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.

Put to Good Use

My new compost crock...

is actually my mother's old bean pot, which I've always loved.  My mom used it to hold sausage balls for community meals, and that's all I've ever done with it, too.  Until this morning, I had it sitting on top of my cabinets next to a ceramic rooster and an old oyster tin for decoration.  

For five years, I've been re-purposing plastic containers (usually margarine tubs or milk jugs) to hold my veggie scraps.  Not the most aesthetically pleasing choice, but being free and reused counts for a lot in my book.  However, I'd finally decided I could justify buying a more attractive container as a permanent fixture next to my sink.  It only occurred to me yesterday that I had the perfect crock right under my nose!

Hunting for Inspiration

I see yards and landscapes differently now as I drive around.  Wide open lawns just seem like wasted spaces where neighborhoods could grow so much food!  And beautifully, too!  As much as I love my gardening books, I love seeing the way "real" people garden next door and down the street.  It inspires me to see what is possible, what can be grown successfully in my climate, how small and odd spaces can be used.  This weekend, I drove around to some points of inspiration in my neighborhood.

This entire carport is so beautiful! Proof that small and odd spaces can be transformed, giving people without gobs of land a way to grow food.

There wasn't much growing here at this point in the year, but the remnants are still inspiring. This twisty raised bed is in the middle of a typical Fort Worth front yard.

 My picture does not do this yard justice. This home is on our trick-or-treating path, and is the real-life yard-garden that finally made Evan a believer in beautiful, edible front-yard landscaping.

 

I have a lot of work ahead of me and a long way to go in re-imagining and re-purposing our yard into a productive, edible space.  My two current gardening book favorites are "Edible Landscaping" by Rosalind Creasy and "The Edible Front Yard: The Mow-less, Grow-More Plan for a Beautiful, Bountiful Garden" by Ivette Soler.  And I'll keep hunting for more local inspiration.

Silly me

I was under the laughable impression that colder weather would mean I didn't have to battle pests for a little while.

 

This morning I decided to take a close look at my backyard pea plants. I'd noticed some yellowing around the base of the plant, which was the beginning of the end for my peas last year. So I perched on the edge of my raised bed in a very unladylike squat and began peering through the leaves.

Aaaargh! The dreaded discovery of pest leavings!

I plucked off the worst bitten leaves to take a closer look... flipped one over... Can you see that tiny little green worm?

Hello, who do we have here?

I take great, and I suppose sadistic, pleasure in disposing of bad bugs. I have not arrived at the point where I can smile benevolently at these pests and acknowledge their place in the world. No sirree. We squish bugs at our house with fervor.

I'm still figuring out what I'm dealing with - cabbage worms, cutworms, or something like. In the meantime, I've sprayed Neem as thoroughly as I can, I'm going to go handpick bugs off of every leaf during the baby's nap, and then I'm going to consider cornmeal traps, DE and an investment in nematodes or something.

Let the battle begin!

In happier news, my broccoli plant is growing.  I'm determined to learn to grow things from seed, and so far most of the things I direct sow grow at a miserably slow pace.  But I can actually see progress in the broccoli and it makes me happy.

Tree Trimming

We have a small backyard.  I'm actually love it, because it's so much easier to manage than our former backyard.  To be so small though, we have quite a lot of trees. The men in the family tackled the overgrown beast in the corner last week, turning our backyard into a temporary jungle.

My fledgling hydrangeas got a bit trampled in the process, but at least the tree is under control.



And it's amazing how much that corner of the yard has opened up.  We still have 7 hackberry (I think) trees to trim, thus the dappled shade you see here.

Sometimes I think the way I talk about our landscape makes it sound way more glamorous than it is.  I guess that's because it feels glamorous to me.  I find so much peace sitting on our porches, or toodling around the yard watching my plants grow by miniscule degrees, or watching the kids play.  Especially as I think about all the people on the East Coast today struggling to piece their lives back together after that horrible storm, I'm very grateful for my little peaceful patch of land.

Winter is coming

It's been a busy few weeks for me, both in the garden and in our house.  At the moment, we're enjoying a true day of rest.  I'm sitting on our porch swing listening to the breezes and reveling in the chillier weather.  I love colder weather, so the larger part of me is rejoicing.  But the other part is glancing around worriedly at my plants wondering what will survive the coming winter months.  I've heard rumors that our complete lack of winter last year is leading towards an especially icy one this year.  I'll believe it when I see it.

I had a friend over to watch one of the presidential debates last week.  We ended up drinking a bottle of wine and talking permaculture, which was so much better than talking politics.  We stood around my yard long after the debate was over, tossing around ideas for my land.  As in most things, a fresh set of eyes is so helpful.  She glanced over at the retaining wall dividing our house from the neighbors' and suggested that I try putting tomatoes beside it.  In the spring. 

I was too excited at the idea of another edible-friendly growing place in my limited landscape to wait for spring.  So I went out the next day and bought a raspberry and a blackberry bush at a 75% discount and made a berry bed.  I told my friend later that I felt like she'd told me where to dig for gold.  The grass hadn't grown well in that particular spot, which made me so happy.  The fewer battles I have to fight with bermuda the better.  Instead, the ground was covered with a natural layer of leafy mulch and clover, and the soil was full of earthworms. 

I've always wanted to grow berries, and I didn't think I'd ever have a place for them on my own land.  And let's be honest, they still might not grow.  We have several beautiful (and annoying) crepe myrtles that provide so much wonderful (and super annoying) shade.  The unfortunate placement of a sprinkler head forced me to move the bed down further into the occasional shade of the house.  And on top of all that, I have no experience growing berries, and they may not survive my learning curve.  But it makes me happy that I have a place to try.

I removed what ground cover was there, put down a good bit of peat moss, mushroom compost and regular compost.  I mulched around the plants and watered in some liquid humus in an attempt to further improve the soil. (As good as it was in comparison to the rest of my soil, it still needs some help.)  Then I decided to plant some arugula and lettuce in the wide open spaces around the berries.  Gideon helped me plant this arugula (in a very haphazard fashion), and it's required a lot of thinning.  I took some bites of the seed leaves during thinning... mmm, spicy and delicious.  There's really nothing like eating what you've grown yourself, even if it's barely a mouthful.

I dug up these two huge rocks while I was preparing the bed.  I'm not sure what Gideon and his stick were trying to accomplish with them, but he was working hard and happy.

Pea planting

I'm really focusing on peas these days. They're supposed to be easy to grow, and it's the season for them. So I'm shamelessly trying to boost my gardening ego with a bumper crop of snow peas and shell peas. In the meantime, I'm thoroughly enjoying the look of the bamboo tepees in our flower beds. Thank you Garden ridge clearance.

Ants are still fighting to occupy my east-side porch planter. I planted in spite of them and managed to avoid any bites. I'm trying cornmeal again as an organic control, but my confidence is shaky that it will work. I've heard coffee grounds, baby powder and diatomaceous earth are also effective ant controls, all of which I have easy access to. We have a pretty huge ant problem throughout our landscape, so I may have robust organic experiment on my hands.