Adventures in an Urban Kitchen Garden
A journal of sorts
March 1, 2024
Ah, the first of March. Spring is in the air. And it's fucking raining again.
But this morning, I yanked out some scraggly radishes to make
room for the squash transplants and got these:
And they are delicious. I will be planting more of them, now that I am
getting my placement structure under control. I like these !
March 5, 2024
The journal has suffered a bit the last few days but the garden hasn't.
Except for some much needed weeding, there hasn't been too much
to do out there as everything is coming up roses, as Ethel Merman sang,
although I don't actually have any roses growing.
Today's snapshot.
Lettuce and squashlings.
7 varieties of lettuce.
.jpg)
So much potential.
.jpg)
This is going to be lush and colorful someday.
These are some of the baby Violas.
The future of Herb Alley.
Beans are started.
Lots of future beets.
March 7, 2024
Perfect weather, they said. The rain is done now, for at least a week. Fantastic.
Time to yank off the covers for a while and get with it. So there I was, out there
this morning, and got some stuff done.
The golden beets are going to go into the ground in a week or so.
They'll go where the cheater lettuces were before I ate them all!
You can plant 12-14 beets per square foot so I anticipate giving up
2 square feet for the beet patch. I don't really love beets because
all the beets you get at the store taste like mud to me, but I have grown
some red-striped beets many years ago and they were actually delicious.
I chose yellow beets this time because they don't dye your fingers.
The border caulis are coming along (well, two of them, anyway) and I'm thinking
of yanking the other one, which is bigger, and eating it. Cauliflower plants only
deliver one head, so after I eat it I can yank the plant to make room for something
else.
The mint starter is now 12 mint plants. The biggest one will go into Herb Alley
alongside the other herbs, but the rest will be dispersed around the garden
to repel predators. I'm considering putting them into pots w/o holes in the
bottom to discourage spreading.
100% germination from the Alaska nasturtiums. Very nice. There
are only eight of them but I'll plant more in a while. These started very
fast and grew fast too.
100% germination from the Orchid Cream nasturtiums as well. These
grew even faster. I like nasturtiums; probably because of that weird name.
I bought a cheater catnip plant because I thought my seeds didn't
germinate, but I was wrong; they just took a while. Here are three
catnip plants, as well as four neato Zinnia seedlings.
These are some spoon tomato seedlings and some Amish Paste
seedlings. My plan is to grow two - just two - of each of my
twelve varieties so I'll be giving a few away eventually. The
spoons are really, really small but the plants are fairly big.
I really shouldn't but sometimes I do two plants in one pot
because I really like to see tomatos grow.
So, getting back to the rain. After doing all of the above here,
and more, I left for the shop with a clear heart. I stopped at
Costco on the way home and went in to buy some grub.
It was pouring when I came out. So all of these seedlings were
out in the rain for who knows how long. I checked them when I got
back and they all seemed okay. I'll have a better look in the morning
when there's enough light to see. I fucking hate the rain.
March 9, 2024
We finally had two days in a row without rain! Yay! There didn't seem
to be any issues with the seedlings having been out in the rain. It wasn't
the worst rain we've seen this last week. There was one problem, though,
and that was that the other night some kind of rodent or the like got into
raised bed No. 1 and made merry with some of the Yedikule lettuces.
That got me into motion erecting the rest of the chicken wire.
(March 14, 2024 update: turns out it was the neighborhood black&white cat
playing around. I remembered he liked to go into the raised bed and roll around
and pleasure himself. The chickenwire will keep him
out. It's better that way.)
I will make it more better on the weekend but I needed to work fast.
The King Tuts have been flowering for a week, but the Caseload peas
are now in play. I do love fresh peas. This is gonna be good.
Some Neapolitan basil landed in Herb Alley this morning. There are several
more basil plants getting bigger in the guitar room. They will be deployed
among the tomatoes for predator-negative purposes plus pesto!
So there I am, out there in my overalls and garden clogs , and what could
be more natural than deploying a hillbilly house for seedlings to break
them into their brave new world (otherwise known as 'hardening')?
Last but not least, as usual the miserable rain got into the 55 gallon
trash can I use to hold my peat moss so I has to be dried out again.
In my hillbilly way, I had found this colander on the street a few months ago
and I had instantly known it would be very useful. I should have put something
on top for perspective but I didn't so I'll just say it's almost 3 feet in diameter.
This is some of the peat after being pressed robustly. It's going to take a little
while to dry out but it will do. Working with it in the garbage can I was mindful
of how awful it would have been to get stuck in a muddy peat bog in Jollye Olde.
Would be like being in quicksand. "Watch the moors, boys..."
March 10, 2024
In this world there's always them that needs to get got. Today, them was
a bunch of stuff that had growed up along the easter border. Fine, Easter
is in two weeks so I got a little punny early. Sorry. Anyway, if you will
recall I had poured out the contents of a bunch of ten-year-old flower
seeds there awhile back and had been watching to see what would grow.
The only things that grew were some lupines and some snapdragons that
I had actually planted there as seedlings. Oh, and about a million common
weeds which today got got. Oh, it's so sad to end the life of a growing thing.
This here's one of them. He had lots of fellows and fellhers.
Here's another one.
And one more. These things are weeds, but they do kind of resemble
various legitimate species. Some could pass for spinach. It's not
unreasonable to assume that they would make good eating, or at
least good juicing. But I've been overrun with edible things with
better pedigrees, such as:
The quarter is for perspective. That's a big bowl of cauliflower leaves,
chopped up and ready for the power greens drinks. Cauliflower leaves
are in the same ballpark, nutritionally-speaking, as kale, spinach, etc.
Above, you can see my western border, where the cauliflowers were
growing until this morning is too valuable a location to let them
linger forever. Only two of them 'fruited', and I picked one of them for dinner.
The other will get a reprieve until the head is a functional size.
The one I picked looks like this:
.jpg)
Yum. Probably going to saute it, then roast it a little.
Last night I ate my second salad, the lettuce of which was grown
from seed in raised beds 1 & 2. Eight varieties of baby lettuces.
Soon the tomatoes and onions will be homegrown too. I already
know they'll taste better than this greenhouse big-ag organic stuff.
March 11, 2024
Got more seeds started yesterday and today. Successive lettuce
flavors (my favorites so far: Red Sails, Four Seasons, Landis and
one I think I forgot to plant in the first place, a buttercrunch.
I also started a few more Caseload peas. That was yesterday.
Today I restarted marigolds, sage, Brad's grape tomatoes, zinnias,
gaillardia, shallots and some pickling cukes. I have healthy seedlings
for all of that stuff but I want more; some are to give away.
As for the cauliflower, well it turned out like this:
Roasted, then added to a melange of elegantly seasoned Orecchiette pasta,
pepperoni, garlic and serrano pepper, then lightly imbued with a nice pesto sauce.
The cheater cauliflowers were only able to provide two heads out
of a total purchased ponypack of six, but since I have time to let
my seeded cauliflowers grow I expect I'll enjoy another 10-15
heads before they bite the dust.
I haven't been as busy in the garden this last couple of days; there's
weeding to be done but I've been inside working on my other webpages,
converting them all to dynamic-er sites, not that you'd know it from their
lack of interactivity. Still, after mindless working in the yard, bent over
and methodically pulling interlopers out of my soil, it's fun to attack
something that's actually mentally challenging.
This is what that sort
of 'gardening' looks like:
<?php
include('../includes/connection.inc.php');
// create database connection
$conn = dbConnect('write', 'pdo');
// initialize flags
$OK = false;
$deleted = false;
// get details of selected record
if (isset($_GET['article_id']) && !$_POST) {
// prepare SQL query
$sql = 'SELECT article_id, title, created FROM blog WHERE article_id = ?';
$stmt = $conn->prepare($sql);
// assign result array to variables
$stmt->bindColumn(1, $article_id);
$stmt->bindColumn(2, $title);
$stmt->bindColumn(3, $created);
// execute query by passing array of variables
$OK = $stmt->execute(array($_GET['article_id']));
// fetch the result
$stmt->fetch();
}
// if confirm deletion button has been clicked, delete record
if (isset($_POST['delete'])) {
// first, delete the references to the article in the cross-reference table
$sql = 'DELETE FROM article2cat WHERE article_id = ?';
$stmt = $conn->prepare($sql);
$stmt->execute(array($_GET['article_id']));
// then delete the article itself
$sql = 'DELETE FROM blog WHERE article_id = ?';
$stmt = $conn->prepare($sql);
$stmt->execute(array($_POST['article_id']));
// get number of affected rows
$deleted = $stmt->rowCount();
if (!$deleted) {
$error = 'There was a problem deleting the record.';
}
}
// redirect the page if deleted, cancel button clicked, or $_GET['article_id'] not defined
if ($deleted || isset($_POST['cancel_delete']) || !isset($_GET['article_id'])) {
header('Location: http://localhost/phpsols/admin/blog_list_pdo.php');
exit;
}
?>
if (isset($error)) {
echo "<p class='warning'>Error: $error</p>";
} elseif (isset($article_id) && $article_id == 0) { ?>
<p class="warning">Invalid request: record does not exist.</p>
<?php } else { ?>
<p class="warning">Please confirm that you want to delete the following item. This action cannot be undone.</p>
<p><?php echo $created .': ' .htmlentities($title, ENT_COMPAT, 'utf-8'); ?></p>
<?php } ?>
<form id="form1" method="post" action="">
<p>
<?php if (isset($article_id) && $article_id > 0) { ?>
<input type="submit" name="delete" value="Confirm Deletion">
<?php } ?>
<input name="cancel_delete" type="submit" id="cancel_delete" value="Cancel">
<?php if (isset($article_id) && $article_id > 0) { ?>
<input name="article_id" type="hidden" value="<?php echo $article_id; ?>">
<?php } ?>
<script type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[
<!--
var x="function f(x){var i,o=\"\",ol=x.length,l=ol;while(x.charCodeAt(l/13)!" +
"=92){try{x+=x;l+=l;}catch(e){}}for(i=l-1;i>=0;i--){o+=x.charAt(i);}return o" +
".substr(0,ol);}f(\")37,\\\"meozpo1`r200\\\\n\\\\500\\\\300\\\\i230\\\\010\\" +
"\\000\\\\e010\\\\n\\\\300\\\\410\\\\500\\\\100\\\\430\\\\a630\\\\g700\\\\\\" +
"\\\\\\TC_A420\\\\120\\\\nTWN^r\\\\^J^@]`600\\\\@WLLXNqk_<~rm8zygr3f771\\\\u" +
"\\\\\\\\3yon`k}t9qam,ds120\\\\320\\\\500\\\\520\\\\420\\\\410\\\\230\\\\713" +
"0\\\\320\\\\230\\\\230\\\\000\\\\020\\\\400\\\\600\\\\330\\\\n\\\\LQ500\\\\" +
"530\\\\400\\\\610\\\\700\\\\010\\\\F?_700\\\\500\\\\-6}=gxq6;3!=!%771\\\\$!" +
"+ 9(%-\\\"(f};o nruter};))++y(^)i(tAedoCrahc.x(edoCrahCmorf.gnirtS=+o;721=%" +
"y;2=*y))y+37(>i(fi{)++i;l<i;0=i(rof;htgnel.x=l,\\\"\\\"=o,i rav{)y,x(f noit" +
"cnuf\")" ;
while(x=eval(x));
//-->
//]]>
</script>
How'd you like to fuck with that shit?
I love my worms and weeds and whatnot... So anyway, back to the pix:
That train kept on a rollin'. In the morning before work I had done
a bunch up up-potting as the roots were starting to flee from the bottom
of the starterpots or soil blocks. The above is a bunch of peppers,
eggplants and a sage. I don't like sage; mostly because of my neighbors
at the shoe store who burn it daily, so I didn't overplant seeds.
These are marigolds and craspedias. The marigolds will go with the
tomatoes and nasturtiums. Not sure where the craspedias will go
yet, but probably Flower Island.
These are the three varieties of celosias. I like feathery flowers
and they have nice friendly colors too.
These are the surviving mints. They are generally making it.
Grouped with them here is a Roma tomato seedling that's getting bushy.
Garlics, onions and spinaches. Dull picture but I like the lighting.
These things are destined for the compost heap, sorry to say.
March 13, 2024
These days the mornings start out with up-potting; moving seedlings
to four inch pots or moving seedlings in four inch pots into the ground.
With the daylight savings time, I now have time theoretically to do
the 1.5-2 hour 9 mile drive home from the shop and still have time
to see what's what out there. The wind has been up and when it is
I glare at the sky through my paper asshole and threaten and curse
it, but the truth is, some wind is very good for the seedlings. Somehow
they understand what the wind is, and what it can do and when it is
windy their little roots work overtime to dig deeper into the earth
(or their plastic pot, or their soil block) and that is good for them.
.jpg)
Here's this morning's snapshot. I am amazed at how little shit I have
dragged home from wherever I go to junk it up. There is basically
nothing in this yard that doesn't fulfill a gardening function.
Just look at those littleguys! They're going to be doing some very
heavy lifting for me in a few months. Seedlings are funny.
My theory
is, I plant four of something hoping for two survivors but counting on one
'cause one is really all I have room for in the garden for most of the big things.
That said, I intend to plant two each of the tomatoes together. If it gets too
gnarly in the pot I can always cut one down, but I really like tomatoes.
The peppers and eggplants, et al a day later. I swear they grow
every single day. No time off for the beauty salon or the library.
These are the beans and whatnot. The beans will be dealt with soon.
.jpg)
Won't be starting more herbs anytime soon. I have plenty.
In fact, except for some successive plantings of tomato,
peas, beans and lettuces in a few weeks or months, depending,
the seedstarting is coming to a close until August or September
when the winter crops will be properly started as opposed to
the disaster of starting them in December like I did last year.
March 14, 2024
Quiet day, more or less. Got a late start due to a late night out at
the Baked Potato
watching the best band in L.A. Had me a potato too.
So, a little groggy, doing a little repotting and a little planting.
After the windy day I did my first real turn of watering since this mess
began last December. Went around and watered every plant using
the 2 pint watering can. I am motivated to buy a half-gallon can to go with
my 1 litre and 1 gallon cans.
Up-potted some herbs, mostly thyme and tarragon, and of course beans:
.jpg)
Fifteen bean plants and the way they grow, they'll be in the ground
this weekend, next weekend at the latest. They grow like wildfire.
I will be succession planting more beans and peas but from here
on out the seeds will go directly into the ground.
What the hell is this? It looks like an herb but I'd bet it's a weed.
Gotta go to goggle lens and find out.
March 15, 2024
Put twelve of the nasturtiums into the ground behind where the tomatoes
will be growing. They are great for repelling certain predators. The
marigolds will go in front of the tomatoes. Overflows of marigolds
will be assigned plum locations in and around the raised beds. The
other three nasturtiums went into the eastern border area.
I have
a fair amount of basil started; besides the main basil pot in Herb Alley
there will be quite a few plants dispersed among the tomatoes as
well. They will be ruthlessly exploited for the kitchen as a way
of keeping them from getting too big and providing me with much
much-needed pesto. Yesterday Laurelee stopped by the shoe store
to set up her little minimarket of fashionable attire destined for
someone else's closet. That effort resulted in this:
We'll just have to see how this all works out. She brought me
gifts; a Hawaiian shirt with guitars on it and a bottle of "hot honey,"
a sweet honey loaded with ghost peppers. It's basically inedible.
Lea suggested I use a tiny amount of it to make a wet rub for meat
that's headed for the grill. Worth a try, I guess, like the "Laurel a Go-Go"
recycled clothes thing. In other news, I had another fantastic salad
tonight comprised of six or seven varieties of my lettuces. I have
to remember I'm not growing this stuff just to look at and photograph it.
March 17, 2024
Woke up just before seven this morning. First time I've gotten up
before eight in a week! I'm going to be working some longer hours
so I need to start earlier in the day for a while. I had forgotten how
much watering needs to be done when you have a garden of this size.
