After the various and sundry rabbits and ground squirrels did this:
Last night, I scurried up to Madison for a class at Olbrich Botanical Garden about Vermicomposting. It was an interesting class. She demonstrated setting up a worm bin using a small storage container and talked about caring for and maintaining the worms and bin, as well as finding supplies around town. With her description, it would have been quite straightforward to get the parts together and set up a worm bin, but she had sample bins for sale for $10 at the class. I figured that the convenience of not having to run errands up in Madison to collect parts and to find the time to put the pieces together made the price seem like a pretty good deal, so I came home with a worm bin complete with worms and a first bit of food for them to eat.
The bin:
and one of the residents:
We added some coffee grounds and scraps from prepping tomatoes for canning tomato today. We will still be feeding our compost bin in the yard, but picking out the choice bits to feed the worms. Especially this time of year when there is a whole lotta canning going on, we generate a ton of compost! All three kids are pretty excited about it, but my bug boy Beeb is especially taken by them. Before bed last night, he came up to me and said, "Thank you for getting us worms, Mommy."
So are they merely new residents in our household? Employees who are producing some fantastic soil amendments in exchange for room and board? Or pets that we have to check on and talk to regularly throughout the day?
The alternating hot weather and plentiful rains have gotten most everything growing like crazy.
“Knee-high by the fourth of July” is for under-achievers. The beans are blooming, the punkins are blooming (with one teensey little green punkin already). The tomatoes are starting to get a couple of blossoms. Japanese beetles have become the bane of my existence. I am keeping a jar of soapy water to knock them into and leaving it in the garden as a warning to other beetles (which hasn’t really made a difference, but it makes me feel better).
I think the bugs have all but killed off the watermelons, but the edamame is flourishing.
The flower in the corner has two buds getting close, so I think Miss Bean will forgive me for breaking off the first flower. The herbs are growing, though the bugs have been in my basil and marjoram. Also, the chives appear to remain annoyed at the insult of being replanted.
Our CSA had their end of season clearance of seedling, so I picked up a few more things. Herbs in a new little bed in front of the house next to the steps:
A sweet green pepper in topsy-turvy hanging off the deck:
A sun sugar tomato from the CSA open house a week and a half ago in a topsy-turvy over the back deck:
The frequent rainfall, combined with a few days of scorching temps interspersed here and there has resulted in crazy garden growth. The corn, beans, and pumpkins/gourds have been going crazy and I am starting to get a little frightened of the oregano (front row, center right).
The tomatoes are still on the small side, but the seedlings didn’t get a great start and then got abused during hardening off, so I’m just grateful as many survived as there are. I did have to fill in a couple of tomatoes from a friend with some spares, but over half survived a rough beginning!
Miss Bean got a pink geranium and Bug got a sun sugar tomato from our CSA open house last week. The geranium is thriving next to the lavender in the front and the tomato, christened Hin III, is in the topsy-turvy on the deck.
We get our first CSA box this week and there have been rumors of garlic scapes, so I am very excited. Also, I think tomorrow morning will be strawberries U-pick. Yum!!!
…is that it make green things grow. After a largely coolish pleasant spring, we have been beset with three days of 80’s and 90’s and plenty o’ humidity. Not my favorite weather. But look what it does to the plants:
That was only six days ago! And wee little things are sprouting all over:
And crazy little herbies (cumin on the left and on the right is basil with its volunteer lettuce friend…I figure we might get a bitsy salad before the basil needs the space):
And crazy little kidlets:
And finally, since I had to be outside to limit the amount of chaos and mayhem generated by the Beeb, I finished some planting:
I wasn’t real clear on which were the roots and which were the shoots on the Lily of the Valley, but I figure they’ll be smarter than I am and figure out which way to grow in spite of my efforts to confuse them. The rhubarb isn’t looking too pleased about the change, but I am optimistic that will perk up once it gets a chance to acclimate.
Gotta run for now…I have a pan of gyro meat ready to come out of the oven…made with New Glarus ground lamb from Patty Reedy. The tzatziki sauce, made with homemade yogurt is waiting in the fridge. Jealous yet?
