I figured out what has been attacking my beans lately. The edge of the leaves looked liked they had little half moon munches out of them. No trace of eggs or anything and just on the beans on the yard side of the beds were hurting. The culprit is way cuter and much easier to forgive then a caterpillar. though, Ivy has been pulling herself up on the edge of the raised bed, reaching over and nipping holes in the edges of the leaves with her little fingers. I caught her red (green?) handed by Damian’s bed the other day.

Other then a few lost beans and some actual pest damage to my kale, the garden is in full swing. The tomatoes are ripening, the zucchini is producing steadily, the corn’s tassels are developing and the pumpkins and winter squash are blooming. All the Autumn crops are all up and running, carrots, peas, radishes and late beans.

Other then ripping out my daffodils (I moved some recently to the bench area, I think he is trying to copy what I did…) Damian is becoming quite the little garden helper. He can identify all the plants I want to keep in the back corner herb and flower bed and knows anything else gets pulled out (though he asks first.) He has also helps me put down leaf mulch and now has a harvest duty too. He picks the mint for our herbal iced tea. Sturdy plants are good for young children and mint has got to be one of the sturdiest there is. Daffodils are resilient too for the record.

My Black Krim tomatoes are heavy with fruit but still ripening, but I have harvested a few Italians and Beam’s Yellow Pears. The Italians are so dense, hardly any seeds, and packed full of flavor. This little one weighed almost 10 ounces. The variety does seem susceptible to blossom end rot, but only one of my two plants had it badly. I changed my watering habits and sprinkled crushed eggshells under it and it seems to have fixed the problem for the most part. The Beam’s Yellow Pear plants are loaded down with fruit and just starting to ripen, we have only harvested two or three so far. I like them but I wish they were a little sweeter, maybe that will change as more ripen though.

Shannon gave me several raspberries plants this Spring and I didn’t expect to get any fruit of them this year, but I noticed while watering the other day that they were covered with flowers and fruit. However either the ravens or Damian keeps getting them just as they ripen, so no measurable harvest there. I won’t worry about bird (child?) netting until next year though. The Brown-Eyed Susans Shannon gave me are also blooming. They look stunning beside the hot pink echinacea my Grandma sent me. I need to look them up though, are they annuals, biannuals or perennials? Should I let them self-sow or collect the seed? I definitely want to keep them in the garden, the bees and I adore them, but I don’t want them everywhere.

I want to thank everyone who gave me advice for the bench garden area. I am leaning towards an Arctic Beauty Kiwi. Spring Hill Nursery sells both male and female plants and they are hardy to zone 3. Only the males have variegated leaves but I like the idea of having both (the female along the sunny back fence by the corner garden) because then I could get fruit, which are apparently delicious.

Damian came running up to me in the yard a few days ago yelling “buuuuuug, red buuuug!” and proceeded to drag me over to the beans and point. Yup, he found a red bug, this lovely little ladybird beetle. She is a very welcome guest in our garden as I have seen some soft bodied pests around as of late.

Attracting beneficial insects is crucial for my organic garden. While I can always use netting for birds, copper rings for slugs, and hand picking for the tomato hornworm (whom I have not seen at all this year *knock on wood*) for the most part I have to rely on what nature has to offer to protect my plants.

While the ladybird beetle is probably the best know beneficial, it is important to spend some time researching the beneficial native to your area. Spokanites, WSU has a decent page on our local beneficial (Go Cougs!) A few of my favorites are:

Mason Bees: These are my favorite garden pollinators. They are far less aggressive then the non-native European Honeybee and can pollinate hundreds more flowers per day then a honeybee. They are also solitary so you don’t have to worry about a hive establishing itself by your home. I could honestly go on and on about these little guys but rather then regurgitate facts, WSU has a really fantastic info page about them here.

Preying Mantis: So beautiful, I love these guys, the ninjas of the bug world. Mantises are exclusively predatory insectivores (though there are some larger species that also prey on small reptiles and amphibians, not native to WA though!) Unlike ladybird beetles, mantises eat any insect they can catch, beneficial or not. Still, they are not common enough to be a pest. I often hear people say that female preying mantises must bit the head off the male during copulating for them to get inseminated (which is called sexual cannibalism) which always makes me laugh. It is not necessary for them to reproduce and does not always happen. It is a behavior exhibited far more often in captivity then in the wild.

Stink bugs: A trickier beneficial insect. Many species are harmful but some are predatory and those that are eat things like caterpillars so you want those. I included these in my list so I can give you a little trick for telling good from bad. As a general rule, beneficial species can be identified by spines coming out of their thoraxes, whereas plant feeders have round “shoulders.”

Ants: Though we don’t like these in our homes ants as a group are beneficial to humans. Their tunneling mixes and aerates the soil and many species feed on small insects that are serious crop pests. The black ants in my garden have herded most of the aphids onto my tallest sunflower which has been a lifesaver for my three sisters garden. I really really don’t like ants but I recognize that it is irrational so I try to see the beauty in them. (If one crawls on me though, it’s dead, that’s just the way it is.)

Spiders and Pseudoscorpions: Before someone says something, I know they are technically both arachnids but you can’t have a list like this without including them. All of them are predatory and fantastic beneficials. They are a bit misunderstood and many people fear them but remember very few are dangerous to man (Black Widows, Brown Recluses and Hobos in our area) and they usually prefer to avoid us anyways.

Parasitic Wasps: Another misunderstood beneficial and with over 16,000 species in North America there is plenty of misunderstanding to go around. Most of these are very small (1/4″ long or less.) They lay their eggs on or in the body of a host insect (like scales, whiteflies, aphids, leafminers and caterpillars) and when they hatch the larvae eat the host eventually killing it (cool huh?) Some wasps also hunt and eat other insects. I saw a wasp carrying off some small caterpillar the other day, I cheered.

Do you have a favorite beneficial insect? What is it and what does it do?

I had originally intended on putting a bench in the back corner of the yard by the raised beds but recently changed my mind to this spot, beside the deck. I changed my mind because my view of the yard is obscured from the back corner at times by what is growing in our raised beds (currently by tomatoes and corn) and it also receives sun all day long which makes it a rather toasty sitting spot for most of the summer.

I like the spot pictured above much better, beside our deck stairs. It received dappled shade almost all day, bright but indirect sun, so nice for reading and cooling off. It is also right by where we usually have our fire pit, extra seating is always good thing.

This past Saturday I had Michael roll over a couple large concrete pillars that have been in the alley behind our home since we moved in. While I have no idea what their original use was, they make sturdy posts of the bench. They are ugly but nothing a little paint won’t fix (I’m thinking brown like the deck or bright white.) There is just a scrap piece of wood from building the raised beds sitting across them now but I am painting a bench top at the moment. It was originally going to say “The earth laughs in flowers.” but Michael recently came across another quote “A life without friends is like a garden without flowers.” which is even better for a bench to go by a fire pit.

Of course I need to fix something about the area the bench will be in with a quote like that. It needs flowers to fill the area behind the bench, I have some daffodils over there already but nothing beyond that. I am thinking violas and bleeding hearts. I have both them growing against the north face of my house in full shade but have been wanting to move them for awhile. Maybe crocuses too, the area gets more light in the Spring before the elm leafs out. I want to put some kind of trellis between the ground and deck behind the bench and plant a vine, maybe Jackamanii Clematis or Goldheart Ivy.

Do you know any other flowering shade plants or vines suited for my zone 5?

Freckles is an Austrian heirloom lettuce I grew this year. It is more commonly called Forellenschluss but I have to google that every time I need to spell it and it is not going to flow easily from my memory to my tongue any time soon. If you prefer the latin we can stick with Lactuca sativa but that isn’t sticking going to be sticking around my brain either.

Name aside, I was quite pleased with this variety in the end. We had a bit of a rough start, I started it inside initially and transplanted it out under row cover quite early. After that it refused to grow any bigger (though it did turn a beautiful dark red back when the nights were near freezing) until the weather started to warm, then it really exploded in growth. Though it is a 58 day variety, because of the slow start outside it took more like 70 days for me. Supposedly it does will in the cold early spring but I didn’t find that to be the case with me.

As for the name Freckles, well, just look at the picture. This variety is characterized by it’s vibrant green leaves covered with deep red spots. It kind of looks like someone splashed red wine on it to me. (Forellenschuss literally means “speckled like a trout’s back”, an equal mouthful of a name.)

I cut some when it was still small as well as when it topped out at it’s full height (8-12 inches) and loved it both ways. Freckles looks like a romaine but has the delicate texture of a butterhead variety. Even when it became very really hot the stuff had no bitterness. I think I could grow it through the summer in a shadier spot.

I would grow this variety again though later in the season (any recommendations for an heirloom variety to grow early under row cover?) and I would recommend it to anyone who wanted a slow bolting summer lettuce in their garden. I am seed saving this one:

One head is currently bolting in the garden. I think the flower is rather lovely (I have a weakness for green flowers and the splotches make it just that much cooler.)

Yesterday I spent the morning out in the garden weeding and harvesting the last of the Spring vegetables. The Amish snap peas were pretty much finished (the recent hot spell did them in) so Damian and I harvested all that remained and ripped the plants out. I was really pleased with this variety and have ripe partly dry pods hanging up in my kitchen to save the seeds from. I have read that snap peas can be a Autumn crop but I am not sure when the plant them… Does anyone know? We harvested 12 ounces of snap peas in our final harvest yesterday, probably a little more since I had toddler help.

We also harvested almost two pounds of Forellenschuss lettuce leaving one to bolt so that we can save the seeds from that as well. I was also really pleased with this romaine variety, it faired very well with the heat. I am saving the seeds but I am not sure if I will continue to dedicate space in the raised beds to lettuce since we receive enough in our Bountiful Basket every week.

