Planting It Up

I established my new planting space beside the garage this weekend, a soon-to-be-vertical bed of sugar baby watermelons and delicata squash. Half the advice I found listed squash and melons as good companions, the other half insisted they be planted as far away from each other as possible. Which means -- I get to do whatever I want, since planting spaces are at a premium around here. We'll just have to see how things grow.

Evan is justifiably less than thrilled with my placement. The new bed is going to make use of that gate irritatingly awkward. But again, space is at a premium. I can't move the sun. And this has got to be better than breaking up the driveway. (I have to remember that line of defense.) I DID move the composter, for the 567th time, to make a better path. I can't have people clambering over my melons after all.

At some point, I took a break for some green beans and seeded nasturtiums around the pumpkin patch.

Then I gawked at our ripening blackberries...

Gawked at my husband installing our rain barrel diverter...

Fed the compost monster...

And found my next planting project in the pantry. Whee! 

Gardening on a Postage Stamp

In 2011, we built our home on a 50x90 urban lot. Our postage stamp. After the dust settled and boxes were unpacked, my dormant love of gardening pushed its way to the surface with an unexpected intensity, and I began to learn. I have tried, failed and succeeded in (mostly) equal measures. I've learned that I prefer growing edible things in the ground rather than in containers, forcing me to be very creative with the limitations of our space. I'm discovering that there are always more potential planting sites than you think, some just take more work than others to prepare. And the work is more rewarding and healing than I ever imagined.

Here is a tour of my garden today. Bear in mind that it is always growing and changing; I add a little bit at a time all the time. I've worked around the builder's landscaping up to this point; the non-edible stuff is always lower on my priority list. See all the remaining grass? Think of it as garden-in-waiting.

To the left is my newest adventure, a vertical pie pumpkin patch. I'll be hanging trellis netting today and seeding nasturtiums. The trellis is 6 feet tall and 2 feet wide. This YouTube video was my inspiration and instruction manual: http://youtu.be/raFtcKNpGYM. To the right is our berry patch, made up of a blackberry and raspberry bush that I bought on clearance two seasons ago. You can't see any ripe fruit on it, because we're all digesting it as I type. We've been picking fresh berries every day for weeks.

We love us some arugula. So I planted the bed on the left in early spring (also known as winter) across from the berries, along with a lavender transplant. This piece of land was easy to overlook; I could've started growing greens there a long time ago. The crib section on the right is showcasing tongue-of-fire bush beans. Originally, I thought the beans would climb up my re-purposed trellis, only to learn later that bush beans don't really climb. Good to know. The beans have been yummy; we've had about a handful a day for the past week. Not enough to feed an army, but makes for healthy snacking straight off the vine.  

This spring, I tucked 3 tomato plants (store-bought transplants) and seeded sunflowers in the west flower bed. The carrots you can see along the porch line were planted back in January, and I guess they'll be ready to eat one of these days.

Here's a better view of the carrots. 

I grow herbs various places, and I have an unsightly cauliflower that is inexplicably still alive, so I'm leaving it alone. For now.

I had a notion to plant scarlet runner beans in front of our main porch columns this spring. I'm thrilled with the result. It's hard to capture how dramatically beautiful they are, and how fast they climb! I think these will grow several more feet in the next few weeks. You can also see my upside down tomato bags in the following pictures; they're not very attractive, but have worked well for me three years running. They're housing black cherry tomato plants this season, a variety that was incredibly productive for us last season.

The east flower bed gets a lot more sun and heat, and things grow completely differently there. I wedged a sweet potato bag and re-purposed drawer-raised beds of eggplant and bunching onions in among the landscaping. There's also a big rosemary plant behind the crazy crepe myrtle. I really need to prune those...

I grew these sweet potato slips from one Trader Joes's organic sweet potato. (They're a little hard to differentiate from the runner bean leaves in this picture.) We'll see how they turn out, but so far so good.

The Turkish eggplant is pretty pathetic right now. See that tiny bud toward the front? And the bunching onions toward the back aren't a lot better. I might be over-watering them. At Evan's encouragement, I'm trying to give them some time. Not one of my strengths, that. 

