Les Jardin:: 2013 version

Well, my inner farmer has been leashed this year. With my upcoming departure (September) it seemed a bit foolhardy to spend my customary amount of time and money on a big backyard garden, so I'm afraid the backyard looks a lot like a weed patch.

But while I managed to leash my farm-girl roots, I didn't kill them. You see, it always amazes me when things grow. You put a tiny plant in some soil, water it and make sure it has sun and it grows! Every day! Watching that process has been a joy to me since I was a wee tyke, visiting my Gram's farm in the summers and planting rows of butter beans and feeding baby chickens....

I did allow myself to use existing pots, potting soil and fertilizer, transplanted some of last year's strawberry plants and bought two heirloom tomato plants. This year's garden exists solely on my lovely solarium of a front porch (seriously gets the best sun on the whole property).

Here's to simplicity and garden-fresh strawberries and tomatoes. And to not complicating my September departure with any more stuff!




Did you plant a garden this year? What are your favorite things to grow?

Sprouting & Growing S'more

It's been a while since I've updated you on the garden growth...
Well. Things are... growing!
I managed to get a crop of strawberries from my little strawberry patch before the deer ate up the plants.
The Zucchini & Squash are doing magnificently. They've taken over their plot of earth and are going to conquer the world next. It's funny, I planted all of these squash and I don't even like eating them... In my defense, I planted some last year and they did very poorly. This year, I took it as a personal challenge to do better. It worked.
Note to self: Mix half potting soil, half local dirt and large amounts of chicken fertilizer for out of control squash of all varieties.

Ah well.
I put up a partial Deer Fence in phases. Now, I have two completely fenced-in areas. Before I managed to finish the whole project, the awful buggers managed to get around at the fence at least once, chomping a path of destruction and wreaking havoc on my Tomato plants. (Which had been doing SO well...)

I'm determined to have a tomato crop despite the terrible Deer. If those critters hadn't gotten to the tomato plants in the garden, they'd all be massive and overflowing with tomato manna! (Or so I'd like to think.)

I've gotten 4 of these massive Zucchini from my plants so far. I pick one and there's another to deal with a couple days later... Anyone need Zucchini?

I've already gotten a couple of white cucumbers from the plant on the right. A new cucumber is just starting (center of the photo). These little babies are wonderfully yummy!

I ran out of room in the back for another tomato plant, but had an extra seedling, so I stuck it in the pot on my front porch and it's outperformed all of the plants in the back by far.


So, this is what the backyard garden looked like when I got everything in the ground:

And this is the most recent. The strawberries seem to have shrunk... but the newly installed deer fence ought to remedy that! Check out those massive squash plants!

The tomatoes (to the right) have gone through a couple of trims from the deer as well, but overall they're doing well, now protected by their own deer fence! 

I really hate deer. In the context of them living too close to me.


PS: I had a birthday yesterday! Can you believe it? They happen every year! :) This is going to be a magical year, I tell ya!

Tiny Beginnings

Well, I've done it. I've begun this year's attempt at farming a bit earlier than normal.
The early timing isn't because of the AMAZING 70-degree weather this week. It's because I decided to start my own seeds from last year's heirloom tomatoes.

This isn't something I want to do every year (maybe?), I just wanted to see basically if I could do it. I've heard that starting your own seeds is rather intensive and demanding of the right conditions. I don't have a lot of daily time/attention to give to this project, so I'm kind of just winging it.

Here's what I did:
-Lots of research. I research everything to death on the internet before I jump in.

-Really started this last year. I started off with last year's seeds, which I lovingly picked out of a couple of tomatoes, cleaned, dried and stored in ziplock bags (cracked open a smidge for airflow) stuck with magnets on the side of my fridge.

-The process:
I saved up a couple of egg cartons and bought some seed starter dirt. (You shouldn't use normal potting soil, it's not good for sprouting). I mixed up a bunch of the dirt in a big bowl with water until it was nice and evenly saturated, then plopped the dirt into the egg cartons (I cut off the tops of the cartons.) I poked a pencil eraser into each egg indentation and dropped in two tomato seeds, then covered up the hole with the displaced dirt.