My Red Russian kale turned out to be a decent producer considering it survived being ripped out by Damian three times this Spring. It is still going but I have decided to leave it for the rest of the season (I’m a little tired of kale anyhow.) I am considering overwintering it just because I want to see how it flowers. Speaking of flowers my miniature rose is blooms. I have a tremendous soft spot for all kinds of roses and I adore this one’s cheery yellow blooms.

I ripped out all my purple top turnips, for some reason they never started to size up and it has been five months, far past their maturity date. They were my Spring failure as was Bloomsdale spinach which all died off as soon as it sprouted. I may try turnips again for Autumn planting since I really love them but I think I will try another kind of spinach.

After harvesting and ripping out the remainder of the Spring crops that only left one kale, one lettuce, a row of St Valery carrots and three PA Dutch Crookneck Squash in Bed A (the one with the trellis.) I fertilized everything that needed it in all the beds and then planted Empress Beans in most of the void space left in Bed A. I tried this bush bean last year and it didn’t do very well but I also did not expect our elm to shade the area where I planted them as much as it did, I didn’t inoculate them and I think I planted them far too densely. We will see how they do this year in a much better location with inoculant and more spacing. I hope they provide enough green beans to last us through the Winter as they are suppose to be a heavy producer. If nothing else they will work as a nitrogen fixing cover crop I guess.

I also planted a few Purple Podded Pole Beans by the trellis as Damian ripped out all the ones I planted a month ago. I might be cutting it a little close on their maturity date and the first frost but I really want to see how they look and taste. The risk is worth it.

In Bed B my tomatoes plants are amazingly huge but they have yet to set very many fruit. With as cold as the weather has been until recently I am not surprised, but now with this recent hot spell they finally seem to be doing their stuff. Lots of little one on the Beams’ Yellow Pear and a few on the Italian, but none of the Black Krim yet. I harvested about a half a cup of Genovese Basil which I have planted around the tomatoes. I made some bruschetta using Bountiful Basket tomatoes with it and tossed it with rainbow rotini, fresh corn, peas and mozzarella today. The flavors meld as we speak. Yum. I should marinate some chicken to grill with it, but I think I have filled my burn quota risk for the day. (If you follow me on Facebook you know what I am talking about, if not, don’t worry I will survive.)

My Black Beauty Zucchini is looking beautiful and starting to produce squash, I can’t wait. I am one of those sick people who can eat zucchini at every meal and not tire of it and there is always zucchini relish to be made. I planted six cucumbers in Bed B and every single one of them died, or so I though (I just have really bad luck with cucumbers it seems) but it seems I have one growing right beside my zucchini. I think Damian pinched the seed and planted it while I was planting since I don’t remember planting one there (maybe he will plant all the cukes next year.) I do not know if it is a Double Yield or a True Lemon but it is both healthy and flowering so at this point I don’t really care!

As mentioned earlier Damian ripped out all the Purple Podded Pole Beans and the cucumbers failed so I have void space in Bed B too. I sowed Empress Beans in some of it. No such thing as too many green beans and they are only a 55 day crop too. I am thinking about sowing more St Valery Carrots in that bed too, they play nicely with tomatoes.

Damian’s cucumber growing super powers apparently extend to his garden too. The Sugar Pie pumpkin vines started off slowly but seem to have quadrupled in size since the warm weather hit, no flowers yet though, and I swear the corn and beans grow six inches every night. The sunflowers are now officially taller then him. Damian loves going out every morning and watering his bed. He is also in charge of watering the raspberries I transplanted in June as well as the tipee garden. He checks the raspberry plants closely every day, I think he is waiting for them to fruit like Shannon’s are. Next summer sweetie.

That is about it for the moment. The tipee garden has rallied since I weeded and mulched it a couple weeks back. I didn’t think my Toad Lilies made it but I noticed them poking through last week, my German chamomile is going to seed and my moonflowers and morning glories are starting to climb. My pink “Double Delight” coneflowers (echinacea) have begun to bloom as have my mint and oregano. I have seen so many mason and bumblebees around that garden. Damian adores seeing the “buzzybeeeeees”, I couldn’t agree more.

This is our back fence. Behind it is a hard packed dirt alley and another row of houses. The alley used to be where the trash was picked up was but now it just an overgrown noxious weed zone (mostly knapweed) where we all have our garages and park our vehicles (except when there is a deep snowfall.)

Michael and I spent yesterday ripping out the weeds back there because I am tried of them crossing into my garden and it is just plain ugly. It’s not done yet but when it’s done there will be a two foot barrier between the alley and our fence. Beyond that area, we will keep where we park weed wacked but generally where vehicles go there are hardly any weeds, not even knapweed likes being run over it seems. I will be covering the area I am weeding with plastic for the season to kill any remaining weeds or seeds (it’s called solarization) and the area will be bordered with all the extra bricks under our deck. There is also another area in the alley to the side of the garage door with knapweed so big it is a bush at this point, I’ll be ripping all that out and solarizing that area too.

I’ve exhausted my summer gardening budget but come autumn I want to amend the soil back there. Hopefully I will have enough compost from my own bin to do that but realistically I will probably need to buy some bags. The soil just needs to be made decent. I also want to mulch it with leaves from our elm before winter. My goal with both the two foot barrier and area by the garage door is to turn it into a xeriscape.

Xeriscaping is a method of landscaping that aims to reduce or eliminate the need for irrigation, which makes it perfect for the dry hot alley. Several of our native wildflowers will be perfect for this area, it is just be a matter of obtaining the seeds (animals eat them in the wild so it is not as easy as it seems.) A few of the seeds require cold stratification so I will need to plant them in the autumn so that they germinate come spring. Here’s the species I’m thinking of planting:

• Arrowleaf Balsamroot (Balsamorhiza sagittata): My favorite wildflower. It is a perennial that has big bright yellow flowers in early spring and is one of the earliest sources of nectar for emerging insects.
• Prairie Smoke (Geum triflorum): A perennial that blooms from spring to early summer with pink buds and the fern-like foliage stays green for most of the year which is nice. It is suppose to make a nice slow-growing groundcover too.
• Blanketflower (Gaillardia aristata): This perennial inspired the xeriscape idea. It gets beautiful fiery flowers mid to late summer.
• Western Aster (Aster occidentalis): One of the few I found that blooms from late summer all the way until the first frost making it a great source of nectar for insects getting ready to hibernate. It gets a mass of pretty little blue to purple flowers.

With these four plants, I should have something in bloom for the pollinators from early Spring to the first frost which is great since I want to attract them to my vegetable garden as well (which is just three feet away on the other side of the fence.) I will be putting up some mason bee houses in the tepee garden (also against the back fence) next Spring since it offers both shade and is watered often (so has mud for the mason bees to build their nests.)

But one step at a time, first to finish all that back-breaking weeding. I wish knapweed didn’t have the mother of all taproots (of course then it probably wouldn’t be a noxious weed.) I also wish it didn’t give me hives but that is another matter altogether and even more of a reason to destroy it.

This morning I harvested 3oz of Red Russian Kale and 8oz of Amish Snap Peas. I was so thrilled to finally get to update my little harvest chart in the far right column of this site. I could have harvested a head or two of Forellenschuss romaine but I have two large heads of green leaf lettuce in the fridge from Saturday’s Bountiful Baskets box, so I would rather leave it to grow a few more days then store it in my fridge. Both today’s harvests are going into stir fry this evening.

It has been raining and raining and raining for the past couple weeks (though it was beautiful for the campout this weekend.) I am beginning to wonder if the warm weather will arrive at all this year. I am so grateful for my raised beds which drain beautifully, in spite of the below average temperatures and drizzle everything is hanging in there quite well.
Last week during an evening break in the weather I managed to finally finish my raspberry bed and get my transplants from Shannon into the ground. I won’t get anything this year but maybe next year.

No matter the short term forecast it is always important to look to and plan for the future.

And the crows that live in my douglas fir say “OM NOM those beans you JUST planted!”

*Sigh* it is bad juju to shoot your totem right? At least they didn’t eat any that had already sprouted and they picked off some truly huge slugs that I missed this morning. Seriously, if I can see the slug from my deck, it’s big and worth the six beans. If it becomes an issue I’ll just get some bird netting.

While all the rain we have had in the past two weeks has been biting into our outside time, it is doing wonders for the garden. I harvest my first head of Forellenschuss romaine on Sunday. It was a little small but I think that is the case any new variety you grow, you can’t help but harvest the first one a little early. It had a bitter edge but I quite liked it and intend on sowing more soon (it is suppose to do well in hot weather.)

My Amish Snap Peas are covered with flowers. I love their blossoms, they remind of of frilly little white dragons. I noticed some little pods forming on them this morning. Grow my pretties! I want stir fry! My Italian heirloom tomatoes also have their first flowers. I’m dreaming of summer BLTs.

The creeping crude (I will identify both at some point) are still being an issue in the Bench Garden but the leaf mulch has allowed me to keep up with their intrusion. They are still there though, lurking on my neighbors side of the fence and now flowering. I must admit, I do find their dainty little flowers pretty, but I still reached through the fence and ripped them out after taking the pictures. No mercy.

My German chamomile is loving it’s new home and flowering away. I am letting it mostly go to seed so that it can fill the area it is in. My Summer Cheer Daffodils are in full force now too and simply stunning. They also smell amazing. I am not use to daffodils having a strong scent so that took me a little by surprise, but it was a lovely surprise.

My mother-in-law brought me peppermint and spearmint plants from her garden yesterday. I am wondering if I plant them in the void area where the neighbor’s crude keeps invading if it will keep it out. However the mint might become the invasive one then… though at least I can eat it and it isn’t prickly. That said, maybe I will sink a couple large pots in that area to contain it instead. Ultimately I think I am going to buy some 13′x58″ Split Bamboo Fencing to line the fence behind the Bench Garden (and eventually around the rest of the inside of the fence) and maybe it will help keep the crude out, and if nothing else the ugly visual of both the chain link the weeds beyond the fence will be gone.

Back in the raised beds; I direct sowed winter squash, zucchini, sunflowers, pole beans and cucumbers in Bed A and B. The turnips and carrots that I planted awhile ago are doing well in Bed A, but I need to do a successive sowing of them, and plant radishes too if it is not too late. In Damian’s three sisters garden we have planted Titan Sunflowers in each corner and his Strawberry Popcorn throughout. Both have sprouted and as soon as the corn is 4 inches we will plant two types of dry beans and pumpkins in there too. No chance at all weeds will be able to find a foothold in that bed once it is in full swing!

And to end on a surprising note, I have largely ignored the front yard since moving it, it is North face and unfenced so the time I have available time to spend out there is nearly non-existent. There are Bleeding Hearts growing beside our little porch that were there when we moved in. They receive a little water when we water the grass in the heat of summer and that’s it. As a testament to how little time I spend out there can be seen in the Bleeding Heart Columbine that has had time to find a pocket of dirt, grow, flower and begin to fade before I noticed it was right in the middle of the path at the base of the front steps. I want to try to move it to the Bench Garden.

While I as out there thinking digging it up I noticed violas growing among the Bleeding Hearts (I threw some old seeds out there last Spring.) Maybe I should think about doing something with this front bed…

Nature never ceases to amaze me.

It has been awhile since I have updated about the garden, but it’s still there, plugging along, a little slower then I would like but my lapses in weeding and occasionally watering may factor into that. Yesterday I spent a few hours get it back up under control. The raised beds needed a little weeding but they can mostly fend for themselves, I mainly battled that corner garden with the tepee. I cut back the neighbors tree invade through the fence and I pulled out 6 big buckets of bellflowers and that prickly creeping crude, then I put down a thick layer of leaf mulch and planted morning glories and moonflowers around the tepee. In spite of my neglect of that area though, I was pleased to find my Summer Cheer Daffodils come up. One is even is beginning to bloom! I also tossed some peas back there a month ago and found two of them winding their way up the tepee. Two of my three echinacea transplants are doing marvelously, the third is missing (serious, hole in the ground straight up missing.) No sign of the toad lilies yet.

In the void left by the disappearing echinacea, I am going to transplant the German chamomile Peter gave me. Right now it has been sitting in one of the raised beds in its little pot (so that it gets watered.) I noticed yesterday that it is starting to bud! It is still just an itty bitty thing right now but I’ve read it should reach a height 20 inches and is a self-seeding annual. I also read that chamomile can get a little aggressive if left unchecked, but honestly I’d like something a little aggressive in that area of my own choosing (love chamomile tea.) Maybe it’s aggressiveness will keep the creeping crude at bay? (Famous last words…)

My early scarlet globe radishes took two and a half weeks to germinate but now they are coming along quickly now. I did plant them right before a cold snap in a container on the deck so I think the freeze is the main culprit for their slow germination.

Speaking of cold snaps… I transplanted my tomatoes last weekend. Two Beam’s Yellow Pear, two Black Krim (my favorites) and two Italian heirloom. Naturally, a few days after I transplanted them, we had several nights of late freezes. I covered their cages with my GardenQuilt row cover though and they seem just as perky as ever.

I caught up with almost all my planting yesterday too. Damian and I planted his strawberry popcorn in his little 4×4 bed (to be a three sisters garden) as well as a few Titan sunflower. In the other beds, I planted double yield and lemon cucumbers, black beauty zucchini, PA Dutch crookneck squash and bloomsdale spinach.

As for what is already growing, I think I will be able to start harvesting some of my forellenschuss romaine and ragged jack kale in a week or two. My St Valery carrots have sprouted (they took forever to germinate as well) as have my turnips. It looks like something is chewing little holes in my turnip sprouts but I have not seen any slug trails, the culprit remains elusive. With a little help, my Amish snap peas have found the trellis and are coming along really quickly. I love how fast peas grow.

That’s about it for now. In the direct sowing domain I only have my purple poded pole beans left to plant (as well as the squash and beans in Damian’s bed but the corn has to germinate first.) I also want to get more carrots, turnips and radishes in. In transplants, only the basil is left, which I am going to put it around my tomatoes today.

That’s my garden, how about you? How does your garden grow?

One thing about gardening and having small children is that some things simply get put on hold. The tipi garden is currently overrun with this nasty prickly creeping crud.

(Can anyone identify it?) Isn’t it amazing how quickly a void in the garden can fill with nature? Gah! Normally that I haven’t had a moment to fit in gardening recently would really annoy me, but I find this is one of those things that I just have to breath and let it go.

Letting go, a concept that I use to see as a weakness, but it isn’t. In learning to let go I experience peace and freedom, the joy of simply being present in this moment. Grabbing onto a goal and planning for the future of course also have a place in my life but not to the exclusion of letting go. There is a balance to be found between the two as they both make life a happier place.

Amazing what gardening can teach us about ourselves isn’t it? Anyways, enough deeper thought for now, I promised Damian pancakes, and then we will see about weeding the garden.

My spring garden is growing well. We have had a couple losses, one of my two kale and all the snap pea sprouts in the second bed, both were victims of The Toddler. You would not believe how fast children can move. However I did factor in this kind of loss so it really isn’t that big of a deal.

My Amish snap peas in my first bed took forever to germinate, but now that they have they are doing really really well. I think they grow a couple inches a day! I have two containers of dwarf Tom Thumb Peas going at the moment too. None of my carrots (St Valery and Purple Haze) have yet to germinated but I know I must have patience, carrots in my garden seem to take forever, same with the turnips. My radishes however have started to come up. I sowed them in a container on our deck. I want to put some in the garden too, maybe where Damian pulled out the snap peas. They are a 28 day variety (Early Scarlet Globe) so by the time bean planting rolls around they will be done.

My absolute favorite thing in the beds right now is my romaine (Forellenschuss.) I love the green leaves covered in red speckles, some are so densely speckled they are beginning to look like red romaine! In contrast though, my Bloomsdale spinach seems to be really struggling but I think the warmer nights are helping it bounce back. I have been on the verge of ripping it out several times but then it has a bit of a growth spurt which stays it execution.

That only leaves my tomatoes and basil indoors (everything else will be directly sown into the beds.) I feel like both are doing great. I’m going to have to find homes for the ones that won’t fit in my beds though, I’ll have six extra, all indeterminate heirlooms. Any takers?

Seriously my friends know the quickest route to my heart. Peter and Andrea recently gifted me with orange Aqua Gems. my favorite color plus gardening, the gift double win! Andrea blogged about Aqua Gems the other day if you want to read the details but basically, once I hydrated mine, I ended up with a quart of the beautiful little gems. I scrounged up a few glass jars and poured them in.

My aloe and spider plants are rather prolific in the baby making department so I decided to “repot” them in the Aqua Gems. I used a little organic liquid fertilizer when watering the other day to keep the nutrients up but other then that just enough water to keep the beads full. So far the two aloe and one spider plant seem to be doing just great. I love looking at them in the sunlight.

Have you tried any novelty gardening items? How did they work out for you?

This past weekend I built Damian’s 4×4 raised bed and filled it and the one beside it with soil. This week I received the six tomato towers I ordered and set them up yesterday. Granted, it is way too early to put my tomatoes out but the new purchase made me giddy.

What is in the garden is doing well so far. My snap peas are growing. I have a row of romaine at various stages of growth as well as some spinach. I recently sowed carrots and turnips though neither have sprouted yet. My radishes just broke through a couple days ago too. I lost a kale plant to grubby lightening fast toddler hands but it happens, right?

Anyhow Damian just woke up from his nap and we are going to have lunch and go outside. It’s 70F!

What’s growing at your place?

A few pieces from our Easter, more photos then words this Monday, I blame the sugar coma. Rain and snow were in the forecast yesterday so our hunt happened inside. Of course that meant the day was sunny (though windy.) Damian and I made some carrot seed mats int he afternoon and planted them. The impatient gardener in me says germinate NOW!

I hope you all had a lovely Easter. It is sleeting today so something yummy is in the crock pot and chicken stock is on the stove. Other then Ivy’s 4 month old check up this afternoon, today is going to be both sugar-free and full of indoor play. Now where are the crayons…

(Edit: Oh yes! Check out the right hand margin on our website, right beside this post. Michael made me a widget to track my garden harvest as they come in. How cool is that? The stuff listed is what is currently in the garden.)

(Click for a larger version.)

I told my mom I would email her about my plans for this corner garden but I thought I might share it with you too. This image is just my general idea for this corner of the yard and the first plants to go in it. The lilies, daffodils and coneflowers in the key are the same varieties I mentioned yesterday that my mother and grandmother sent us. The lilies are in that corner since it is partial sun as it is and with the bench in place it will be mostly shade, especially if I decide to go with split bamboo fencing along that fence (though that will probably not be for another year or two.)

The back fence is also a little more long term since we are still renting. Initially I considered asparagus but their summer ferns get so very tall, also they do fine in partial sun so I think I will put them against the east fence instead. This summer morning glories and moonflowers will go along part of the back fence (and branch tipi) however eventually I would like a perennial vine on the fence instead. I like the idea of a grape (maybe a Reliance Pink Seedless Grape) since they have about a 20′ spread, and it might be worth the maintenance since I love growing things I can eat (and really, I adore grapes beyond most other fruit.) Other vine options though (and easier to talk my landlord into) are clematis or honeysuckle.

As for all that empty space, it will fill eventually, not sure with what of course, mostly flowering perennials and herbs. This bed will end wrapped around that hollow dead stump in the foreground. I am kind of tempted to fill the hollow with dirt and plant something that will cascade over the side, maybe a creeping herb. Open to your suggestions as always.

(Don’t forget to vote for your favorite quote for the bench!)

Today is just a yucky day. I know, I know, we need the rain, it is important so that we have no water restrictions in the summer, but do we need the 50mph winds? And this dampness that seems to just invade your body with it’s chill. Not even Damian wants to go outside, though he is loving watching out wind chime spinning in the Douglas Fir.

