Gardening

[cineater]

And then the riding mower won't start.    Oh yeah, I'm out there mowing it by hand.  I won't do the whole 5 acres but I will do a couple.  Number one pet peeve is the grass.

So people are starting to give me shit for being at the garden so much.  Like I need to get a life.  Like I'm going to wear myself out.  Like I'm doing too much.  I look at them and think, am I asking you to do anything?  You know, just tell me you like it.  What you're seeing here is my passion.  I wake up in the middle of the night and think shit, it's not time to go to the garden yet.  I have a ton of energy.  I'm doing all this without coffee.     I'm having a great time, leave me the fuck alone.

[pilferk]

Mulch it all.  That's the correct answer for grass control.

[cineater]

Mulch it all.  That's the correct answer for grass control.

   My favorite response to any gardening issue.

My hands have ground in dirt and callouses from gardening.  I am now wearing plastic gloves with moisturizer all night trying to get them to look good for the wedding.  It's working but my fingers are sliding all over the keyboard. 

[cineater]

I added short shorts and 3 inch heels to the plastic gloves outfit last night.  

Yep, all the lettuce bolted and the tomato plants have shot up.  Cool season crops are over and the warm season are taking off.  We buried the food pantry in lettuce.  They're going to have to share it with their pantries in other counties.  We occasionally do that, grow way more of one thing then they can use.  We did it with hot peppers one year and they finally told us thanks but no thanks.  

We have strange weather tomorrow.  Possible flash flooding and large hail.  The whole property is just beautiful.  I did a lot of work redoing two long paths and the monarch garden in the flood zone.  We even have the greenhouse looking good.  Just give me one year where all's well.  I would like one year where all progress is moving forward.

This is my third year as their leader.  It was hard sell getting a volunteer group to come around to my way of thinking.  Basically, I wanted to take the gardens from something we just played around at to a professional looking, educational spot.  Gone is the farmer mentality of piles of junk and shit laying around where they dropped it.  They actually are thinking about educational signs they can put up and are working on them.  I've had my fingers in everybody's garden.  Sometimes working along side of them and sometimes just surprising them with what I did.  I raised the bar and they like it.  Got them off to a good start and they are following right alone.  I'm seriously surprised.    OMG, you should have heard the push back in the beginning.  We are a work in progress but they are working on it.

[cineater]

   People are now starting to get it and are saying back to me about it being my passion is why I'm doing so much.  Glad they get it but it's my passion in May.  We're going up to 90 this weekend.  My passion just burned out.

[pilferk]

Here's a little walkthrough of our garden.  We're in the 'burbs, but live in a PUD, so lots are basically postage stamp sized.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RaeEX30klk&t=2s

[cineater]

Here's a little walkthrough of our garden.  We're in the 'burbs, but live in a PUD, so lots are basically postage stamp sized.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RaeEX30klk&t=2s

Wow, I love it.  You are really using all your space.  We use the cattle paneling for trellis too.  Love the containers.  My veggies are all in containers at home.  Wish you would have talked us through it.  I think I know what I'm looking at.     How long have you been gardening?

[pilferk]

Wow, I love it.  You are really using all your space.  We use the cattle paneling for trellis too.  Love the containers.  My veggies are all in containers at home.  Wish you would have talked us through it.  I think I know what I'm looking at.     How long have you been gardening?

I will likely post a more in-depth walkthrough at some point.  This was just a little preview I put together for social media friends and family who wanted a peek.

As for how long?  Um...40+ years, here and there, I guess?  When I was 4, I remember roaming the gardens with my maternal grandmother in our back yard.  Helped out back there throughout my early years til I was 10 or so.  Then worked summers with my dad as a stone mason assistant throughout my teens, and stayed with my paternal grandmother those summers.  Part of staying was helping her in the garden. Did that til I graduated high school in '92. Then, we bought our house about 20 years ago and did some light gardening back there...mostly ornamentals on the edges (along the fence and the house) with a little "fairy garden" along the right back side (aka in the fence notch with no gate).  We started converting some of that space over to vegetables about 3 or 4 years ago (mostly peppers and tomatoes kinda thing), and HARDCORE swapped in spring of 2020.  Most of the panels and infrastructure there, now, were done over the winter and into the spring to maximize our growing space for this year. 

