Moving Right Along

OK, first off I have poison ivy again. I must have leaned against or sat on something that had poison ivy on it when it was still damp from the rain. I have it on the back of my thighs and my rear end. It sucks .... and itches.....and people look at you funny when you scratch your ass at the Home Depot.



I started on the tomato trellis today. It's made from 1 1/2" pvc and is going to be 8 feet high and 20 feet long with 3 support posts in the middle. I decided PVC was ugly so I grabbed a can of that spray paint for plastic, red of course. It has to cure overnight and I wanted to see how it works so I just did the elbows and t's today and the long pipes will go tomorrow. I think it'll be pretty neat looking when it's all done.



I managed to track down a few herbs today that I hadn't been able to find. I got rosemary, bee balm, lemon balm, greek oregano and some lavender. Being the cheapskate I am I split and took cuttings from all the plants. That way I have more than enough to space out among the cinder block holes, share with my sister and pot up.



I finally found a use for the tray with no pot my mom brought over out of Nana's basement. It's an uber tray for the pots with no trays. A few stones and hey it looks pretty cool. The vast majority of what we used to get the garden going was out of Nana's basement. Papa is too old for a large garden and Nana had started reducing her amounts of stuff long before she got sick and passed away. I'm amazed how much I remember from being a kid and helping in Nana's garden, it came back like I had learned it all yesterday. I think she'd be proud of the garden and happy all the stuff got put to good use.

Radishes and Rice

The first tasty bits from the garden were part of dinner last night. I love cooked radishes and radish tops are amazing mixed into rice.


It's been two days of rain and it looks like one more to come so not much can be done outside. Except for making sure none of the container plants are drowning by emptying their trays I haven't been outside at all. There's still things to do for the garden though. It's pretty boring, propagating rosemary and soaking nasturtium seeds, but at least it keeps everything moving along.

Saturday will be another big garden day. I want to plant in the rest of the cinder spaces in the last bed and build and paint the tomato trellis. The tomatoes are growing noticeably each day so the trellis is the first priority. I might be putting in a couple more blueberry bushes as well.

Wow that was fast!

The garden must be happy because when I went out this morning I noticed a few things. First there was this pretty zucchini flower peeking out from under the leaves.

Then this lovely blossom on the pea plant I was sure was going to die.

Finally, and this one is really a shocker, I've got blueberries on that bush my BIL bought a couple weeks ago. I knew it was a self pollinating variety but berries?? Seriously??

I've got to mix up some fish & kelp for feeding this afternoon. I almost forgot because today is a holiday but I picked Monday because it's easy to remember to feed at the beginning of the week. I'm thinking that everything is happy so far so I must be doing something right.

I'm still drawing out ideas for the tomato trellis. The only thing I've decided is that it's going to be pvc. I can't decided if I want just a flat wall or more of a row cage. If I spray paint the pvc the sun shouldn't destroy it too quickly and I'll get a few years at least out of it. PVC is also super cheap and I like the idea of being able to take it apart and store it easily. I'm not sure if I'm just going to get tomato cages for the potted peppers that need it or do something more creative. I was always a big Lego fan so maybe I'll build some contraptions there as well. Decisions, decisions.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like a Garden!

I played in the garden all day today! Well maybe not played, more like worked. In two days I've managed to get 80% of the plants into the ground or in planters. I'll be finishing up tomorrow and Monday is clean-up day.

Since the hot peppers are more fussy then some other goodies I've mostly kept them to planters on the deck. Hubby and sis are HUGE pepper fans so I got a number of different types and heats. I used the planters to create a wall-o-fire along the edge of the deck.

The deck bench sucks for sitting but it's great for planters. I've got radishes at all stages and more hot peppers below.

The long beds are just about finished, they're the last bit of planting I have left to do. The left one has one long row on tomato plants and we'll be making a trellis wall for them next weekend. The rest is a mingling of things that are happy together. The bush is a blueberry bush my BIL bought on impulse, yeah weird huh? It ought to be pretty happy in the spot I picked, it's where the huge pine we had removed dropped it's needles for a few decades very acidic. Actually it's almost spot on the kind of place blueberries pick to grow wild in the woods. I gave BIL the OK to get a couple more bushes. Maybe next year they'll get joined by some other berries.

Busy Busy Busy

What a day!! It's been a crazy week but the garden is almost done, well as done as it can get right now. This weekend the last of the plants go in and the rest of the summer is maintenance. I got a couple amazing packages in the mail today, one for the garden and one full of fiber and yarny goodness.

I managed to score a Phat Fiber box this month and today it arrived. The samples are just amazing! I haven't gone through it too closely yet but at a first glance everything is just beyond cool.

The second box was from chileplants.com. I got a dozen hot and sweet pepper plants. I didn't want to risk starting hot peppers from seed and I wanted single plants of the super hot ones so I went with purchased plants. I was just floored at the amazing condition they arrived in considering they sat in a hot UPS truck all day. Hubby is thrilled, he's a huge hot pepper fan. I've decided to keep most of them in planters on the deck so I can baby them and bring them in if we have a cool night.

I finally discovered who'd been munching the sunflower seedlings and raiding the bird feeder. It's the one and only star of cirque du squirrel and he puts on quite the show. I'll be replanting the sunflowers on the OTHER side of the yard and let him have his little playground since he amuses both the monkey and her puppy pal right before nap time.

I should have some pics of the garden all planted in a day or two, I can't wait. I'll also be talking about how we ended up with a blueberry bush and some other random stuff in the garden.

Frost Warning!!!

Yep, May 18th and we have a frost warning for tonight. I've seen it snow so I guess it could be worse but it still wasn't fun bringing in all the plants. We haven't planted much out so covering up for the night didn't take too long.

This week has been hell with family stuff, mine and hubby's, along with 4 birthdays that needed either cakes baked or travel or both. At least it's over, I just want to play in the new garden.

We finally finished up the long beds. Pretty spiffy if I do say so myself. Unfortunately I botched the topsoil estimate and we need 10 more bags on Saturday to finish up. It's supposed to be nice weather and it's a long weekend so hopefully we'll get everything planted out as well.

Remember the hosta I raked out and mulched a mere three weeks ago?

Look at them now! One of them between the stairs and the bulkhead is 7 feet across and looks like a plant from when dinosaurs roamed the earth.

These are the hardened off babies waiting to get in the ground. I have way to many tomatoes so I can really pick the best of the best. Hot pepper plants will be arriving this week sometime. I've decided to put them in planters on the deck so they can get the royal treatment. I got a few fussy ones that I want to be able to bring inside if it gets too cool, LIKE TONIGHT!

It's Almost Time

The tomato plants are looking quite happy and it's almost time to stat hardening them off. Since the basement is naturally about 62 degrees I'm more worried about sun than temperature. That makes it a touch easier as I can leave them out overnight and just move them to progressively sunnier positions over a couple weeks. Unless there's a freeze predicted I can skip the bringing them in at night part which I find to be a pain in the neck.

I'm still going to have to find homes for a bunch of plants since I had 100% germination on the tomato plants and as of now I have no less than 60 of them. Most of them are Romas, I planted Speckled Romans (they're the curly leafed ones) and Martino's Roma as well as some Burpee's Big Boys for my Papa. Even though I'm planning on putting up a lot of tomatoes this year I'm thinking 40 plants tops is all I can manage without losing my mind. So some are going to have to get given away.

I'm putting out the pumpkin seedlings today in my niece's small bed. It's going to be overcast but thankfully not raining so It's a good day to move them along. I might start the sunflowers by the deck as well, it depends on how long the rain holds off, yes there's supposed to be more rain tonight.

Tomorrow we start leveling and filling the last two beds. Now that the evil poison ivy is gone it's safe for people with skin to be over there. I also have to build a dirt mound over the stump and replace the compost bins which got moved during the eradication.