Sun or not, today has had some very bright spots. Damian and I felted eggs at the kitchen sink (he wore his new apron!) I called my mom and we chatted while Damian wrecked havoc on my pots and pans cupboard and Ivy rolled around the living room floor. I got a package from my mom and grandma too. I freely admit, I love getting packages, who doesn’t? But this one was extra special and a complete surprise, technically it is for Ivy and Damian, but hey, I’ll be planting them. It was flowers from Spring Hill Nursery. Deluxe Toad Lilies and Summer Cheer Daffodil (both summer blooming varieties) and Pink Double Delight Coneflower. As soon as these winds die down I will be planting the lilies and daffodils outside (in the bench garden I think.) I’ll need to harden off the coneflowers first since they are starts but I think I will plant them by the bench too.

What a lovely start to the week!

I suppose it is actually six weeks and a day, but yesterday simply got away from me. Besides that, today’s sun made for a lovely picture! In terms of growth, my Tom Thumb pea plants have not grown very much since last week, in fact I think the leaves might be beginning to die back, but they are beginning to set peas! So here is the sun-aided x-ray of my baby peas.

Will I be harvesting by next week? Able to put amounts on my harvest chart for 2010? I hope so! Eitherway they make me smile.

The Tom Thumb peas I planted last week have germinated. I will not share my weekly photos of this batch with (unless you wish it so) but you will still get the occasional dose of peas, especially when they flower and fruit. I love this macro of one of the sprouts.

Previous Weeks (from the first pot):

A few weeks ago I posted a little about this little corner of the garden. I want to turn the two stumps in the foreground into a bench and turn the area behind it with the tepee into a colorful little backdrop. Very colorful, bright and cheerful!The tepee is just a simple thing I threw together with some twine and branches that our Douglas Fir has shed. A couple days ago I collected all the larger rocks around the yard (with Damian’s help of course!) to help define the border. Though it is very much a work in progress (I need to fill the area back there with some decent soil) I wanted to share the updates, and draw on all your gardening and design opinions.

This summer I am going to grow morning glories and moonflowers up the tepee and along the chainlink, but eventually I would like to find a vining perennial that is pretty is multiple seasons. Grapes? Wisteria? Something I can control easily enough (I am in a zone 5.) The chainlink by the alley is to the south so if I add height I will have partial shade I think. Between the vining plant and the bench I wanted some more height, and maybe fragrance too. No thorns of course, that wouldn’t be pleasant to lean back into. I adore zinnias (though they have no fragrance) this variety is 3-4 feet tall too! Alternately maybe a butterflyweed? Seed Savers offers a beautiful orange one and they have a long bloom period. Maybe in front of those or tucked in somewhere some bunny tails, I don’t know where they would fit but I just love them, I think Damian and Ivy would like the fuzziness too. I will need something really short and hardy for the foreground, right up against the rocks and under the bench. Completely clueless there. Maybe a fragrant creeping herb? Under the bench is shaded though, moss? How hard is moss to grow?

Other plants I love (not they will all fit but to give you an idea of what I’m thinking:)

• Black-Eyed Susans (I might plant these all along the fence alley side. I hear they are really hardy.
• Lavender Hyssop
• Purple Prairie Clover
• Amish Cockscomb
• Chinese Aster

As for the bench, I am working on that. I will be woodburning a quote on a 4 foot long 2×10 and staining it after. I have many favorite quotes though, I can’t seem to settle on one. Some of my favorites:

“You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.”

“Love is a canvas furnished by Nature and embroidered by Imagination.”

“Go out, go out I beg of you. And taste the beauty of the wild. Behold the miracle of the earth. With all the wonder of a child.”

Do you have a favorite, or maybe a completely different one? I welcome your advice, even if you don’t garden, but have a design opinion, I’d love to hear it.

I always eat my peas with honey;
I’ve done it all my life.
They do taste kind of funny
but it keeps them on my knife.

Sorry, the moment I saw that my Tom Thumb Peas were blooming, almost before I could marvel at their beauty, that is the first thing that popped into my mind. Aren’t they lovely though? You can eat pea blossoms, but I won’t be, I would much rather have the ripe peas. This pot is spending from dawn till dusk outside rather then under my grow lights as the days are getting up into the 60s. I have also sowed a second pot of Tom Thumb Peas, I will be letting them dry on the plants though so I can save the seeds.

Previous Weeks:

Previous Weeks:

(Michael and Ivy relaxing on the deck during lunch this weekend.)

This weekend was a busy one. The weather was beautiful, really really beautiful. No housework was done but that was the intention because it was all about the yard. Last week our landlord put in a fence, which we are truly thankful for. Now we can actually get stuff done without chasing down Damian ever 30 seconds.

Saturday we hit the Home Depot and Northwest Seed & Pet for gardening supplies. Lumber, PVC, and nylon trellis for the raised beds, a new pot for our Yule tree, as well as some organic fertilizer, and pea and bean inoculant. After which Michael (and Damian!) disassemble my old raised beds and salvaged some of the parts (brackets and screws.) I mostly took pictures and chatted with the neighbor. Hey, if I hadn’t spoken with the neighbor, I would not have learned he had a tiller and he would not have offered to till where our new raised beds were going!

On Sunday we were up nice and early and out in the yard. We raked and weeded, our neighbor came over and tilled, I baked 4 dozen gingersnaps (a dozen of which went to the neighbor.) Damian played in the freshly turned dirt, filling his wagon with weeds, sticks and grass (no complaints there.) Though I often hear that yearly tilling is damaging, I don’t think doing it once to deepen the soil under the beds is a bad idea (it also made getting all the weeds out all kinds of easy…) We are going to sow new grass around the beds.

I also took some time to ponder a side project. Michael snapped this photo of me while I was brainstorming. I want to turn these two dead stumps into a bench. I want to stain and finish that 2×10 I’m holding for the seat and fill the area behind it with flowers. I am thinking maybe a tepee of morning glories and moonflowers. Maybe some zinnias too? I want to more of less obscure the chain link. Any suggestions? I also need a nice garden quotation. I want to wood burn it on the bench. Open to suggestions on that front too!

Aside from the bench brainstorm, we built a trellis for last Autumn’s raised bed as well as most of a new raised bed before day’s end. We have yet to install the pvc bases in it for the hoops and it’s trellis, as well as Damian’s 4×4 bed. Still, I am supremely happy with what we accomplished. With the completion of this first trellis, I will be able to plant snap peas this week!

I could spend every weekend this way. Well almost, I have one small tweak. A barbecue would have been perfect yesterday, but we were out of burgers… Oh well, there is always next weekend!

Our Tom Thumb Peas are chugging along in the growth category and starting to develop lots of little tendrils. Damian thinks they are awesome. I thought I would get a photo of my blue eyed babe beside them today…

…but instead they got attacked. Nom nom nom!

Previous Weeks:

We planted our Tom Thumb heirloom peas 14 days ago and they are really coming along nicely, so well in fact I have decided that I want to post a picture of them every week from now till they’re finished. If we had some kind of herbal mascot here at Paganites, it might be the pea. They are just so satisfying to watch grow.

Previous Weeks:

I admit, I have a weakness. A weakness for heirloom pole beans. But really aren’t they lovely? Bush beans are just fine but towering pole beans are just way more fun in my book, and growing up instead of out conserves space in the garden too.

Going clockwise we have Purple Poded Pole Beans, which are a snap bean. Think green beans, except purple of course. They blanch to a pale green though (pity.) Damian picked those from my Seed Savers catalog.

Damian also picked the next beans, Good Mother Stallard. Aren’t they lovely? These are a shelling bean that will be growing up our Strawberry Popcorn this summer. I read that they maintain their loving coloring through cooking, so I am looking forward to using them into succotash.

I love the description Chiot’s Run left on my flickr page about the next beans, that the coloring of them reminds her of palomino horses. And people wonder how heirlooms end up with half a dozen common names… Palomino Beans, I almost want to call them that, but Hidasta Shield Beans they are. I ordered these shell beans as much for historical reasons as culinary ones. The Hidasta Indians grew these beauties up corn in the Missouri River Valley of North Dakota. They will be growing among our corn too. A little piece of Native heritage in my garden and eventually my family’s tummy! Apparently they taste kind of like a white bean so I am sure they will be making their appearance in my soups next Winter.

And last put not least we have the non-beans of the lot, Amish Snap Peas, which are going in as soon as the trellis/inoculant situation is resolved. And trellises are important as this variety grows six feet tall and are suppose to be enormously productive. I like heirlooms that have been developed by the Amish, they are very reliable.

My beans won’t go in for a few months, not until the last frost has past, but that’s why I have the peas isn’t it? Still, I can’t wait to see those pole beans climbing their supports, be it trellises or corn. How about you, what are you waiting to see sprout in your garden?

We have encountered some kinks this gardening season. Northwest Seed & Pet (my gardening store) does not have pea and bean inoculant in yet. More so though, we were intending on using part of our tax return to built a second raised bed, tomato cages and a couple trellises but instead we are waiting on Ivy’s January emergency room visit bills to work their way through our insurance. It may chew up the rest of our return. Amazing how expensive me sitting around for hours holding a gauze pad on my daughter costs. Before anyone gets any ideas, I’m not angry at Ivy. It is not her fault she has a hemangioma. I might be a little more then annoyed at “health care” (what an oxymoron) in the USA but there’s nothing I can do about that. Really anyone who thinks it is even remotely function in this country needs a serious reality check.

If anything, the second raised bed will have to wait till next year and I’ll downsize the garden plan to fit in the one bed. The trellis is the current priority since my snap peas are waiting but if all else fails I have some long branches that I can build a tepee with (which will leave less space in that one bed, so I’m trying to be patient.) We will see how things go.

It’s not all bad though, we can rise to the challenge. In much brighter news, I started some lettuce, spinach and kale indoors last week as well as a pot of dwarf peas (Tom Thumb.) With the exception of the peas, the rest will be planted out under hoops once they are large enough. I’m excited about the heirloom dwarf peas, they are suppose to do really well in containers, so I can’t wait to see how they do.