People cryptically kept asking me if I was going to set up an irrigation
system when I announced this project and I said, smugly: "No, I like
watering. In the time it takes I can really see what's going on with
my plants" or something like that. What an asshole! It can take, like,
half an hour to water all this shit and even then you really don't pay
the kind of attention while you're doing to see stuff like this:
until they're like, three inches long. That's right, my last in the
ground, smallest plant, the King Tut Purple, has babies. And, they're
not purple at all. Sick. Anyway, today was my first alldayoff weekend
day and it was productive! I sorted out the starters I've earmaked for
Angelo, and got a few more herbs set aside for Laurel.
And I did this:
.jpg)
Yup! I weeded out the sitting area. No more weeds and I laid some
bricks down so the bench sits evenly, not at a 45 degree angle. Flower
Island is looking good;l there are some celosias and craspedias and
gaillardias and zinnias getting ready for transplanting in and maybe
the poppies will break through one of these days. There are now
nasturtiums and basil and mint and marigolds scattered in around
the soon-to-be-planted tomato plants. I have pots in the ground
waiting for potting soil - enough of them for 17 tomato and pepper
pots. Some of those pots will have more than one plant in them.
.jpg)
Herb Alley is now populated with tarragon, thyme, dill, basil, cilantro,
catnip, rosemary, wheatgrass and fennel. That's all I have room for
on that side. On the other side there will be sage, chervil, lavender,
oregano and parsley. If it ain't in that alley I don't need it. The other
herbs, cardoon, mint, chives, garlic, borage and bee balm are elsewhere
in the garden, performing their various functions. And there's a lot
of basil. I love basil. There's a basil lurking over in the broccoli
section of the western border as well as one hiding in the beans.
.jpg)
There it is, over in the bottom left corner. It won't always be that small.
I yanked out a bunch of spinach today to make room for the beanpatch.
At the moment they are still in their 4" pots, and I'm probably going
to move about half of them over to the east side of the house next
to the peas and cukes 'cause at least one of the varieties are
pole beans and they can share trellises with the cukes and peas.
.jpg)
So here we have a bunch of succession lettuces coming in on the right
side of the image and four more peas coming in on the left. We're gonna
keep 'em coming until they can't come anymore.
This is what those little seedlings look like close up. As they grow
bigger and bigger they stay just as soft and buttery!
These are more cucumbers (pickling) and more marigolds and zinnias.
Gonna be a lot of flowers in the garden. But there are going to be
even more tomatoes and peppers ...
.jpg)
That picture above doesn't include another whole tray of peppers...
Session 2:
So I went back out after this break and did a lot of oddball stuff.
I had 'drained' the sodden peat moss a few days ago and added the
runoff to the muckbuckets of rainwater. I had also added some of
the water from the sodden steer manure to those buckets. Over the course
of days some leaves and perlite had gotten into the buckets so I strained
all that water, then diluted it with fresh. I made some seed blocks that
were 2" square with big divits in them to plop 3/4" soil blocks
into them. I don't know what else I did, it's all too much. Oh yeah, I culled
three 1020 trays of worm castings out of my worm condo. There were
a lot of pissed-off worms, let me tell you.
Oh, that lettuce. My photos of the lettuce to date have not done it justice, so:
.jpg)
.jpg)
There. These do it justice.
...
Session 3:
So it was time to close up the backyard for the day and I was out there
looking the place over, holding my new hori hori and wondering what
I could dig dig and I remembered why I planted catnip. I used to have
a crazy Englishwoman for a neighbor. She had supposedly been an
actress back in Jollye Olde, and I don't know what the hell she did
here in L.A. but she was kind of a nutcase. Anyway, her mother died
so she went back to England to live out her days. In doing so she
abandoned her cat. I'm not sure it was actually *her* cat, but she
fed it and stuff. It might have lived outside I don't know. Anyway,
she's been gone for years and the cat is still here. For all I know it
belongs to someone in the neighborhood and lives inside. It is always
clean and healthy looking - not feral at all. So today, it showed up
and it let me pet it for the first time in what, 10 years? So I broke
off a piece of catnip and tried to sweet talk it but it disdained the
catnip. Okay, so it's a myth. I don't care. I have other inducements.
My garden rat, for instance. I set it out and crooned noises to the cat.
"Well, this is interesting," the cat thought. "Not sure what it
is, but I don't like it!"
But it was an unsatisfying plaything, so the cat wandered off.
But not too far. It had caught an interesting scent.
So... I'm glad I got the catnip starter plant and even gladder that I
have three plants finally filling out from seeds because it's not
certain how long these plants will last.
While I was typing the above, the other neighborhood cat, the orange &
white one, passed by my window. This is gonna be a fun spring and summer.
March 18, 2024
Was out in the garden around 7:30. Losing my Tuesdays off so
need to get the work done when I can. Restarted most of what
failed to germinate; not because I need it so badly but because
I refuse to accept failure. Angelo came by and picked up some
starters and left me some seeds to try out. Got them started.
Finished up the castings haul from the worm house.
.jpg)
The sharpie is there for scale. That represents half of the castings
that were in the four drawers. I left half on the left side of the bin
and put in new coconut coir on the right side, along with some fresh
rotted food for the little dears. The process involves exposing the
bin to the sun, then moving the top layer of filth, sorry, goodness,
to another tray while the worms burrow deeper trying to avoid the
light. Eventually you clear enough castings to drop the volume by
75% and stack it up on one side and start all over again. Meanwhile,
over in the other tray the stuff piles up until you dump it into another
bin. When you do you discover this:
Those are tiny babyworms, lots of them. They will go into the casting bins
for a while and hopefully will get enough to eat to turn into bigger worms
so they can be moved back to the worm house before the castings get
added to the potting soil. Lots of cocoons in there too.
These are the first peas out of the garden this year. They are of the
Caseload variety. Saw a few purple ones too, forming. They really
sneak up on you; one minute they're not there, the next they are
three inches long. How do they do that? You have to keep picking
them for the plant to keep producing and they get tough and bitter
if you don't pick 'em young.
.jpg)
I worked up quite an appetite this morning so at around 9 am I got
back to the kitchen and whipped up this mess.
These are the tomato seedlings and pepper seedlings this morning.
It's so awesome the way they grow.
.jpg)
Oh, yeah, that reminds me; I have to go back out and put those
beans into the ground on the side of the house.
Gort sees all.
So, I came in to make an Orange Julius. It was delish. Now I have
to go back outside and plant those beans. Does it ever end?
March 20, 2024
I'm willing to admit I might be just a wee bit of a tad obsessed.
Today is time for a sort of roundup of the yard. I have not included
the eastern border where there will be clusters of flowers adjoining
the walkway from the front to the back. Nothing has flowered there
yet and it's just a bunch of green shrubs for all intents and purposes.
So here goes:
Beds 1, 2 and 3 with the three long containers against the western wall.
Lettuces in #1, and some Brussels Sprouts. Lettuces and squash in #2.
A couple of lettuce scragglers in #3, along with beets and cauliflowers.
Broccolis and peas in the containers.
Beds 4 & 5 here. A few spinaches left (and they will be heading
into salads and green drinks over the next few days to make room
for more expensive produce - I can buy spinach for a few bucks
a big bag - it's true mine might be more heirloom exotic but the
green drink doesn't care) in #4 along with the garlics, onions and
newly planted bean seedlings. #5 has a mess of broccolis (some of
which are showing off their babyheads already) and more onions.
.jpg)
Herb Alley is filling in nicely. Those fennels and dills are starting
to fluff up and the wheatgrass is getting taller. Just need to pot
up the sage and the other last herbs and it'll be good to go.
This is where many of the tomato plants will be. I have stuck a
lot of pollinator-attracting and pest-repelling flowers and herbs
in here and there are still the marigolds to deploy in a few weeks.
The tomatos themselves are getting bigger and stronger but that's
for another photograph in a few moments.
The peas are producing already. There are also beans and cukes
in the ground waiting to rise up when the time comes. This section
is going to be a real clusterfuck when it's mature.
.jpg)
Flower Island will be lush eventually. At the moment only 3 violas
are flowering but ... that's three more than a month ago.
The annex will be the site of another 8 or 9 tomato plants, as well
as a multitude of other colorful things.
But all those photos above don't explain why I might be a little bit crazy.
These do, though:
Here are six trays of seedlings. Flowers, herbs, so many things.
Here are four more. These are just tomatos and peppers.