Aaaaand, turning to a happier topic…
We will be doing the same CSA as we did last summer so we are getting very excited for lots of wonderful veggies to come. The things I selected to plant around the yard were things for canning and/or to fill in CSA gaps. I thought I would photograph, label, and blog so there is at least a remote possibility I’ll remember what is where when things start sprouting. First, the little garden plot:
Herbs in front…we got the onions as transplants from a friend, the cilantro was just seeded today and the oregano and sage are back from last year
Tomatoes around the edge…three varieties. We ran way short on canned tomatoes last year, partly due to the late blight, so my motto is “Never too many tomatoes.”
The three sisters in the middle…corn, beans, and squash. Since we get a ton of regular squash from our CSA, we did half in sugar pumpkins and half in birdhouse gourds. We will experiment with dried corn and cornmeal with the corn, dried beans to be canned for chili, pumpkins for canning, and birdhouse gourds to dry and make into projects.
Next along the side yard:
Watermelon for eating and rinds for watermelon pickles and a little bit of soybeans for edamame snacks.
In the front:
Lavendar for drying and making lavender syrup. I have gotten fatally hooked on lavendar white chocolate iced mochas at the ‘Bou and rose white chocolate iced mochas at the Ear. Wild flowers are for the pretty. I will try again with bulbs in the fall. I planted bulbs in the fall shortly after we moved here, but they keep getting nibbled by critters. Not enough to completely kill them off, but enough to keep them from budding or thriving. The little SOBs were tunneling under the steps and up into the bed. So this spring I dug all the dirt (down to clay) out of the planter, made a five sided wire cage out of wire mesh left over from the compost bin project, and put the dirt back. We’ll let the rodents give it the old college try over the summer and plant bulbs this fall if it is a success.
And finally, herbs on the porch:
The only planting I have left is three topsy-turvey planters that I will plant with seedlings that I’ll get when our CSA has its open house, a rhubarb plant I got at farmers’ market last week and some Lily of the Valley that will be put along the back of the house. I’m thinking a cherry tomato, a jalapeno, and maybe a green pepper for the topsy-turveys.
At what point do I need to start worrying about locking the bedroom door at night? I'm pretty sure you can actually see them growing if you watch for a while.
These are from just two days ago! The front porch tomato has gotten taller than its cage and has several green tomatoes:
The pumpkins appear to be planning world domination, starting with the entire rocky area. Tomorrow, the whole yard; the next day, you might want to be careful when you go out your front door...I'm just sayin'
We have had tons of blossoms, but have only found three little pumpkins so far and all three are sugar pumpkins (pie pumpkins). I really hope we get some jack-o-lanterns, too, or the kidlings will be disappointed! There is plenty of time yet, so I'm not worried yet. Here are two of our tinies (the third picture was even blurrier than these two...)
It was clear from the start that Hin was more than slightly neurotic and refused to have anything to do with upside down. If you look at the previous post the vine is grosing in a very insistent U-shape. However, just a couple of days after the last batch of photos, a wind storm finally managed to make Hin see the error of his ways. After a windy night, I went out to check on Hin and discovered that the bottom of the U was now the middle of an S:
Right after the wind, you could see daylight through the broken stem, but the branches beyond the break have continued to flourish, so it appears all is well and no major veins or arteries (or the plant equivilent thereof) were severed. The broken part has even filled in a bit since then.
These pictures are over two weeks old, so already woefully outdated, but I'll get them posted and then try and get a set of new pictures in the next day or two.
Container tomato on the front porch:
Pumpkins beside the house:
The whole garden:
Close-ups of the herbs - cilantro:
Basil:
Oregano:
Rosemary (I think, need to double check):
Topsy-turvy tomato with actual tomatoes:
A quick comment about the topsy-turvey...I had been trying to heft the watering can over my head and hit the smallish hole in the planter. The usual result was water all over the deck and me and no clue how much I had given the tomato. After several weeks of this, I finally hit on a solution. I now fill a 12 oz. pop can and put it upside down in the hole. The lid is tapered and the hole is slightly smaller than the can so it just sits there and empties. I am inordinately pleased with myself for coming up with this.
And finally watering the garden:
