Gardening in the Rain

My strawberry replacement plants came yesterday (All but three or four plants died from the heat and lack of water last year...) So that meant I had no choice but to do some gardening work.

I planted 25 strawberry plants, transplanted broccoli and lettuce starts, planted red onions, and did some weeding. All of this is the rain.

I'm definitely seeing green out there now! The warm weather has been lovely, but I'm definitely afraid of a late frost/freeze. It was only in the 60s today, so that rain that has now taken residence in all of my clothes has chilled me to the bone. At least I got out there with the camera!

In turtle news, all turtles have now emerged. Nadine was the slowest, and I saw her out there this morning for the first time. (she was the one who gave us fertile eggs last year, so I was rather worried about how long it has taken her to come out!)

Confession helps

So I guess just confessing that I had no motivation was enough to give me some motivation. A high temperature of 83 today didn't hurt either.

Today, Hubby helped me get the compost moved back to its normal area, and loosen/fertilize the soil. I have a nice sunburn on my back to prove it...

I also planted some additional shelling peas, carrots, radishes, spinach, and assorted lettuce varieties.  I did this part all with the help of this post from Annie's Kitchen Garden.  I had never made seed mats before, and truly only did it for the carrots that I was planting for the first time, and ended up doing all of it with this method. It was rather windy, and it was incredibly quick and easy to do the spacing sitting at the kitchen table, and do the back bending work without seeds or seed packets in hand. Definitely a process that I'll be reusing!

The camera battery was dead when I went to go take an "after" picture of the garden, but truly, it's just a brown soil patch with a trellis at the end, and it'll still be that for a few more days.

I didn't have a true "plan" this year, no diagram to go off of or anything. I held pretty close to my spacing and planting from last year, with slight alterations, just so that I'll shift my peppers and tomatoes a bit. With as small of a space as I have, true crop "rotation" just isn't feasible.  Last year's plan worked well, so I'm glad I put all of the effort into it a year ago.

I'm looking forward to seeing some green in the next week!

I can't get going...

I just can't get myself going this season. I have gotten some garden work done, but not much. The "non-winter" we have been having this year has not kept me inside, especially since I've continued to run all winter. That inside time is what makes me long for outside time.

I've got broccoli planted. Twice actually. The first batch that I planted died. It took too long for me to get the shelves and lights upstairs, and they literally died.  The new stuff is happy, with second leaves, and is ready to be potted up. They've even been fertilized (I know, right?!). I'll need potting soil to pot them up though, and I haven't made so much as ONE newspaper pot yet, so where they're going, I don't know yet.

I've got all of my peppers and tomatoes planted. I took it down a notch this season. I doubled what I wanted for myself, just to be safe, and plan to give extras to my mom and my neighbor ladies, but otherwise this "nursery" did not take orders this year. That still means I have 40 some peppers and 60 some tomatoes that I will need tending.

We're still getting a steady supply of lettuce from my Aerogarden. Tender lettuce knocks the socks off of any store bought lettuce we get, so it is a nice treat.  I know not to plant any more "red" lettuce in it though, it starts out trying to be red, but then goes green and stays that way. I'm not sure if there is a nutrient deficiency from the liquid components that we use, but it's not something that concerns me enough to try to fix it.

Yesterday, it was 72 and beautiful (though very windy) and I got the first "Spring" glimpse of Eleanor! She was "out" before I stuck my phone in her face to send this picture to the hubby. She is never shy once she's out and about for a while, I very rarely see her shell close this much.  We've never let our turtles come out of hibernation naturally because I always want the compost that they are hibernating in. This year we moved the finished compost to the garden, and have done all of our composting on a pile in the garden, so we're going to let them do their own thing this year. Eleanor is from Pennsylvania, so we know she's used to a bit colder weather. I'm anxious to see when the others will emerge.

The only gardening I've done was to stir the compost in the garden, and move some of the finished compost we'd piled in so I could build a new trellis and plant my snow peas.  I haven't used a pitchfork or those muscles in months apparently, because I was SORE after even that little amount of work!  At least something is in the ground, even with my lack of planning. I have really good luck with peas in the location I've used in the past, and I know they SHOULD be rotated, but something keeps them doing really well there, so I'm not changing that up this year, but I did have to rebuild the trellis.

I'm a part of a group getting ready to start a community garden in my area, so some of that planning took place yesterday.  Night shift has really taken the life out of me I guess, but I'm hoping some motivation blows my way soon!

I'm glad to catch up on blog reading when I get the chance... Happy Gardening to all!

January Update

It's been a while, of course.

This winter has been so warm.  I've been running outside. I work nights, which is weird. I may be moving in August.