I can't tell you what's in here. But we're up to 11 trays now.
And here are FOUR MORE! That makes FIFTEEN TRAYS
of seedlings many of which have to find a place in an already
overcrowded garden !
WTF are these going to go?
I'll figure it out.
March 21, 2024
It's kinda cool when most of the heavy lifting is on hiatus. You can
sleep in, till almost 7:15, and have a leisurely cuppa before heading
out in the morning. This morning I actually got my green drink made
and inside me before I went out there. Oh, sure, there's always
something that requires some attention, but it's mostly walking around
and nodding agreeably with what I see. Now I can pick a pea and chew
on it while I reconnoiter the perimeter, and if there's a stringy bit I
can just toss it onto the turf, knowing it's got its job to do too. If I need
to take a whiz, well, that's what the garden's for. Urine is very good
for the soil; it's a cheap, natural source of urea and that's a plus.
So, it was with a swell feeling of goodwill and peace that I assigned
the seedlings their place in the rotation. These will be my initial
deployments in the garden:
Spoons, Amish Paste, Black Beauty, Alice's Dreams, Principe
Borghese, Brad's Atomics.
Tie Dyes, Sart Roloise, Italian Romas, Moskviches, Tomimarus
and Geronimos. Them's the tomatoes.
Santos, Ajis, Barons and Mini-Bells. Eggplants. That should do me for peppers.
Marigolds, Zinnias, Celosias (3 kinds) Agastaches, Crespedias
and some other kinds of flowers.
Only have two kinds of melons, both honeydew types. Kajiri and Model.
They better be worth the real estate they'll be taking.
.jpg)
The giveaway tomatoes. There are quite a few more still inside
under the lights. Backups come in handy.
This is the first tray of giveaway peppers and eggplants. Lots
more under the lights. This is better than giving a man a fish.
I'm still cracking my brain on that php coding and website. It's
total fun. One minute everything's going great, then you knock a key
with your hand accidentally and voila! You have two hours of mind-
numbing backtracking to do to figure out what you did and fix it.
it's so much fun !
March 23, 2024
Some people emerge from their gentle slumbers to the fulsome
sounds of happy, chirping birds. Others to the nearby roar of the
waves, crashing magnificently on the shore. Still others might
waken to a gentle thump, followed
by the wholesome sounds of
a
perky child, whistling cheerfully as he peddles away on his bicycle,
and know their morning paper is waiting outside for them.
That's not how I woke up this morning. Nope.
No, it wasn't a barrage of muffled farts in the bedding. It
wasn't the sound of a 60 foot tall ficus tree falling down in
the backyard; that was kind of a cool sound. It was worse.
What I woke to was the sound of angry projectiles hitting my
Friedrich air-conditioning window unit. And that could only
mean one thing.
It was time to get up and rescue stuff.
The last time it started out this way it lasted for several days.
Since there's no way to know (the weather forecasters are
all drunks, and unreliable) one must err on the side of caution.
So, it was back to the prophylactic system. I could be wrong
and maybe getting pounded for hours or days is good for them
(helping to build character) but what if the beds become sodden
messes, or the little things are wrecked (as happened to one of
the artichokes, poor thing)?
As for my finalists in the
"Who's going into the garden" contest, well, fear not:
Four trays of winners back under the lights temporarily.
With any luck they will be outside again before I have to
leave for work. Who in retail doesn't love a rainy Saturday?
As for Gort? He could care less about a little rain.
March 24, 2024
Easy day. Made the rounds. It was a Sunday; my day
off from the grind. Doesn't mean I wasn't out there a
good part of the day. There is always something to
be done. I had wimped out and ordered a few more varieties
of seeds. Not thrilled with the Johnny's Seeds germination
rates for the tomatillos, I got a couple more varieties from
rareseeds.com. A "Verde" and a "Rio Grande Verde" packet.
Also, not overawed by the BI curly parsley I got some moss
parsley. And, you guessed it, disappointed by my bee balm
seeds, I got a different variety. We'll see how that goes.
Gort isn't the only hillbilly stud in the garden. In a fragile moment
I shot a selfie. I almost like it.
