PlantCatching

I discovered a neat plant and garden sharing resource online this morning called, PlantCatching.  This platform facilitates the sharing of plants, seeds, garden materials (e.g., compost), produce, and other garden-related items.  The site looks easy to use and is available in English and French.  

There are buttons on the site that allow visitors to share it via social media (Facebook and Twitter).  If you click on, "Seed Your City"  under the heading, "More" in the menu at the top of the page, you will find downloadable flyers and posters to put up in your community, labels to attach to your shared items (if you wish to use them), and widgets to place on your blog or website. 

Blazing Sun and Petal Confetti: Let The Gardening Begin

   The last two weeks have brought us unusually hot, sunny weather for May.  We were able to get a head start on the initial (and increasingly, dreaded) grunt work of the gardening season.  R. tilled the in-ground plots and I spent hours on my hand and knees picking out grass roots and weeds, particularly from the north garden.  I planted the carrots, onions, beets, leeks, and transplanted the cabbage into a raised bed along the driveway and into the south garden beside the garlic patch.  We decided to try growing potatoes in one of the raised beds instead of the in-ground plot near the raspberries this year.  The soil is fairly light and sandy in the raised beds, whereas the plot near the raspberries is chunky, dry, clay.

   Monday, we put up trellises in the north garden and planted peas.  Many, many peas.  I overestimated the number we would need, and soaked three bags of them when two bags would have been sufficient.  My original plan was to have ½ - ¾ of that patch as peas and something different planted in the remaining portion.  We ended up filling the entire plot with peas.  I see much shelling in my future. Thank goodness for Netflix.

   The trees are filled with blossoms and the air smells heavenly!   Petals are falling like confetti in the breeze today.

   The last few days have been so hot that half the leeks I planted fried and had to be replanted yesterday, when we had a very welcome day of cloud-cover and showers.  I finished planting the tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers yesterday, and also planted the winter squash (North Georgia Candy Roaster), basil (Fine Verde), summer savoury, dry (Amish Gnuttle, Swedish Brown, Molasses Face, Coco Jaune de Chine) and snap beans (Romano, Red Swan, and Slenderette), cucumber, summer squash (green zucchini and Early Yellow Straightneck), kale (Dazzling Blue and Curly), and collards (Tronchuda).  I still have some greens (chard and lettuce) to plant as well as the Romanesco cauliflower and pole beans (likely Early Riser snaps and Flagg dry).  I have never grown pole snap beans, so am eager to find out how they do here.  Early Riser is reportedly a prolific variety of Romano snap bean.

   In addition to preparing the garden plots and beds, Roy dismantled the two rock beds, as they’d been overtaken by weeds and quack grass.  We both like the look of rock beds, but the maintenance is tedious and unending.  He built wooden beds to replace the flower bed and what I thought of as the “cabbage bed” by the (now enormous) currant bush.  He used most of the rocks to rebuild the low wall that separates the driveway from the north garden.  Fortunately for R., he was able to hire a family friend who was visiting town to help him schlep rocks for the day. Unfortunately for the fellow, he got the second sunburn of his life doing it.  Even the darker-skinned among us were not immune from the relentless rays this week!

   The carrots, beets, carrots, and a few of the potatoes have sprouted.  Because we didn’t have the usual 2-3 week cool transition from Spring to summer – just, BOOM: HEAT - the carrots have not germinated as well as they did last year.  Several of the tomato varieties this year have wispy foliage, and I ended up losing one to the heat after it had been transplanted.  Anything that wasn’t thoroughly hardened off before transplanting this year met it’s Maker once in the ground.

Can you feel the heat?  The tomatoes can!

   Last year was not a good year for cabbage. Most of the seedlings I started were nibbled to death by some sort of tiny insect.  Those that survived grew well once in the garden, but then slugs decimated them.  This year, I was able to successfully start more cabbage seedlings than last year and will have extra to share with friends.  The Red Express cabbage (and the Dazzling Blue kale, for that matter – it also has predominant pink/purple streaks in it) was remarkably robust.  I wish my green cabbage varieties would do so well.

L-R...beets, cabbage under milk jug tops, leeks

   Every year, we seem to contend with a different pest (aphids, slugs, root maggots, catepillers, wasps, etc).  Maybe they collude to work on a rotating basis.  If the last two weeks are any indication, it looks like this will be a hornet and wasp year.  We set up two "juice" traps earlier this week, and R. bought a fake wasp nest to hang outside.

   There is still a lot to do out there:  the raspberry patch looks like a hayfield, the lawn needs to be mowed and whippersnipped, gardens need to be mulched, weeds around the property raked, etc.   We’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, though.   

Knock wood.

Tomato Boot Camp and Gardening Notes

   Yesterday morning, I started hardening off the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants.  For the first while, they'll be put them out early (between 5:15am - 5:30am) and brought in an hour later.  The mornings have been cool and a bit overcast, so no worries than they'll be scorched.

   I also started some lettuce seed in milk jugs yesterday:  Sherwood, Galisse, Lollo Rossa, Black Seeded Simpson, Grand Rapids, and Flashy Butter Oak.        

   This morning, I cleaned out the spent canes in the raspberry patch.  It is sunny, mild, and breezy outdoors; perfect weather for this kind of task.  I spotted two ladybugs nestled amongst the cane, which made me smile. The first bumblebee of the season was buzzing around the composters, looking cute and fuzzy (and sounding like a Cessna).  The patch is  s p r e a d i n g, and there are bare spaces in what we loosely consider to be the rows in the patch.  I’d like to dig up some of the smaller canes and move them to the interior of the patch to fill the spaces and keep the patch from taking over the lawn.  There is just so much else to do, though, that I’m not sure this will be a priority. 

   Last year, volunteer pansies were coming up in the raised beds and the north garden.  I didn’t have to plant any, I just moved them where I wanted them!  No sign of volunteer pansies this year, so  this morning I planted some in the black planter in front of the house (a mix of small yellow, purple, and white ones) and around the back corner of the bathtub (Springtime Cassis, a variety that is new to me).

   The Wooly Thyme looks fantastic - soft and green.   Just love it!  The same can’t be said for the rest of the flower bed.  Last summer, it was overtaken by weeds and quack grass, and I didn’t have the energy to deal with it.  The Creeping Thyme is also green and flourishing, but it self-seeded extensively last year and is now all through the bed, filling in the gaps between the weeds…and the grass has grown up through the original clusters.  Ahrg.  If I decide to deal with the flower bed rather than throwing a tarp over it and hoping nobody notices, my mantra will be, “It’s for the bees…it’s for the bees…”

   The trees and lilac bushes are budding like mad. Strangely enough, I have only seen 2 or 3 dandelions.

   The garlic started to come up about a week ago and is already several inches tall.  I had to rescue the bulbils by pulling off some of the mulch that their sprouts were struggling to get through.  I mulched the bulbil section heavily last Fall on the off chance we were in for a very cold winter.  It turned out not to be; we haven’t had a really cold winter for some time, now… 

   After hemming and hawing over what kind of winter squash to grow this year (the tried-and-true Galeux D’Eysines or North Georgia Candy Roaster, or the new-to-me Rouge Vif d'Étampes ("Cinderella Pumpkin") or Delicata), a decision was finally made.  Earlier this week, I started North Georgia Candy Roaster seeds in milk jugs.  The jugs will be kept inside on a heat mat and under lights, and hardened off in June before transplanting.  Hopefully, they will do as well as the first time I grew them! 

It begins!