So...short answer...pretty much all my life.  It really has become my zen space.

[pilferk]

Oh...and a quick runthrough:

Starts with strawberries.  The trellis will eventually be filled with climbing (aka arctic) strawberries, but probably not til NEXT year (they just went in, from seed, about 2 weeks ago).  The hanging tiers are all regular strawberries.  The bushes on the left are all blackberry bushes.  There's a trellis right there on the right I sort of "miss".  Those are cukes.  One side pickling, on side slicing.  The trellises along the house, on the right, as I move forward are all tomato plants.  Everything in containers are cherries.  The ones in the ground are beefsteak.  The containers down the center of that path are all bush beans.  The greenhouse doesn't have anything interesting right now.  The planters are a mix of brassicas.  Buttercrunch and romain.  There's a tiered planter of spinich in there, too.  As I move around the back of the greenhouse, the fenced in section is corn.  It's only fenced in to keep the critters from eating the shoots...they're just up in the past week.  As I come back around, all the bags between the benches are potato plants. The tree over it is a cherry tree. And the bushes in the ground...that are taking over...are rasberry bushes.  As I come forward, on the left is peppers of all sorts...jalepenos, red, green, and even a few rainbow plants I think.  The trellis on the right will have zuchini and spagehtti squash. They're through, but just and hard to see.  As I finish up, there's all that stuff under white netting.  Half of it is curly kale, and half is cabbage.  Netting is shade cloth and bug protection to keep it all healthy.

I think that's it?  There's chamomile all throughout, as well as some other pollinator draws (my mother actually plants and picks out the flowers), and the whiskey barrel with the lavender in it has a bunch of herbs planted in it (recently). Chives, Sage, Dill, and.....something else (my wife planted it, I can't remember).  On our very red deck, we have a couple more herb planters. Cilantro, Oregano, Basil, Thyme and parsley.

OK, THATS it. I think.  At least for now.

[cineater]

You really went to town on getting that developed.  You have that place packed with good stuff.  Del uses the shade/bug cover over our stuff in the garden.  Must be a new fad as I've only recently seen it but it's a good idea. 

You can get a shade cloth for the greenhouse.  It's good to keep it from getting too hot during the summer.  Is this your first one?  We learned if you can keep it at 130 for 3 days (and nights) it will kill all the germs.  Easy during the day but we had to run the heater at night to keep it up there.  I thought it was a waste.  I'm going to wipe the whole place down anyway and they continued to run the exhaust fans with people in and out after they tried it.  I prefer wait until it cools down, spray the whole thing with bleach water and lock it up until we start growing in it again.  This year we got powdery mildew.  Think it came in from a grower but now we've moved our bleach solution up to 10% from 5.  I'm a stickler about sanitation in the greenhouse.  It hits the floor it better hit the bleach water before it goes back on a table.

Try Thai or Cardinal Basil.  Their seed head is fist size instead of the single stalk.  It looks like a flower in your garden.  Thai basil can be cooked at higher temps.  Has a sweet licorice flavor.  Purple seed head and some purple leaves.  Really pretty plant and it "blooms" all year.  I'll toss the spent seed heads in other plants to keep the squirrels from digging in them.  Haven't decided if that really works or not but I can tell you they never dig in the containers with basil.

[cineater]

Leaf mulch!  We got in two trailers worth today.  Love that stuff.  Functional but it just makes everything look so much nicer.  Had them dump a hill on the parking lot right by the front gardens that needed it.  A swarm of folks cranked that out before the head of the place even knew we did it.    Saved us about 100 yards per wheelbarrow.  Unfortunately we are an extreme, full sun garden.  We are waiting till tonight to hit on it again.  Got two gardens that still need to get done.  I'll be there at the crack of dawn tomorrow to move some more.  Doesn't weigh anything just a long walk from the bin where it's dumped to where it needs to be.