 Next, I put six toothpicks (three on each side) in each egg carton bottom and then covered the whole thing with that glad sticky clingwrap stuff. This creates a kind of makeshift greenhouse. Keeps the warmth in for the seeds. I used a spray bottle to spray the dirt every day or two. (Just have to keep the dirt moist.)

-Now, I've read that the optimal temperature for seeds is between 70-75. I'm not about to pay the heating bill to keep my house between 70-75, so the temp for my seeds ranged between 55-75. The seeds didn't sprout though, until today (maybe yesterday?), when the weather turned crazy awesome warm. (75 today!)

 Here they are - my tomato sprouts! I planted two variations: A gorgeous pink/orange striped, meaty tomato called a Mr. Stripey, and a tiny little orange tomato that's kind of like eating candy. Can't remember the name. They're amazing though. My nephew would tell you as much if he actually spoke English (He's two. He has his own little person lingo going on.)

So, today was a success. I'm told that now I've got to remove the plastic and let these little guys get 12-16 hours of light (in my windowsill) per day for the next few weeks. When they develop real leaves I'll have to transplant them into larger containers and then eventually "hearten" them - expose them to the outside world during the day (shade only for the first 3-5 days) and bring them back inside at night. 5-9 days of heartening and then the plants should be ready to go into the ground or a large planter to properly grow and bear fruit.

That's not too complicated, right? Only about a million things could go wrong between now and the end of summer. (Including the evil racoons and deer that plague my neighborhood ravaging my plants again this year!)

Ugh. I don't know why I do this. It's the stubborn, Russian Swedish German farm girl in me.

*I really wasn't sure any of this would work until the sprouts actually popped up today. I was going to give this experiment another week or so before trashing it all and heading to the nursery to buy mature starter plants. 

**Make sure you do your own research and adjust for your climate if attempting to grow your own seedlings!

Rodents

I have a problem.

I like to garden. It's in my roots.

You know this.

You know this despite the fact that I never posted any photos from this year's garden: ie, the "before/newly planted/thriving" photos that I've done for the past couple of years.

Well I planted a garden this year despite ignoring the photos. (i did take the photos, mind you.)

This year I added a whole extra terrace to my garden. It has been my master plan all along to spread out the garden year by year. Well. I did it. And then I planned it all wrong and didn't buy enough plants for my expanded space. I should have bought double the amount of tomato plants. Maybe triple. Then I could have canned them all later, like a real farm girl. (uh, i might not have canned them...i might have just given them away... jury's out.) Well, that was the start of the mayhem. Too much space, not enough plants. Whatever. I wasn't really bothered by it. So along I went, feeding, watering, weeding my garden. March, April, May, several setbacks with deer eating all the tallish stalks off the tomato plants... June... more deer problems...

Despite the pesky deer, in June, I ought to have started getting some Tomatoes. And Squash. And Zucchini. (since i planted those too.)

Except the weather decided not to cooperate and gave us an extended winter with bouts of sunshine thrown in to tease us. July... I finally spied one ripe little tomato and several ripening ones! Yippee! A few days later I went to pick the tomatoes that surely should have been ready for a-pickin'... BUT THEY WERE GONE. Not only were the ripe ones gone, but also any quasi-ripe ones, and several just-plain-green ones.

My blood ran cold in my veins as I glowered at the barren spots on my carefully tended garden. BLARGH! Then I saw the discarded fruits strewn across my yard with only nibbles taken out of them...

The bastard Racoons were back! I'd been hearing them in my fig tree for weeks, but hadn't thought they'd go for the tomatoes, after all they'd mostly left them alone last summer. I was wrong.

Those little Rat Finks have cleaned me out this summer. Every time a tomato begins to grow to decent size, they get snatched! I've tried the repellant sprays. (In fact, tonight I got a new one that's like pepper spray for rodents. I sprayed it all around the plants and hopefully it keeps them away!!!)

The point of this story is this:

1. I don't have any bloody tomatoes this summer despite my best efforts.

2. I hate Racoons. HATE. Loathe. They are disgusting vermin. They're smart and will get even with you if you try to scare them away. Trust me. I now understand why Farmers shoot them. If I had a shotgun, I would shoot them dead and dump their bodies in a dumpster. (Too bad it's illegal in CA to shoot them... freaking hippies!)

3. UGH!