants get the most use of the herbs. I love making pesto and I use it all summer and freeze what I can for the winter months. Just love this stuff!
So as you can see I am excited about spring and the garden. It's too bad that I am not that excited about knitting...I am knitting but it just doesn't excite me for now.

Garden Update

I showed pictures a while back of our beginning garden. I went out this morning and took more pictures to update the garden. Since I belong to a Container Gardening group on Ravelry, I wanted them to see my latest pictures. I can't figure out how to post pictures on there so I am going to post them there and link from Ravelry.

Here is a view of the middle bed. The two metal trellises are supposed to be more full than what they are, but we waited too late in the season to plant the snow peas and the heat is eating them alive. If you look closely in the background you can see the vines are dying from the bottom up. I have see what happens in the past and I am debating whether or not to just pull them up and try something else. The pepper plants are skinny and look sad but I have noticed a few blossoms on them. I doubt they will yield any peppers this year but I will let them go a bit longer and see what happens. The cucumbers are small but they are going strong as well as the two basil plants I have in that bed. I am going to go and top off the basil plants and try to preserve them in a plastic bag for later this weekend.

This bed has three transplanted tomato plants. They were in the shade of our fence so we moved them about three weeks ago and they are trying but they don't look right; kind of skinny and a bit pale. I can't remember what kind they are but hopefully we will get some blooms soon. Behind the tomato plants there are bush beans. We didn't have much luck with them last year but this year they look like they are doing much better. We have some in another bed because we eat a lot of green beans. In the front is my lettuce bed. It's really too hot for the lettuce to do much more than what it is before it bolts. I am going to pinch them back for this weekend and maybe it will be enough for two portions; maybe.

This is the bed that I am most excited about. We planted more bush beans of a different variety. These are Jacobs Cattle. They are supposed to be a dry bean. We got about 1/4 cup last year. Not much to speak of and I decided that this year I was going to have enough to cook some. So we planted much more this year. Plus we planted bean in the same space we move the three little sad tomato plants from. They are coming up and I am thrilled. The bushes are full of blooms and I think this year will be the year we actually get a good yield.
Beside the beans are onions sets that are both red and white. We have never grown onions before so this is just a wait and see thing. So overall I think our little city garden is giving it a good try despite the heat wave too early in the season and the fact we were about 8 weeks late in planting. The squash and zucchini are coming along but haven't quite hit their stride but I have a feeling when the weather settles down they will be going gang busters.

Here is what the tomatoes in containers are up to. We have not done anything to them except mix in manure and water. I have not pinched the suckers. I have just let them go to see what will happen. These are supposed to be smallish tomato but I have lost the stick that came with the plant so it will be surprise. I think they might be yellow but not really sure. They are going really well and with the tomato scare going on right now, I will be glad to eat something of my own that won't make me sick.

Here is our first attempt at pear tomatoes. They are small but they are going strong. I have seen what people pay for these at the grocery store so any amount of these we get are great.
Well that's the total garden update. I will post more pictures another time when I have picked something or they are starting to show color.

Flowers
I love to garden and I am not really sure that I have done a good job until something happens; like some color. This year I didn't take too many chances on new flowers but here is what is going on now on the deck in pots.

These are really spring Pansies but I moved them to the shade and they are going full guns. Pretty soon I will have to find something else to put in that pot when these fizzle out.
These are Geraniums that DH picked out at the local boxed hardware store. I really didn't think they would do that well but they are doing pretty well. I love the color in the summer on the deck. We have a lot of shade in our yard due to the neighbors huge out of control oak tree. We have a maple that is bending over the deck trying to capture the sun because the oak is a sun hog. We are going to cut the maple down because we are afraid it will snap off in a hurricane or really big winds and take out our sun room with it. I love maple trees and it makes me sad to have to cut down a tree, but the house might be in danger. We have planted a little Japanese maple in the back yard that is under the shade of the oak. I was thinking that we should plant another one in the place of the maple as soon as we cut it down. If that neighbors ever cut down the oak, my shade garden will surely be toast.
This is one of the new Hydrangea bushes we planted in the spring. It has some really killer blooms on it but I know next year that might not happen. I still have one if not two more bushes that need to be moved to the shade but weekends are getting more full. DH has been doing a lot of over time so gardening on a Sunday is not high on his list of priorities. He pooped.
This is in the sun room and has a really cute story to it. My youngest son was about to go to Iraq about three years ago. He had some money (about $10) and bought me this plant. Right before he left, he said to please not let the plant die. It was so pretty when I got it and during the year he was gone, it looked like it had died. I was horrified. So I kept the pot in the same place for a year and threw some water on it when I remembered. Then one day I was looking at it and noticed there was a green shoot poking up from the dirt. I could not believe it. No flower ever appeared but there was some skimpy foliage. Three years later I have my first flower. The plant has gotten so tall in the current pot that it has fallen over. I think another flower might be coming soon. I am super pleased I did not throw it away but more than that; I didn't let my kid down by killing his gift.

A No Knitting Day...
As much as I want to be a sheep farmer, it's not happening living in a large city environment. We live on a zero lot line so there is no privacy unless you spend all your waking hours indoors. Living near a beach is wonderful if you are a fun in the sun sort of person. I am not. I miss trees and I miss the shade with dappled sun light. So we have tried to create a little farm here at the city dwellers house. Yes, this has nothing to do with knitting other than the fact that I was so exhausted from working in the garden, I couldn't get any knitting to speak of done.

The weather here is getting warmer and wetter so we figured it was now or never to get our little city garden planted. Not only did we spend some bucks (I could have spent that money on yarn you know!) but we spent a lot of Mother's Day digging in the dirt. The fruits (really veggies) of our labor should be happening in about ten days. The earth is warming up and so are the temperatures.

A few weeks ago when we were at one of the big box hardware stores, one of my weaknesses came seeping out of me. I just love decorative garden do dads. Last year we used PVC pipes for our climbing veggies. I just couldn't bare to look at those again this year so hubby indulged my need for pretty garden things. We had to amend our soil and when I sent him to the store on Sunday he came back with these. The large one in the back will hold our Snow peas provided we haven't planted them too late in the season. The leaning tower to the left will also have Snow peas. The plants in the front are different colors of bell peppers. We love to grill them!

This bed has more Snow peas, some bush beans, spinach and assorted micro greens. I am never really sure how they will turn out but I keep trying. Last year I had a great crop, but they bolted and I didn't get as much out of the planting as I had wanted. The sticks are to remind me what was planted where. Once they come up the sticks will go. I am hoping that the birds didn't get all my seeds before it rained.
This next bed has another variety of bush beans, cucumbers, squash and of course more Snow peas. Can you tell I like snow peas??

This last bed has a some Jacob's cattle (a bean meant for drying), three different kinds of tomatoes, red and white onions and zucchini. We want to plant more things but will wait and see what comes up. I still have to purchase three or four basil plants and we bought some lavender. I have two plants in the front garden that are really going gang busters so I wanted more. I have the lavender because of my wool. I usually get my lavender from a farm NC and this year will be no exception.

I can't help myself with the containers. So here are those plantings. We did more tomatoes and I sneaked in a few flowers too. I am hopeful that my garden will yield wonderful things. As far as knitting it's back to normal. I have made some progress but that's another posting. Enjoy the out-of-doors before it gets too hot!