My6impossiblethings’s Weblog

The June Garden was very busy. We had lots of rain which means weeds! and we transitioned from cool weather to hot weather plants. 

Anyone need a tomato?

Blondie (shelling) peas

Our snap peas took off like they were going out of style. Can you guess how many I harvested (one day's worth)?

Finally seeing a start to the peppers. I'm too impatient for peppers.

I now realize why gardeners dont keep very good blogs- they are too busy gardening! Here are a few highlights from May.

Shopping at the Farm & Tractor store is dangerous. We spent about ~ $80 and discovered a new favorite magazine: Grits!

New purchases. Yup, thats my old friend the loper

 Excitement was building for eating our first broccoli.  

Broccoli head. White little butterflies can just stay away!

 First attempt at sweet potatoes. These are planted at our “second” garden. I think you know you have a problem when you are borrowing space in other people’s backyards for more gardening room…

One day at the end of May we had the trees in the backyard removed, for various reasons. This left us with out any trees on our property and a very funny story of the tree removers not knowing what a growing broccoli looks like. I also planted sunflowers and luffa seeds on the south side of the garage.

Good-bye trees. Hello neighbors!

The day started off with Brunch at the new local place Daily Grub. [http://dailygrubomaha.com/]  We both had waffles. I had the PB&J, Mom had Elvis topping (thick berry smoothie). Afterwards we walked around the new Mid-town crossing complex. Then it was time to work in the garden.

The beans are literally growing before our eyes! It’s amazing to see them unfurl and grow leafs.  The second sets of onions are also popping out of the ground. The lettuce and spinach are growing like gang busters. We discovered the best way to eat the greens is to let them crisp in the fridge for a day after picking so they have a nice crunch.  

Can you see it growing?

The theme of the day turned into transplanting. We transplanted 10 volunteer tomatoes into plastic packs.  We are hoping that they are 6 yellow pear and 4 brandywine or Amish paste tomatoes.  We also transplanted little broccolis that I started from seed.  Five went into the box gardens and the other three stayed in the pot to grow larger.  The seedlings do not look strong so hopefully they will toughen up and start growing strong.  The front yard vegetable this year is peppers! We planted two red peppers and one Jalapeño in front of the ferns.  And the first beet has shown its self.

On May 6th I attempted to hill the potatoes for the first time. I say attempted because I really did not have a clue about the best way to do this or even how. I dug holes in the dirt in the corner of the potato area and used that dirt to cover the stalks. I figured you need to pack the dirt around the base and build up for the dirt to stay around the plant. Even then the larger potato plants had stalks over a hand high above the dirt hill. (I forgot to take pictures)

In the new garden plot we did not add any outside dirt when we planted and that appears to have been a mistake. The ground was rock hard where I watered, I could see a difference in soil color and I could not break through the dirt. I don’t know how the seedlings will be able to come up.

On Saturday May 8th Mom and I went to a composting class hosted by Green Omaha Coalition. [Omaha people look for upcoming events http://goc-features.blogspot.com/ ] GOC has been doing a lot of great events this year in part from being the World Enviromental Day host city in 2009. Check out the above link for more info.

The first speaker’s topic was on outdoor composting and he did not have much new information for us. We have definitely decided against having a plastic tumbler to compost and agree that we need at least 2 compost areas, one to add to and one to “cook”. The next two speakers spoke on their experiences with vermicomposting/ vermiculture which is using red wiggler worms to compost kitchen waste. The first guy was hilarious with his nonchalant attitude towards the worm, “if they die, well, they’re just worms.” The second lady had a very different approach and was very involved and attentive to her worms. The best part though was the raffle at the end. I won a book and Mom won some worms- please ask her about them .

May 2nd
What we are eating:
- Rhubarb (Mom has made muffins and a sauce for pancakes and cooking. We have harvested about 2 lbs)
- Loads of Lettuce and Spinach
- A 4 tender little radishes
- Herbs (the chives have started to bloom)

I finally finished digging the entire length of the new plot. YAY!!! And ouch my back is protesting and I gained three blisters on my hands (must remember to start out wearing gloves). I better only have to do that once! The dirt is pretty good with lots of wonderful worms but there is no denying that we have clay soil. Our compost needs to kick it into higher gear so we can start improving this dirt.
Side note: I have been thinking about dirt a lot lately, thanks to the Omaha Public Library. I watched the movie Dirt! and started reading the book Dirt: the erosion of civilizations by David Montgomery.