I have my seedlings (and a couple other houseplants) on the desk in the dinning room under a shop lamp that was in the basement when we moved in (frugal score!) I should replace the lights with full spectrum ones, but I am hoping they will do fine with what I have in combination with the south facing windows in that room. If not I have a small full spectrum light (that I use for SAD) that I can install over there.

So far the peas, lettuce and kale have sprouted, still waiting on the spinach. I’m the first to admit I am impatient, I want to see those beautiful little sprouts! Little green dots of pure happiness for me.

Have you started anything for your garden yet?

I am having my pap this afternoon, as well as an IUD implanted. The first not being overly traumatic, the second, I’ve never had one before so I am a little nervous about having a copper tv antennae stuck in me for birth control (pardon the mental imagine…) More then anything though this will be my first time being away from Ivy and honestly, I have a bit of separation anxiety. I wasn’t away from Damian until he was almost a year old. I have a bottle of pumped breast milk in the fridge though and Andrea is coming over to hang out with Michael, Damian and Ivy while I’m gone. I’m sure everyone will be fine, but I still wish it was tomorrow already.

But to keep my mind off all that, let’s talk about my Spring garden plan! If you click the image you can see the little details, no key since I know what all the little images mean, but to give you an quick overview.

• Peas, Amish Snap. Lots of them, maybe too many, but Michael swears that there is no such thing. Besides, they freeze beautifully. They will be growing on the two trellises at the ends of the 4×8s and growing on a teepee in Damian’s bed (the 4×4 bed.) I need to buy soil inoculant still though, because there is nothing like boosting production of an already prolific plant!
• Radishes, Early Scarlet Globe. All around Damian’s peas. I am going to plant them in one week intervals so I don’t end up with 200 radishes at once. I can haz overkill? This variety matures in 30 days, so the beds will be empty by the time it comes to plant corn, beans and squash in it.
• Carrots, Saint Valery. Two rows, each separated by two weeks. They store and freeze well, but I still prefer them fresh.
• Turnips, Purple Top White. I tried these last year and had less then stellar germination but as I have leftover seeds I’m going to retry a few square feet of them. I adore turnips.
• Spinach, Boomsdale. Really tasty, and there is no such thing as too much spinach in my book. Love it!
• Lettuce, Forellenschuss. This is said to be a hardy romaine that also does well in summer heat. We will see. More staggered planting here, a square foot or two a week. I’m starting these indoors, in the next week or two hopefully. I still need to set up a light and maybe buy a seed starting tray, the kind with the clear domed lid.
• Kale, Ragged Jack. Just two plants. I like kale, but not that much. Lots of yummy nutrients though and excellent fried with bacon (which might negate some of that nutritional value but I maintain bacon is healthy for the soul.) I’m starting these indoors as well.

And that is the Spring garden. As you can see, it is all pretty much condensed into one bed, mostly because the 4×4 and second 4×8 haven’t been built yet. One step at a time. Next up, the Summer garden plan

(A sunflowers from last summer’s garden.)

I ordered my seeds from Seed Savers Exchange today. The order can be split into two categories, child and adult. I don’t think you are ever too young to play in the dirt! I’ve decided to build a 4×4 foot bed for Damian since he has shown an interest in my putterings around the yard. I let him go through my seed catalog and pick several favorites.

• Good Mother Stallard Beans
• Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck Squash
• Strawberry Popcorn

He also loved the sunflowers but I already have seeds for those. I think his choices will work our well in a single bed as a Three Sisters garden, which is a Native American style of planting. Corn for the pole beans to grow up and squash as a ground cover to conserve moisture. In the Autumn the beans are cut off at the base to let the nitrogen in their roots release into the soil.

As for the other “adult” raised beds, I ordered:

• Amish Snap Peas
• Beam’s Yellow Pear Tomatoes
• Black Krim Tomatoes
• St. Valery Carrots
• Double Yield Cucumbers
• Early Scarlet Globe Radishes
• Italian Heirloom Tomatoes
• Purple Pod Pole Bean
• Hidatsa Shield Beans

I also ordered Tom Thumb Peas but I will be growing those in containers. Damian picked the purple pod pole beans too, but I just wanted some variety of snap bean so I didn’t mind. I actually think the purple pods will be easy to find and pick among the green leaves. Both the radishes and carrots are reorders as I am doing successive sowings with them and will run out of my current stock part way through the season. I want to try to overwinter some carrots to save the seeds from too (they are a biannual.) This is also my second year growing Black Krim tomatoes. Laurie gave me a transplant last year and I really love the variety. They don’t produce very heavily but they taste amazing. This will be my first time starting tomatoes from seed.

I have seeds leftover from last year (mostly lettuces, bitter greens and more pole beans) but I am keeping my crop list short again this year. I want another year to get use to growing in this climate since I am focusing on having crops from early Spring through late Autumn. I also need to save some gardening budget for building those extra raised beds, trellises and sturdy tomato cages (heirlooms need them,) not to mention good soil (which the corn will definitely need)

Have you ordered any seeds yet?

This year my main gardening focus is on successive sowing. I would like to have Spring, Summer and Autumn crops. This of course entails a lot of research on my part and what is becoming a small tidal wave of lists and chart.

While there are so many things that I would love to grow, I am trying to keep my plant selection realistic this year. Snap peas, radishes, lettuce, spinach and maybe kale in the Spring. Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, pole beans, squash and maybe watermelon in the Summer. More kale, lettuce, spinach and radishes in the Autumn. I want to try doing successive sowings of carrots from Spring to Autumn and of course sunflowers along the fence again. I have a least one more raised beds to build before half that stuff can go in though. I also have a thought of building a little 4×4 bed for Damian. If it doesn’t do well it won’t be the end of the world, but I think there are some things he would enjoy watching grow. Strawberry popcorn, pole beans, pumpkins… A three sisters garden maybe?

I would love to spend a little time developing the rest of the yard outside the raised beds this year as well. Once the garden is in that will be one of my focuses. While I have no great love of grass it does have it’s uses, a place for my children to roll around. Our grass is scraggly and patchy, I want to try to fix that. There are also several areas that beg for some color, some herbs, some flowers. First our fence must be repaired though (which the landlord will be doing come Spring.) I don’t want any new beds amaged by the repair work!

For now though I plan, and since you all make such a great sounding board I think I will start sharing more of my plans, both long and short term here. But Ivy just woke up so I’ll wrap this up. Everything runs on a baby schedule here.

What are you planning on growing this year?

The temperature rose all the way to 50°F yesterday! In January! In Spokane! And we have had above 40°F weather for well over a week now and forecast for the foreseeable future. My parsley has grown back! My grass is almost to a cutting length in some places! Trees are budding that should not be budding yet! Apparently it has to do with his El Nino year and we should have a mild Winter.

Now my fellow gardeners, if you were faced with this kind of weather in January what would you do? Toss some cold weather crops in your (completely thawed!) raised beds just to see what happens? After all my row cover cloth is rated down to 24°F… Maybe some radishes, carrots or turnips? Or maybe some cold hardy lettuce, spinach or kale? I’m temped, sorely tempted.

If anything this weather has motivated me to pull out my garden folder and begin planning and making up some seed mats. I think I will put a few seeds in the ground too. If they fail, so be it. If not, radishes in February!

Michael brought these home for me the other day, orange chrysanthemums! I love the scarecrow head with the crow perched on him.

I really love mums but I have never had the greatest luck keeping them alive through the Winter. I heard if you get them earliest enough in the Autumn you can transplant them, but we are already having our daily hard frosts here so I doubt it would survive transplant. I’ve also heard the reason they don’t survive the Winter well is because most are greenhouse grown and not the hardiest varieties.

So do I just have bad luck with mums or have others had this problem? Has anyone successfully kept them alive and healthy through the Winter? I’d love to hear your tricks and tips.

We were blessed with a rain-free morning today which we used to play catch up with yard work. Our Elm is still clinging very tightly to it’s leaves so we focused on general garbage and toy pickup, cleaning out the raised beds and cutting back the bushes in what has become the largely ignored side yard. Well, Michael did the cutting back, I was glad to watch, Whatever those bushes in that yard are, I do not like them. They aren’t very pretty at all and grow incredibly fast. Our landlord cut them all down to the ground before we moved in and they keep growing back from the stumps. Next year I think I am going to dig them all out.

We pulled out, and in one case had to sawed down, my Titan Sunflowers too. The biggest head has dried out quite well. I do not know if the other two will dry properly but I’ll give them a shot, I think they are pretty either way. I’ll put them on the deck after the snow falls for the birds I think.

Damian was intrigued by the biggest sunflower seed head, especially since he could pop out some of the seeds (and promptly attempted to eat them, husks and all.) I think it is natural for children to love sunflowers because they are so much bigger then they are, same goes with pumpkins. Damian pulled the last radishes with me too (and promptly ate those too) anything red is fair game for his grubby paws I think.

How is it that children manage to wedge themselves in the most bug infested grubby places in the blink of an eye? This window well looks so benign but he was sitting on a nest of earwigs. Gross gross gross! (I can deal with pretty much any insect but I do not like earwigs. I think Damian knows that and relishes that knowledge.)

We still need to dismantle this past Spring’s haphazardly built raised beds and trellises but I want to build the next one first so that I have a place to move all the dirt. I think we are going to buy the supplies for that this afternoon while we are out finishing the shopping in preparation for Ivy’s arrival. Her due date is coming up so fast! If we could buy it all at the same place we would have a shopping cart that might make a cashier wonder, fir 2×10s, decking screws, a mop, a humidifier, Macadamia nuts, a heating pad, sanitary napkins, a baby monitor, ricotta cheese, essential oils, and a breast pump. Maybe I am just easily amused though…

The days and nights are getting both shorter and colder. I think that these next few days will be the last safe ones for my last tomatoes outside, then I will bring the last fruits to finish ripening and ripe out the plants. After that all this Spring’s raised beds will be empty and I can dismantle them (as I am moving and replacing them with better ones next year.) I am hoping we will have enough money to build one more raised bed this month so that I can have a place to move the dirt from those beds.