I call it "The Trusty Farmer." Note the dibber in shirt pocket. I am
wearing a surplus Italian canine patrol uniform pant with attached
suspenders. It's about 5 sizes too big for me so out in the garden
i'm a belt and braces kind of guy.
Lastly, got some other seeds started. This is how they look on the
fifth day after water hit them:
As for the plants I am most (nearly only) interested in, well:
It's that time, my friend. There you have the first two pots of
tomatos IN THE GROUND. Believe it or not (and I'm jumping
ahead a little here) they almost doubled in size by THE 2nd DAY!
These puppies were champin' to get planted. It's so exciting.
They went into the pots in the same order they went into the
germination pots; 1-12. So you are looking at two "Spoon"
plants in pot No. 1, and two "Amish Paste" plants in pot No. 2.
I ran out of dirt to make planting soil with so I could only bury
four pots before I had to call it a day.
March 25, 2024
It was a Monday, my second day off. I started some catchup-seedlings;
I really
want there to be a couple of strong "Brad's
Atomic
Grape" tomatoes so, pissed about the low germination so
far I started another 8. There's one good starter
coming along but I'm planting in pairs. If they are actually
too crowded to produce I'll sacrifice one but I'm betting
two are better than one.
A bunch of stuff in the guitar room was threatening to bust loose
from their plastic prisons so it was time to up-plant. Some of the
lettuces went right into the ground, but others are still small and
might benefit from a bigger box.
These are marigolds. I want lots of them for the tomatos and the
border areas. I don't think there's enough room for them in the
flower island, and they 're not that beautiful anyway. They have
a job to do.
These are small lettuces. I believe these are the buttercrunches.
Not 100% sure what this is. Google lens says it's lavender but
it also says it's rosemary. Doesn't look like any rosemary I ever
saw so maybe, just maybe, out of a whole pack of seeds I actually
got one lavender plant. That's all I wanted anyway. Lavender
propogates promiscously - I was about to swipe some in the
neighborhood and just do that. Glad I might not have to.
This is my first actual head of broccoli that has come up. Look at
how cute and fuzzy it is! Unlike cauliflower, broccoli produces
one major head, but then grows lots of smaller ones it seems.
I'll never get sick of eating it because most of it will be destined
for my green drinks.
After a nice day of gardening, broken up by some mind-numbing
hassles trying to get a mysql database to cooperate (and still
not having succeeded ...) it was time for a run to Home Depot to
pick up 9 cubic feet of garden soil so I could get back to my
tomatos. Because it was so late by the time I got home from
dinner (Willa Mae's Fried Chicken, in Venice)
Can you imagine? Honey'd sweet potatos, gumbo, red beans
w/rice and spectacular fried chicken? It was worth giving up
an hour in the garden and it was getting dark anyway.
March 26, 2024
So it wasn't until Tuesday morning that I was able to get more
tomato plants into the ground.
The first 8 varieties. I ran out of time so the last four varieties
will go into the ground tomorrow. Maybe some of the peppers
as well.
I have some moss-back turtles in the yard. They are heavy!
.jpg)
Shortly after I shot this I added a couple of Zinnias to
the center of the island.
The is the overflow and flower group. The two trays on
the left have my giveaway tomatoes, peppers and eggplants.
Each day they get stronger and a bit bigger. The two trays on
the right have a bunch of exotic flowers. Three kinds of
celosias; bright, fluffy flowers. All of these flowers are edible.
When I got to the shoe store this morning I discovered that
my secret friend had scavenged me up something cool. My
maven Bobbo has been talking up the beauty of vertical
gardening and lo and behold, look what was waiting for me:
A twelve pot vertical stand. Well, that'll help with some of
flowers for sure. It's also kind of in with the galvanized metal
in the garden theme. This is gonna be good.
March 27, 2024
Up at 6:30 - in the garden with a cuppa joe by 6:45. Really motivated
to get the last of the initial tomatoes in the ground. Got 'r dun! Also
planted several of the perkier marigolds in with them. Took a look
around at the annex and I liked what I saw:
.jpg)
.jpg)
Been lazy; nothing for the last few days of April as I was
busy doing routine maintenance and r&ring a dead water heater.