All are reasonable excuses to why I have not been blogging for a while.  The garden is in limbo due to the moving part. It's hard to get terribly invested in it when I may be missing out on one of the most productive months of the year for me. The hubby is looking at an art school in downtown Philadelphia, so we may be packing our bags and heading out. That leaves me with all of the other things to think about BESIDES gardening... (where will we live, I'll need a PA nursing license, I'll need a PA nursing JOB...)

We visited the school on my 25th birthday.  My first reaction was that I was getting cancer from the lack of GREEN in the city. Granted, it was January, but there is next to nowhere for even a patch of grass.  I claim that I "live in St. Louis", but the bulk of the St. Louis population lives outside of the city in the 45 minute straight sprawl of suburbia, me included.  When we lived in Lebanon, PA, I could readily smell horse manure several months of the year just by walking outside, and though I love my garden, I proclaimed myself a "city girl". This is going to be a whole different ballgame. We had lunch with a close friend, and it helped to take away some of that instant culture shock. That is mainly where my mind is right now. We're praying for a scholarship opportunity to come through, so the decision hasn't been made, but once it has, it means packing up a house we've lived in for three and a half years for quite a big move.

I did get some new Aerogarden bulbs. So I do have some things growing right now. (This may be my only "garden" besides containers or a *rooftop garden* fingers crossed on that one if we move to Philly)

This is from January 11, when we returned from PA. I had to do lots of thinning. Most of my seeds were old, but they had only just begun to sprout when we left.

This is 12 days later, from today, January 23.

I've got three buttercrunch lettuces, two red sails (Thanks Daphne!), black seeded simpson, and little caesar. We'll be having salad in the near future!

My broccoli will be planted this week, but I'm nowhere near ready. This year it feels like I just finished cleaning up. We just threw out the last of our ripening green tomatoes, and bought our first store bought tomatoes since September. 

Our average high temperature in St. Louis throughout this December was somewhere in the low 50s. Nowhere cold enough to keep me inside, so I haven't been having that cabin fever issue which normally lends itself to massive garden planning. I've got seeds to order, and I've only just begun to peruse the catalogs. 

My church has begun some thinking on creating a community garden that we'll donate the harvests, and have asked me to be a part of that. I'm incredibly excited, and I think that the planning for that will take up more of my time. I'm off to run, and then hopefully to get a nap before my first of three night shifts this week. Happy Gardening to all!

Mail

Got an exciting package in the mail that had me squealing before the door was shut.

Many thanks to Daphne at Daphne's Dandelions and her seed sharing for this delight! I'll be having some sweet gardening dreams tonight!

Seed Catalog

Winner of the first seed catalog this year... Stoke's seeds. :) Excited about planning. We tore the garden down this past week, all but the rest of the snow peas. Looking kind of bleak out there.

What a Mess.

At least it's my mess. Thankful to have it this year, come this time next year we may be relocating due to hubby's schooling...

The garden was a big disappointment this year with just insurmountable heat slowing everything down. Biggest disappointment was my tomatoes, and the of the small amount that were there, the amount of theft by squirrel made it even more frustrating. I've begged the hubby for more garden space in the side yard, but we'll need to take a tree down (which desperately needs to come down anyway), and that's just not in the budget right now.

Here's the mess I've got right now, as well as a few things I'm still picking.

Here's the normal garden shot. Yup, Megan's Messy Garden is right. It started out tidy... oh well, there's always next year.

This is a fun little treat for me. I threw this into next to no space turtle/compost area when I pulled it out when it just wasn't growing quick enough. I got a few spare plants from friends, and it looks like this may still give me a harvest... nearly 11 months after I planted it from seed. Look at the little head forming! It's gotten more sunlight as the seasons have changed. Here's hoping. I loved the fresh broccoli we got!

Here are the green tomatoes ripening on the counter. I'll have more to add to this, since we still haven't had any frost yet. It'll come soon, I'm sure, but I'm not going to complain about the 60ish degree weather that we've got.

First jalapenos from the "extra" plants I stuck in the compost area. The plants got next to no sunlight, but have still somehow started producing fruit

Sad looking tomato plants, and peas that never grew.

More sad tomato plants, tumbling all over the place. Several of my plants didn't give me a single tomato. I'm hoping I may get a few green ones from them to save. The deep brown at the end was about a 1/2 cubic yard of compost we moved about a month or two ago, and it's already broken down to next to nothing still. That's going to be a nice and fertile area for next year!

 Of the 27-28 strawberry plants I planted last year, only about 3 or 4 survived the heat and my lack of watering this summer. Looks like I'll be adding that to my garden order this winter...

Almost finished for the season. At least the colors are pretty!  

(We DID clean up the leaves, including blowing off the patio just this past Friday... looks like we'll be doing that job a few more times before it's all cleaned up!)

Happy Fall!