Even with an 8 square foot dehydrator, I am still working on processing all the apples from this year’s Harvest Festival. Granted more then a few have been used in pie and more still set aside for more baking but most of our haul is being peeled, sliced and dried. We love snacking on dried apples, I even put pieces of them in my winter stews to add that little edge of sweetness, they are great chopped up in curried rice too. One of these years I am going to buy an apple peeler corer slicer (the thing that is clamped to the table in the picture) I always end up borrowing my mother-in-law’s. Luckily she never seems to mind.

I am also still working on the last of the 36lbs of pluots Michael brought home. Other then an experimental tray of them in my dehydrator (I love dried apricots and plums so why not an apricot-plum hybrid?) the rest are in my crockpot, which is covered with a stirfry screen. This is my preferred way to make fruit butter, as it removes the need for constant stirring. The screen prevents splattering and still allows the pluots’ juices to reduce. Once the fruit butter is the right consistency (which takes about a day( I will run it through the blender, bring it to a boil on the stove, add some sugar and can it. Pluot butter is our preferred topping for pork roast and chicken. Sometimes a reserve a bit and add applesauce to turn it into a fantastic sweet and tangy fruit leather.

It makes me a little sad when the main gardening season draws to a close, but having a pantry full of dried, canned and in some cases fresh bounty to savor in the heart of Winter makes it all a little better. It also motivates me to plan next years garden to ensure another beautiful harvest, next year I know for sure I want to plant more squash, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite Winter foods.

We are getting our first frost warnings this week so I have had a chance to start using my GardenQuilt row cover which should protect down to 24F and has 60% light transmission (so I pull it off during the day once it warms up.) I bought a 10′x20′ piece of GardenQuilt and used most of it to cover my winter vegetable garden (my carrots have finally started to grow by the way!) The extra piece will not be large enough to cover the next raised bed I built but I can eventually sew a couple pieces together to make another large piece. For now it is draped over my tomatoes trellis to offer them some kind of frost protection while they finish ripening.

I harvested my first autumn Early Scarlet Globe Radishes this morning, I think they have gotten hotter with the cooler weather. I am definitely ready for this cool down too, anything over 80F has been leaving me drained but I am not sure if I am ready for frost yet. I am hoping my last pumpkin ripens before the killing frost as I don’t have enough row cover to protect it. It is about half way orange. You can see it at the very end of the vine to the left of the tomato trellis.

Does anyone know if there is any way for me to encourage it to hurry up and ripen? I do not intend on storing it for long, it will be turned into a pie in short order. Should it ripen at least.

I harvested over 2lbs of stupice and cherry roma tomatoes from my garden this morning as well as the last bit of basil. I still have 8oz of stupice from the other day too. I am going to have to graduate from simply throwing them in our salads. I think I am going to try this Tomato Onion Tart for dinner. Doesn’t it look amazing? I’ll let you know how it goes.

Time is flying by lately and Damian seems to be growing in leaps and bounds. I feel like he is coming up with some new little thing to wow us with every day. It is so magical to witness his personality developing. Lately we have been fully appreciating the last warm days of summer in our backyard. I’ve been watching Damian’s love for flowering dandelions transition to a love of dandelions that have gone to seed. He wanders around and picks all that he can cram into his little hands and then either blows on them or makes a running b-line for one of the raised beds. While I am generally faster then him (I’ve noticed the pregnant waddle returning recently,) I do now have a few little quarantine areas in the winter bed where I am watching for explosions of dandelion sprouts among the carrot. Do you think he will be helping me plant seeds next Spring?

My website ticker says that I am 30 weeks along with just 70 days until Ivy’s due date. Seriously, time is flying by! My midwife will be drawing blood this afternoon for the usual tests, ick! Not that I have any apprehension, but I don’t think anyone enjoys being stuck. I am grateful that Beth will be doing the draw I never feel it and she gets it right the first time (in the past nurses and doctors tend to butcher my arm looking for something to tap.) I have wanted to clarify something about my midwife, recently I was asked if I have two of them as I often refer to my midwife as either Beth or Linda. The answer is yes… and no. The Spokane Midwives practice is owned by both Linda and Beth but it is only ever one of them who gives me my check ups and only one will be attending Ivy’s birth (with an assistant.) Linda was the one who helped deliver Damian but I wouldn’t have minded if it had been Beth on call. I love them both and they are both equally experienced certified nurse midwives.

Since time is zooming along, I am pulling out my Bradley Method workbook today. When I was pregnant with Damian we took Bradley classes and while I was a bit of a skeptic at the time I know now that it is definitely the right choice for my body and desire for another natural birth. So in other words, it is time to start the review.

Another question I was asked recently is if I am having the intense and spiritual dreams that I had when I was pregnant with Damian during this pregnancy too. If you followed this blog when I was carrying Damian you might remember the dreams I had involving both condors and snakes. I have had similar dreams this time around but mainly with jackals (sometimes they are coyotes) and snakes. Lately luna moths have been present in some of the dreams too. The animals have never been frightened me, completely the opposite, they all have been incredibly maternal, supportive and protective. Even the moths, which are luna moths but prehistorically large are oddly maternal. So far they have only been present in the dreams where I have just given birth and they cover Ivy like a cozy blanket.

I generally try not to make predictions (at least not publicly) with my pregnancies, after all I thought Ivy was a boy, but I also keep dreaming she will be born the day after Thanksgiving, November 27th, which was my Grandpa Mason’s birthday (and the day I broke my arm when I was 13 too but let’s not think about that.) We will see I guess!

We planted lots of sugar pie pumpkins this Spring but one of the vines ended up under the Elm tree. It made just one itty bitty pumpkin. Mommy gave it to me since she said it is a bit too small to make a pie out of, I love it!

Maybe a pumpkin pie cupcake just for me Mommy?

We always know when summer is coming to an end in our area. The warm weather goes to battle with the increasing cold fronts and one day can be 90°F and the next barely pass 60°F. Last night dropped to 42°F and some of the outlaying areas even had freezing fog. On Friday I ordered row cover fabric to cover my Winter bed and protect my tomatoes from the cooler evenings. The variety I purchased is called GardenQuilt and should protect down to 24°F, a killing frost that hopefully is still a couple months away. Yesterday I also took some time to prune my tomatoes to encourage their heavy sets of fruit to start ripening. One can only eat so many green tomato dishes.

Even though the gardener in me is sad to see the first frost nearing (though I am looking forward to the Winter garden of root vegetables and hardy greens) I very much love Autumn. Bright orange pumpkins, the apple festival in Greenbluff, the fair, falling leaves, puddles to show Damian how to jump in and, of course, rainbows. We had a beautiful double rainbow bless our skies between rain showers on Saturday afternoon. The rainbows made that nights windy carnage a little less painful. The high winds of the next front blowing in did a little number on one of my Titan sunflowers.

Another Autumn perk is being able to make hot food in my kitchen without roasting in my home. This Sunday we had some of our friends over for dinner. With that day’s high of 63°F I went all out and made two baguettes, pound cake and my potato soup (which always seems to be a hit.) Andrea and Peter brought over some beautiful yellow and red corn from their garden and tiny little watermelons. I think Damian has a new fruit love.

Isn’t the corn beautiful?

This coming weekend we are having our what is becoming an annual invade-the-closed-campground trip to Skookum Lake. There are few things more beautiful then watching the mist rising off the lake at dawn while sipping mimosas (made with sparkling cider for me this year) with your closest friends. Or at least with your closest friends who don’t mind hiking it to a closed campground so that you have it all to yourself and the potential for slightly chilly nights (and maybe another, dare I say it? Chupacabra sighting.)

Sun or rain, wind or calm, life is truly beautiful when shared with those you love.

Michael took this photo of me before we went to the Millwood Farmers Market yesterday. I’m 27 weeks along for the curious. 90 days to go! I am standing under one of my Titan sunflowers growing in one of my raised beds. I don’t know if Damian or I love it more.

I forgot to take a photo of our market haul this week and we have already eaten some of it, whoops! But this week we bought:

• Apples, Pears, Watermelon and Sweet Peppers from Pacific Produce
• Romaine from C&S Hydrohuts
• Chunky Southwest Salsa from Granny D’s
• Sun-Dried Tomato Bread from Arabesque Farms & Bakery

We normally buy Small Planet Tofu too but he was not there this week, so we used the money on bread instead. It is SO GOOD. If you get a chance to go to the Millwood Farmers Market, definitely give them a try. One thing I love about the market is that I can barter the price on a lot of things, I only had $5 left and she gave me a deal on the bread because of it. Too bad you can’t barter at the grocery store!

This Saturday Michael and I finished building the first of six new raised beds. (Click it for a larger image.) I am so proud of our hard work.

Materials:

• 3 2×10s (one cut in half)
• 10′ of 3/4″ pvc (didn’t need this much but it is what they sell)
• 4 10′ lengths of 1/2″ pvc
• 2 1/2″ decking screws
• 1″ decking screws
• Soil (garden soil, compost and manure)

Simple enough right? Well double digging the ground before placing the bed was a pain (literally!) but will be worth it long term. I could really use a power drill to predrill the holes. I have a dremel but the bit I was able to get was not quite long enough to go all the way through the 2×10s. So I had to drill from both sides… A little too much measuring for me. We chose douglas fir for our 2×8s, which while not as rot resistant cedar is a nice alternative for the budget conscious, especially if you will be using row covers as they protect the beds somewhat from the elements. We didn’t need to saw anything because Home Depot will do simple project cuts for you, so we had one 2×8 chopped in half.