In this new bed we planted two kinds of Cucumbers (Munching and regular long), one Pattypan Squash, one regular Zucchini, two Butternut Squash, the rest of the yellow and red onions, and two rows of Beets. This is our first year of trying beets, could not resist seeds at less then 50 cents.

New garden plot planted with seeds

We also “saved” volunteer Roma Tomatoes from next door neighbor Matt. These little guys thrived with the transplanting. Our intent is to grow these Roma tomatoes as give away plants.

Look at how well our potatoes are growing! 100% success rate

Potatoes on the left, Onions on the right

This weekend, April 24, the focus was on the near box which previously held our compost.  We have high hopes for the fertility of this dirt.  We installed wood trellis purchased from Habitat restore originally intended to be window inserts.  I planted Ying Yang beans, Garden beans, Swiss Chard, and a Pineapple Sage. (Update: Radishes seeds planted 5/6 and broccoli transplanted 5/9) The potatoes and onions are going strong.

Ying Yang beans= Coolest beans ever

Trellis and beans in the ground

Fresh Garden Salad

Bleeding Heart in full bloom

The weekend of April 9th & 10th was exciting in the garden as we “broke sod” on a new plot! We intend to use this space for the vine and sprawling plants. It turned out to be a bit of an unusual shape and we have never started a bed that truly just grass before plus I don’t want to buy a lot of new dirt in plastic bags (does anyone else see the irony in that?) so this whole section will be one big experiment.

In the original garden, back corner, our rhubarb came back and growing strong. We also had some onions return. We are working on clearing out the Creeping Charley weed that has spread from our neighbors’ yards. Another first on the homestead was the planting of potatoes. Mom had some potatoes go to seed before we could eat them so we decided to try planting them. The potatoes were organic from the farmers market at the end of last fall. I made trenches and then hilled the potatoes. I also planted two long rows of onions, one red and one yellow. The onions are planted close together and we are suppose to pick every other one after they have some growth, so we’ll have a crop of small early onions and leave the rest to mature to regular size.

Potatoes in the trench before being covered up

Onion sets. Yellow and Red (cant wait to make guac!)

The not so fun part of gardening was the spring clean up. We attempted to make a dent in clearing out mulberry growth and pulling maple seedlings that like to take over the fence lines. We also did some pruning to the wild rose bush. I decided rose gardener will NOT make the future career list. However we did transplant two roots for Emily at her new house.

Finally something just as exciting as a new garden- our new CLOTHESLINE! This one was made in Parkersburg, IA (locally made) and it can fit a lot of clothes. I had to dig and dig to get a foot and half hole. I seriously thought I was digging to China, I wish I would have gotten a picture of it. After about the first layer, at least a hand’s length of grass roots!, we hit really awesome dirt- who knew! Apparently our house was built on land that use to be a dairy farm so I am thinking deep under the grass is some quality cow enhanced dirt.

And it spins!

Over the winter Mom and I had big plans for the garden and we were ready to go as soon as the weather allowed. Of greatest interest was how our compost would work. Last summer was the first time we experimented with composting. It appears that we might not have closed our beds early enough to retain some heat over the winter, but who would have expected the frigid long winter we had? We also had planted two kinds of garlic in a new plot around Halloween and we found some strong plants peeking up under the “compost” layer.

Before working outside we started some herb seeds inside. In little peat pots we have cilantro, basil, and parsley. They are next to the southern facing windows. When they did not sprout in the proper amount of time we made little hot houses by covering the pots with old plastic bags and using the grow light on them. They sprouted but came up very thin and spindly.

Our planting started on April 3. We put in two areas of lettuce and spinach, one trial of peas, radish. Later that week we added carrots, snow peas, blondie peas, and a mix of already started lettuces.

We are going to try and weigh all of the produce from the garden to participate in the White Violet Center’s “Grow One More” campaign.  See here for more info: http://www.spsmw.org/WhiteVioletCenterforEcoJustice/Agriculture/GrowOneMore/tabid/1746/Default.aspx

Now we mostly have to worry about the weather and hope there will be no hard freezes.