I'm growing a mix of lettuce under a tree. Because you can do that. This picture features lettuces still remaining after several harvests and salads, as well as the hated bermuda grass that a person could weed out all the live long day and still not eradicate. You can see my asparagus raised bed and stair-step tomatoes in the background.

This is my long-awaited 18-inch deep asparagus bed. The one I dug into the slope, built board by board and installed almost completely by myself. Yes, I'm proud and will accept compliments. It was hard work. I did have generous help from my husband, kids and a dedicated friend in filling it up with one cubic yard of rich soil. I can repay them all with asparagus in about three years. :) I seeded morning glories in front of the bed for now, but will eventually put strawberry crowns there. 

I grew these five gorgeous tomato plants from seed: two nyagous, two yellow pear and one sweet pea currant. They're getting ginormous. I'm already regretting, as I do EVERY YEAR, that I didn't put them in better cages. 

Here grows the current incarnation of my reclaimed back fence garden. I've had to clear a LOT of overgrown vines to prepare this space, and I still have to be vigilant about pulling up the invasive former occupants. They may never be convinced that they've been evicted. Up until a week ago, I had awesome pea vines growing back here. We picked peas to our hearts content for a month until it just got too hot for the vines. I've now seeded spaghetti squash, zucchini, basil, and chard, and put in a lot of pepper transplants - half that I grew from seed and half that I bought from Elizabeth Anna's Old World Garden. (If you live in Fort Worth, you really must visit her urban farm. Bring the kids and walk around. Prepare to be inspired.)

 

This is the future (read: days away) site of my vertical sugar baby watermelon and delicata squash patch. It's directly south and across the driveway from the fence garden. The trellis there will be 7 or 8 feet tall and 4 feet wide. 

So that's my garden right now. Lots of possibilities in very small spaces. Learning to grow food has given me endless appreciation for our varied and over-abundant food supply. I really don't know how farmers for the masses do it, but they deserve way more recognition than they'll ever get. 

Making the Most of What I've Got

Two weekends ago, I sliced and diced some boards we happened to have in the garage, and hobbled together some more lighting racks.  I was left feeling very resourceful and even a little adventurous.  Historically, the only projects requiring tools that I've been willing to tackle myself were hanging picture frames with a hammer and changing out batteries with a screwdriver.  Re-purposing the kitchen island was huge for me (see DIY Conversion post).  So I surprised even myself when I marched into the garage and decided that if I could install grow lights, I could make a stable frame for more lights using some 2x4's, a jigsaw, a hammer and some nails. I didn't cut off any appendages, I only smashed my thumb twice, and I successfully added a third tier to my gardening stand.  I admit, it's not the most elegant addition to my piano room, but I'm using every square inch of out-of-the-way space that I can. (Since this picture was taken, I moved the extra florescent light sitting on top of this whole arrangement to the laundry room growing area.)  All in all, I'm extremely proud of my expanded spaces for starting seeds.

[Side Note: I understand now that power tools are called that because they make you feel POWERFUL.  After I'd sawed through a few boards (and maybe gotten a little high off of adrenaline and the smell of sawdust), I started having visions of my very own wood shop.] 

We watch our budget pretty carefully, and I've put up with enough teasing from my wonderfully supportive husband to be curious about my current gardening expenditures versus our potential reward.  In total, I've spent $121 just on lighting (6 2-ft plant grow lights and 1 additional 4-ft florescent fixture).  I saved a lot of cartons and yogurt containers, but still ended up buying peat pots and plastic seed pots for about $18.  Seed starting medium, potting soil, Garrett juice, and worm castings cost me around $50, and I spent $22 on seeds from Seed Savers Exchange.  So for a little over $200, I've grown 92 beautiful, organic seedlings!  If I bought those plants at a store for $3 a piece (which I think is a conservative estimate for organic plants), I'd spend around $270.  So there.  I'm coming out ahead so far.  Plus, I can reuse the lights and stands for years to come.  Now it just remains to be seen how many peppers and tomatoes we'll produce to offset the grocery bill.