After drilling forever, I screwed together the sides with 2 1/2″ decking screws; two for each corner and Michael moved it out to my double dug area. If you only wanted to do summer gardening this is all you need to do to build a raised bed but we decided that we wanted to design all our beds to have removable hoops for row covers. We want them so that we can extend our growing season and then come summer remove them to set our vegetable cages, trellises, or put up light weight netting. This first bed is the only one that we will be using for winter gardening this year and we will probably be fitting this bed with a 12′x20′ GardenQuilt Coveras we approach the first frost date.

To install the removable hoops we cut the 3/4″ pvc into 10″ lengths and attach them to the sides of the bed. Michael found on neat technique for doing that over on Little House in the Suburbs, so check out their post about it for all the details. Then we just had to bend the 1/2″ pvc to create the hoops and fill the bed with soil. Or rather, Michael filled the bed with soil and leveled it since I was worn out by that point and the bags are more then what I should lift. I loved watching my husband doing that by the way, I’m just saying.

And voilà! One 4′x8′ raised bed. Now only 5 more to go! Still, I just want to take the time to admire this one. We can only do one more in the back yard at the moment though since this year’s beds need to finish first as they are in the way. We could build them in the garage and store them until that happens though. I’m going to get Michael to do a cost breakdown to post so that I can share that all with anyone interested in this project. I know this was much cheaper then building a raised bed kit and much more customizable as well. Eventually we want to surround the beds with brick pavers to making mowing/weeding the paths easier and look nicer too.

For the curious, the image to the right is my winter garden plan for this bed. Click it for a larger image as well. Many thanks to my wonderfully hubby for designing the template for me to do it on the computer. I have started the Forellenschuss Lettuce, Bloomsdale Spinach and Ragged Jack Kale inside on Saturday and made seed tape for the St Valery Carrots, Purple Top White Turnips and Early Scarlet Globe Radishes this morning. I will be sowing them this evening.

The tomatoes have started rolling in. I harvested a bowl of Stupice and Cherry Romas this morning and it looks like my Amish Paste will be the next to start ripening. Keep in mind they are all inderterminate plants though so they will produce until the frost offs them. I am going to have so many Cherry Romas, so it is a good thing they dry well, and taste fantastic too. Michael and I are a little underwhelmed by the flavor of the Stupice though (still better then anything from the supermarket) so I do not think that variety will be making a comeback next year.

I have had to rip out my two hybrid romas and giant valentine. The romas never really flourished and every tomato has blossom end rot, and then all the hybrids got late blight (so much for hybrid resistance.) I am glad that I decided to put them in a different bed. I would cry if my heirlooms succumbed to blight, though I continue to watch them all very carefully. I give no quarter to diseased plants. My garden gave me a pleasant surprise while pulling out my spent bush bean plants this morning though, a flourishing Genovese Basil plant hidden behind them and under one of the tomatoes. Yum! Firms up my decision to grow my basil in a container next year though. I know they are a companion plant to tomatoes but I have been having a hard time getting to them for harvest (and apparently I loose them too!)

Elsewhere in the garden, my ground cherries seem to be doing fantastic. They were right beside my blighted tomatoes but don’t seem effected by it thus far. My pumpkins are… Well, I am dealing with the little pumpkin vine that could, at least it use to be the smallest one, now it is the longest, 12 feet I think? Not that it is doing anything more productive then that, it has not set one fruit. I am actually having a terrible time getting my pumpkins to set fruit. I have one baseball sized pumpkin and three plants. I hand pollinated some of the flowers so we will see if that helps, a few fruit seem to be growing now. Where are all the pollinators this year? Seriously, between my neighbor and I, we have enough flowers to attract them and neither of us have seen much of anything beyond the occasional mason or bumblebee. I haven’t seen any butterflies either. Maybe my eight-foot sunflower will send up a pollen-available flag, the head is starting to develop. Bloom my pretty, bloom!

My Seed Savers Exchange order arrived yesterday. It is about 8 weeks to the first frost date right now and I am starting my Ragged Jack Kale indoors this morning. It will be transplant just before the first frost date as per the instructions (it is hardy to -10°F.) Ragged Jack is more commonly called Russian or Red Russian Kale by the way, I just like Ragged Jack better, reminds me of my Grandpa Jack. He loved the color red and the cold. Not that he liked leafy veggies, I believe he referred to them as rabbit food… He would have found the tribute amusing though.

I keep meaning to blog lately but really nothing much has been going on. We are in the midst of a heat wave, our temperatures have been about 10 degrees above average for almost two weeks now. The clouds that linger at sunrise make for a beautiful morning sky but burn away quickly. We had a little Lughnasadh gathering this past Sunday but several people ended up not being able to come (they were probably hiding out from the heat too) so it turned into more of a simple cook out. I didn’t mind though, I always find the warm weather sabbats to be more relaxed.

I have been feeling the baby a lot more lately. She pokes Damian sometimes when he is nursing, it rarely notices but I find it rather amusing. The heat with baby belly has been a little oppressive at times but I am pretty adaptable, except during the hottest parts of the day. I have been catching up on all the projects that don’t require much physical activity, I switched my walk to early morning and Damian tends to get his bath around 15:00, when I find it to be the hottest. I let him play in the water while I cool my feet in the tub. Jim, someone Michael knows through work, gave us an old AC window unit which was very kind of him. The bedroom is nice and cool for sleeping now.

They say the heatwave will break later this week, which I am hoping for, I want to get out into the garden to start double digging for the new raised beds. The weeds are nice and fried under the plastic we laid down. We’ve been looking up lumber prices so that we can budget for the raised beds, I think we will be using 2×12 pine. I am hoping we have a couple short ends left from that projects so that I can make a couple mason bee houses for next year. They are a fantastic native pollinator. I have seen a few of them around and I want to encourage their population new Spring when they reemerge. Contrary to popular belief they are not a destructive insect. They are a solitary bee so only the females make nests and they make use of existing holes to do so, they do not drill holes in wood. They are called mason bees because they seal off each cell in their nests with mud. They are also quite docile and tend to only sting if you accidentally step on one or close one in your fist.

Beyond the heat and gardening, I have a new addiction. Grilled pizza. It is so good! I made it again for Lughnasadh and fully intend on doing it again this weekend and pretty much until the weather prevents me from lighting the grill. It takes more prep work then just doing burgers or corn, but it is completely worth it! I love grilled zucchini and peppers on mine.

I have six crops left in my raised beds right now. Tomatoes, pumpkins, green beans, ground cherries, zucchini and sunflowers (do sunflowers count? I am saving their seeds after all…) The photos above are my quickly ripening cherry romas and stupice. My tomatoes are doing so beautifully this year. They are so heavy with fruit. Tomorrow I think I am going to harvest my first zucchini, technically it will be my second but the first was damaged by hail and went soft.

I am amazed with how much I have learned since building my beds this Spring, most notably I have learned not to underestimate the amount of shade a tree casts. But beyond repositioning my beds due to the elm tree (which I have typed about previously) I have a little list of other things I need to improve. For starters, I need to focus more on amending my soil. In addition to compost I am going to add rotted manure to my beds as my soil is still somewhat nitrogen deficient (which is relatively common in this area apparently.) For a longer term solution to that problem I am also going to start growing more varieties of beans next year, Empress (which I am growing and seed saving this year,) Good Mother Stallard and Hidatsa Shield. maybe cowpeas again too… Beans are a legume, which is a nitrogen-fixing plant. Once they die the nitrogen fixed in their roots is released, making it available for other plants to use. I didn’t know that until recently, I thought that beans constantly released nitrogen.

Water, that is an area that could use improvement too. I use an oscillating sprinkler to water my yard, including my beds, but that can make the leaves (and fruit!) if my beds more prone to disease. Luckily I haven’t had too much of an issue with that this year since it has been so hot and dry, but I can’t bank on luck every year. Drip irrigation works best from a gardening and water conservation standpoint and I could invested in soaker hoses, but given the chance I like to try to stay low cost. I have been considering collecting 2 liter soda bottles and making my own watering stakes. I am still undecided though. Eitherway I am also collecting 2 liter bottles to make sub-irrigation planters for my transplants next year, problem is I never drink soda so I have been asking around to get them from my friends who do (if you are one of my local friends, can I have your bottles?) One man’s trash is another’s treasure right?

Look at my little sugar pie pumpkin! (Please ignore the bolting cilantro beside it.) I am looking so forward to making pumpkin pie from scratch this fall. My pumpkins remind me of two things I need to keep in mind next year which go hand in hand, plant spacing and better planning. Two of my pumpkin vines climbed out of my raised beds and having grown six feet away from them (towards the sun in fact, since they are in the bed shaded by the elm.) I will have to keep a closer eye on them next year so I can train them into the spaces I want. I want to do better with my planning next year too (and I have all winter to plan so I am not overly concerned.) Both planning plant placement and successive sowings. This year I have managed to supplement our diet a bit this summer but I will not have much to preserve (except tomatoes and maybe pumpkin.) I want to remedy that over time, so that I grow more and more of our food. Experience will help me there.

I wish learning worked a little more like it does in The Matrix and I could just download information right into my brain and instantly know all these little trial and error lesson and so much more. Granted it probably wouldn’t be as much fun then.

Seriously sometimes I feel like a cheerleader when it comes to my tomatoes. All my heirlooms are so heavy with fruit, especially my cherry romas, amish paste and stupice. And finally, it is happening, my first stupice is turning red. Of course with this wonderful development mother nature decided to test my tomato protectiveness and we had a random brief but violent hail storm yesterday. To paint you a picture, imagine my expanding 21 week pregnant body zooming out the patio door through the nickle sized pellets of pain to throw a sheet over my tomatoes. That’s insanity dedication for you. Everything is fine, the slant of the hail was mainly coming through our mystery tree (can you identify it?) so just our raspberries, on the other side of our yard, took the worst of the punishment.

(This is what this area looked like before anything was growing!)