[cineater]

Well fuck.  To be ADA compliant, our wood chip paths don't work.  Talking big bucks and a lot of labor.  Every time I get to a point where I think I can get down to focusing on the gardens for education, they throw something else at us.  Pull down the sail, I've lost my wind.

[cineater]

Fuck, waves of rain over the next few days, 1 to 4 inches.  We'll flood if we get those higher amounts.  I just redid the two paths that get flooded out.  Nothing I can do but watch all those wood chips float away. 

For the most part when we flood it's back fill.  It comes up, it goes down within a few hours.  Doesn't really hurt the plants but we have to wash off the muddy water it leaves behind on the leaves.  The current doesn't hurt the plants just makes a mess out of those two paths.  At our worst flooding, it will float away heavy wood structures like our bridges and benches.  It can come through there like rapids.  If it gets in our raised pantry beds, that's contaminated water.  You can not eat vegetables out of them for two years or what we did the one time that happened we had to dig all the soil out and put in fresh.  We never want to do that again. 

[cineater]

That worked.  I took a new garden this year.  It's front and center in the garden, the show case bed.  A great opportunity to totally flop in front of everybody.     It's an annual flower garden with plants under 12 inches.  It's coming up masses of color.  Your eye goes right to it and it pops right out at you.  It's still growing but it's coming out great.  This month it's getting our big garden sign placed behind it.  It's been three years I've been trying to get somebody to put that sign put back up.  Hopefully my hands on involvement gets the job done.  Almost there.

I have a room full of potatoes curing.  Better than taking the garlic.  The whole house would have smelled of garlic.

[cineater]

Woohoo!  We just found out the St Louis gardening magazine is coming out next week to do an article on our gardens.  My friend told me not to make everybody crazy by yelling for an all hands on deck to clean up the gardens.  We don't need that.  We have been show ready for months.  So ready I power washed the concrete in the handicapped garden.  I'm only doing that when there's nothing else to do out there.  I'm calling an all hands on deck so it's a group photo and I'm lost in the crowd.   This garden doesn't look this great unless I'm this dirty.

[cineater]

Wait, 'is the head guy from here gone'?  We were on a phone conference with the University.  Oh yeah and they have a new key to the building for me.    They fired him and changed the locks.

[cineater]

I'm not sure how you judge if your magazine interview went well.  The guy was there a long time, took lots of pictures, walked the whole garden.  Liked our native beds and the bird garden.  He's a native man.  I think Justin gave him all the prep info.  The gardens looked beautiful.  He was surprised how much we grew since he was there 10 years ago.  Will have to wait and see how much space we get in the magazine but any space is good.

[pilferk]

Took about 5lbs of greenbeans, 5lb of carrots, and a few lbs of raspberries out of the garden today.  Unfortunately, we've lost a LOT of the raspberries to mold.  I've frozen a couple batches, building up so we have enough for jam at some point, but.....we're not gonna get what we had last year (or what we got out of the cherry tree, this year....15 jars!!).  Blackberries should be up in a week or two.  Hopefully better luck with those!

We've had TOO much rain.  About 10 straight days of rain, dating back to the 3rd, on and off. Today was the first real sunny day we've had, after rain in the AM.  Tomatoes are splitting just as they ripen, and those plants are looking ROUGH.  Gonna have to aggressively prune them this weekend.

On the flip side, cukes, peppers, corn, and squash all seem to have really liked the rain.  They've taken over their respective beds quite nicely.

I'm worried about our potatoes, though.  They were just laying over before the rain started....but all that water, I'm thinking we're going to have a bunch of rotten potatoes in a couple weeks when the tops finally die off completely.  Good thing I have another 5lbs of seed potatoes ready to go.

Besides pruning, time to process some herbs this weekend!  Herb "ice cubes" will be the goal of the weekend!

[cineater]

We've had the rain too, 2 inches above normal.  I know they are having trouble with the tomatoes.  I've been busy in other sections of the garden, fortunately it takes me by the blackberries.   

[cineater]

I feel like fresh meat out there.     The mosquitos are really bad.  Do you put poison on yourself or spray it around the yard?  I was reading that mosquitos are the most deadliest animal in the world.