This is my workbench / potting bench in all it's glory, tucked between the new tiller I got for Christmas and boxes we're waiting to recycle.  I actually rescued this dresser from someone's curb years ago, and my dad surprised me by re-purposing it into a play kitchen for the kids.  (He added fresh paint, the "control panel" board, washers for dials, and coffee can lids for burners - so awesome!)  Now that the kids have quit playing with it, I've claimed it as my own.







My new favorite way to grow tomatoes is in eggshells.  Pretty sure I saw this on Pinterest.  This season, I started all of my seeds in a store-bought Jiffy medium (instead of making my own mix) and added spoonfuls of worm castings.  The seeds I tucked into eggshells have grown at almost twice the rate of those in other containers.

I cleaned them out well after making breakfast and let them dry.  

After filling them with seed starting medium, I carefully drilled a hole in the bottom with a screwdriver. 

 

Planted seeds and watched them grow! (The eggshell seedlings seem to hold moisture better as well, and so needed less watering each day.)

 

Out with the Old

Gideon and I both got awesome new gardening gloves in our stockings this year. He wants to use his at any opportunity, so today I sent him to clean out some of the straggling lettuce plants from the backyard raised bed. (Come spring, that bed is getting an overhaul. I'm interested to test summer sun back there, because winter sun was a total bust.)

Watching things grow

Growing seeds is a romantic endeavor for me. Seeing tiny leaves emerge from the ground fills me with wonder. Last year (my first to start seeds), I'd read lots of books about the process, seed leaves, true leaves, rough timelines for varying inches of growth, etc. But I almost didn't believe I would see it would happen.

DIY Conversion -- Kitchen Island to Seed Starting Stand

I've been lusting after Gardener's Supply Company's seed starting grow lights and stands for months, but they're dreadfully expensive.  When I have lights and surfaces on hand that function perfectly well, it's hard to justify such an investment.  My husband already teases me mercilessly about $100 peppers and $40 tomatoes.  Still, my own hodge podge lighting system was awkward and driving me nuts.  The 4-ft flourescent light was causing all kinds of problems since it could only hang diagonally and on the lower shelf.

So the kids and I took a trip to a home improvement store this morning in search of shorter flourescent lights.  I am very intimidated by power tools and DIY projects, but I managed to install them without any trouble.

I'm so happy with the end result! It may not be sexiest seed starting system available, but it's much more stream-lined than before and didn't cost me an arm and a leg.

Maybe at some point I'll find a more attractive way to raise and lower my seedlings as they grow... but Amazon boxes will work fine for now.  :)

                            

SURPRISE!

I made a discovery yesterday while I was watering. I just happened to glance down at my flowerbed (the landscaping the builders installed that I've hardly messed with) and noticed a beautiful green plant growing. We have a fair amount of clover, dandelions, and miscellaneous weeds growing all over our yard, and this didn't look anything like them.  So I did a double take, then leaned over for a closer look. Finally this morning, I rinsed off a leaf and tasted it.  ARUGULA! 

The biggest arugula I've ever grown and it was a complete accident, growing in compacted, clay soil that I assumed wouldn't grow anything worth a lick.  The powdery stuff around it is a mix of cornmeal and diatomaceous earth that I poured over some anthills.

This is the arugula bed that I planted on purpose in between my dormant raspberry and blackberry bushes.  It's doing beautifully (though now that I've seen how monstrous arugula can get, my opinion of this bed is tempered slightly), and I pick leaves and whole plants on an almost daily basis to add to pizza, eggs, and salads.

When planting, I've often dusted my hands off over the flowerbed, wondering absently if any random seeds would take hold.  But I've never gone to the trouble to check.  After taste-testing my surprise arugula  (with Evan watching me doubtfully), I went back out to the flowerbed to scan for other lettuce-type leavings. 

I should say that none of my lettuce is growing well in containers or in my backyard bed.  I'm beginning to pinpoint the mistakes that I've made.  And now I'm wondering if I should just broadcast seeds in my front flowerbeds, careful planting and soil preparation be hanged.  There are three plants here that I'm pretty sure are some kind of mesclun.  They look similar to dandelion leaves, until you put them side by side.  I ate one a small leaf (with Evan still looking highly skeptical), and it tasted fine - really mild with not even a hint of bitterness.  After a little more research, we might have some free. yummy salads for dinner... assuming I can talk my husband into some entry level foraging.