Hubby will be raking out the last of the dead roots and starting the mow down the weeds in the back so we can smother a large area back there over the summer. I got a 20 x 100 foot piece of 6 mil black plastic that should survive at lease one New England winter but I do hope it'll be reusable for another section next year. It's pretty tough stuff and weighs in at almost 60 pounds all rolled up.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

It's rainy and raw and has been for a couple days now. I like the rain, we need the rain, but I'd prefer if it rained at night not all damn day for days on end.

It's Wednesday and no sign of itchies from Sunday's major poison ivy grubbing event. The decon procedures seem to have worked. So what if they involved running through the house nekked from the washing machine in the basement to the shower, we're all family right? I'm not sure if it was the super careful covering up or the Tecnu showers or the combination but I'm glad no one is scratching three days later.

We did manage to get all the roots out of the area I want to place the new vegetable beds. It took several hours and we filled seven contractor sized garbage bags with roots. Yeah you read that right seven bags. We also found the mother root attached to the old tree stump I had put the compost bin over to rot it. It was one scary monster and had made a hole for itself at the base of the tree. At least it explained why there were so many poison ivy runners to pull, it had been there a long time and had a very large root system to try to survive with. Now it's dead, dead, dead and rotting in big black garbage bags until I figure out a safe way to dispose of it all.

There's still some plants left but they're far enough away that we sprayed with roundup and will just rake everything back to dirt this weekend to pull up those roots. We're going to smother / solarize the next large section of the yard we want to add to the garden. I got 2,000 sq feet of 6 mil black plastic to lay out over it once we've removed the big stuff and mowed. I plan to leave it until next spring so if the summer heat doesn't get everything the lack of light and water will. Next year we'll just get a truckload of fresh earth and cover the whole dead area. I'm planning on grape trellises back there and a few more raised beds.

The hardening off of the seedlings has begun. I've planted out the peas and cucumbers already but we have to finish leveling and setting the last two beds before much more can go into the ground. Hopefully we'll get to that on Saturday.

I also have to make a new plan for rotting the stump. If we missed any of the poison ivy roots they'll love trying to grow up into the bin so I think that's going to have to get smothered as well. I'm going to mound dirt over the whole stump then cover with plastic topped with mulch before I put the bin back. A couple holes in the plastic right over the stump should let enough water through to encourage rotting without encouraging anything to try and grow.

An Early Reward for Working in the Yard

Well, I started grubbing up the poison ivy. What a pain in the ASS. Some of those roots are as thick as your arm.

Here's the thing. We had a huge pine removed in March before it decided to fall on the house in a storm. Too many branches had fallen during the ice storm last winter and it was a dead tree walking. It was almost 2 grand and took a bucket truck, 150 crane, chipper truck and a log truck over two days to get it out around the power lines and taken away. Did I mention is was HUGE?

Well there was a poison ivy vine growing up it for a long time, LONG TIME. I had hoped being cut at the ground before the ground thawed would kill it, no such luck. All it's roots decided to send out little runners last week. So while there's suddenly a whole lot of poison ivy in the yard where I want to put the last two raised beds, they're all connected so you just dig and follow the roots back to the tree stump. I got like a third of it done in a couple hours today, tomorrow I'll have helpers and we'll finish up quick. The good part is it's fairly contained and when you get rid of the roots you get rid of the poison ivy for good. Any little bits of root we miss can be easily pulled if they decide to sprout but there won't be a massive infestation again.

After I went through decontamination (a shower, washed clothes and tools) and had some lunch I did some propagating. Someone hubby works with dug up a bit, quite a bit, of spearmint from her garden for us. I got 13 good planted cuttings from it and I had some sprigs leftover that were just lovely so a decided to treat myself to a little gardening reward, mojitos. Hubby's working tonight so it's just me, the tv, and a couple delicious cocktails. Sweet reward!