Michael and I have begun planning the expansion and repositioning of our beds for next year. We will be repositioning the beds because I kind of forgot to take into account the amount of shade Mystery Tree creates. The two beds nearest the deck receive too much shade to produce well, I’ve pretty much given up on having cucumbers for the year because of it, their empty trellis is a little sad do you think?

The new beds will be positioned along the fence coming eight feet (maybe ten) into the yard. Two of them will be three feet wide and two will be four feet wide. I think I am going to build them out of 2×12 untreated pine. In the far right corner of the yard are several tree stumps that I really do not want to rip out so I will be planting all my herbs around them in an irregular shaped bed. I am considering building a 4×4′ potato bin in front of that bed too. As all those plans develop, I’ll share more though.

For now we are just starting to lay the groundwork. Michael spent a couple hours last weekending laying down black plastic over the area some of the beds will be (thank you sweetie!) We also have two 4×8′ patches in the front yard blocked out too. The plastic will smoother the grass and weeds which will be easier to rip up come cooler weather and theoretically we will be less weeds to worry about. We also have to wait for the beds to be completely harvested since they have to be removed before the new beds. This autumn I may only build one so that I can plant my garlic before winter sets in.

Does anyone grow any heirloom garlic that stores well? (I am not interested in hybrids.) I added a variety to my heirloom wishlist but am open to suggestion for what works well in this area. I have some seeds I can swap for cloves too.

Spotted knapweed is the most recognized noxious weed in this area, so much so that it is actually illegal for you to have an outbreak of it on your property. Knapweed seeds remains viable in the soil for at least five years and with each plant producing over 1000 of them infestations are a rapidly expanding problem. Not only that but the plant releases a toxin into the soil that reduces the growth of native forage species. Ick, yuck, poo.

If you live in Spokane, you can report clusters of it to the city so that they can come deal with it. I only know this because we filed a report last night. The foreclosed home next door is positively infested with the stuff and the gardener in me dies a little each time I think about it infesting my beds.

I must admit though, that as abhorrent as I find the plant, that I do find the flowers rather beautiful. They also attract a huge amount of bumblebees, one of my very favorite insects. So while I most certainly want the city to eradicate this outbreak, I am appreciating the surge in my fuzzy favorite pollinators for the time being.

(Speaking of which, I received my new camera today so that photo is my own! I’ll blog about the camera more later though. For now it will have to be sufficient to say, it is awesome.)

This morning I realized that I had not yet thinned my carrots when Damian yoinked out a a few and I noticed the drastic size differences. Not surprisingly when two carrots grow crammed next to each other one looses the battle of the biggest and the other never really reaches it’s full potential either. I don’t like thinning my plants, as is most obvious when you see my leaf lettuce patch. Plant abortions kill! Nom nom.

You don’t have to throw out those tiny carrots though, they are still deliciously edible. I washed them off and Michael and I snacked on them for breakfast. Also if they are cooked beyond a light stirfry they will revert to orange. In the thinning process I pulled out a couple larger ones, which I took a picture of. Not your typical carrots, but that is the joy of a home garden. I am growing purple haze carrots, which turn purple as they mature, though the core will remain orange. They are still a couple weeks from being fully developed but they are still going to be excellent in our lunch stirfry.

I want to do a successive sowing of carrots this year, after these are harvested. I am going to give making seed tape a try, that way thinning will not be necessary. If that works well I might do that for all my small seeds next year, a nice little winter project. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Photo intensive garden update time. Enter at your own bandwidth’s risk!

Do you remember what bed A looked like just a month ago? Now look at it!

Carrots and onions and green beans, oh my! Ignore that empty square in the back left corner. My cilantro bolted while we were at the Pagan Campout (I still need to blog about that don’t I?) so I pulled it up. Never fear though, I have the new crop already sprouting in bed B (photo to the right.) But while we are on the topic of bed B…


Cucumbers and Pumpkins (and zucchini which are not pictured.) Cucumbers… well they are rallying at least. My Sugar Pie Pumpkins are doing fabulously though, as you can tell, the kid in the corner won’t be boxed in, but I’m cool with that. I’ve always had a thing for rebels. Please ignore the weeds proliferating in the pathway, I know that I am!

I adore pumpkins, they just make me so happy. Look at this blossom! And who says yellow is an ugly color? (Oh wait, I do. I love yellow in nature!) My sunflowers have several more feet to go before their giant yellow beauties open up, and I really do mean giant, they are 12 foot heirloom Titan Sunflowers. I have them in the four corners of my beds, ants have turned them into aphid prisons.

I really love insects. Look at this jewel-like fly perched on my ground cherry. I am sure it and it’s six-legged cohorts will eat my garden (or their spawn will,) but lets just appreciate how beautiful Mr Fly is, before I catch it munching on my leaf lettuce. I just sowed my second row of lettuce a couple weeks ago (the old stuff was getting a little bitter.)

I have these beautiful Creeping Bellflower all along a section of our fence and one side of our deck. Initally I thought they were the more innocent Ladybells but they are spreading quite voraciously (they are a naturalized but ecologically invasive.) I am keeping them around for those gorgeous flowers, but I plan on annihilating them once they begin to fade. Gardening is a brutal business, I’m telling ya.

Here is a flower that will never be thinned. Mmmmmm cherry roma tomatoes or are they stupice tomatoes? Well they are one of my 4 varieties of heirlooms. Basil is keeping them all company. Basil and tomatoes are just meant to go together. Can you say bruschetta?

Tomatoes are to Michael and pumpkins are to me. It looks like my Giant Valentines (one of my two varieties of hybrids) are beating my Stupice in the race to be adored by him first. Granted, I think my raspberries will be the first to bare fruit. We are both cool with that though.

In fact, we are cool with everything in the garden overwhelming us with bounty. If there is too much for us to eat fresh it will just go in the freezer, in a canning jar, in the dehydrator, to Second Harvest or shared with friends (preferable all of the above.)

Got to love the mad dash to protect the seedlings when late season hard frosts threaten. Since I covered everything and the world revolves around me, it did not happen of course. Not that I am complaining, after all, how cool is it to have the world revolve around you?

I placed the boxes around each transplant and filled them loosely with shredded newspaper to keep my tender green babies insulated. I find this method works well, I can store the boxes the next morning and either spread the shreddings around like mulch (they break down very quickly) or toss them in the compost as brown material.

On a seperate matter I am still working on a name for our little rented homestead. I want it to be something simple that reflects our beliefs without being horribly cliche. The hard part is finding just the right combination of words that reflects our little family. Small Steps Stead was an early though (reflecting children as well as our small steps towards a more eco-conscious life as well as owning a some land outside the city) but I don’t know…

Does your home, farm, ranch or even apartment have a name? How did it come to be?

This weekend my raised beds and I spent some quality time together.

I transplanted 3 black beauty zucchini because I am a sucker for punishment, 5 sugar pie pumpkins because I adore giant orange things, cilantro and red onions and yellow onions. I also have purple haze carrots and mammoth dill directly sown and hopefully working towards giving me an abundant crop.

On Friday we had some friends over, including the lovely Laurie and Ben. They brought us a couch and several transplants for us. I transplanted the chives, garlic chives, triple curled parsley and tarragon but am waiting another week before I transplant the tomatoes (Giant Valentine, Black Krim, Stupice) and ground cherries. Better safe then sorry, the lemon cucumbers and basil I started will be waiting another week before transplanting as well.

All the seeds I started this year were planted in cardboard egg cartons and so far it seems to have worked pretty well. The roots of the pumpkins were starting to grow through the cardboard, so I didn’t even both removing them from the cups when I transplanted them. I think that they will degraded just fine. If I wanted to grow larger transplants (like if I start my tomatoes indoors next year) they will need to move up to a larger container but for the small starts egg cartons seem to work great.

(Mmmmm tomatoes… Grow my pretties, grow!)

The hardest part about growing your own food is waiting for it to be ready I noticed a few flower buds on the ground cherry transplant this morning and I think that just heightens the anticipation. Come wild plant spirits of my garden, grow!

Other then getting my hand stuck in a jar, I have been pretty busy lately.

On Friday, Michael watched Damian for the afternoon, which allowed me to go shopping with my friends Ileen and Andrea. I now have a pair of jeans that fits properly and is not white (because lets face it white anything and babies do not mix) and a mini skirt. Michael and Damian survived without me.

On Saturday, Michael, Damian, Ileen and I went to the Finch Arboretum for a free composting class. I’d say it was a blast but honestly it was a little boring. Add brown waste to bin, mix in green waste, water, turn, wait, repeat… The vermicomposting station was pretty neat though (composting with worms) and the Finch Arboretum is gorgeous. All wasn’t lost though, friends make even the dullest times better and we all received free compost bins for doing it.

On Sunday we did the usual food shopping and then stopped by Northwest Seed and Pet to pick up compost and topsoil to fill my two raised bed. We also bought nylon netting so I can build trellises for my cukes, beans and tomatoes.

Rained on Monday and it is brutally windy today, so I am confined to indoor tasks. Yay, dirty diaper laundry! Erg, or something like that. As soon as cows stop flying around a nice informative gardening post will happen.

Damian nor I have felt overwhelming fantastic for a couple days, probably swine flu (promised I would try not to joke about that) the bubonic plague. I had to say that somewhere in this post so I could have an excuse to post a plague doctor drawing (not that I collect creepy historical pictures or anything.) Some day I will dress like that for Halloween. Granted if this thing turns into a pandemic, this year might be a poor choice… Still, doesn’t he look so awesome? Reminds me of a raven.

Anyhow. This Saturday we will be out in Medical Lake celebrating Beltane at Sal’s. We will have a ritual (where I will be calling water and setting up the water altar,) a maypole, a spiral dance, drumming, a potluck and just a great time in general. Beltane is one of my very favorite sabbats, the gateway to summer and a celebration of sweet luv. If you are local and interested in going check out the Spokane Pagan’s meetup group.

That’s it for now. Don’t forget to wash your hands.