The Garden in August

This has been a banner year for me in gardening, but that doesn't really mean much since I have only really been at it for two summers. In the past, I have tried in vain to grow indoors or on a deck, and those times never went well. I can't keep anything alive inside. Ask Mike, he'll let you know that the only plants that stay alive are the ones he cares for.



Some things aren't doing so well, like the herb garden I have in a large pot. The picture you see above is from when it was planted. Everything did really well for June and July. The plants were huge! Now they look like they’re ready to die. It’s so depressing I refuse to take a photo of it. I've been using it all summer for pesto, mojitos, and caprese salad and it looks like I might not be getting anymore out of this. I refuse to water my garden, but a small planter like this probably needs more frequent waterings since it can’t hold as much moisture. I’d say there’s a lesson learned here, but my guess is that I will probably not water it next year either. I’m stubborn and lazy, a terrible combination.

 

Those are our banana peppers! We have three ready to pick. It’s mild salsa time, everyone! The rest of our peppers, including the much desired sweet mini peppers, are progressing at a painfully slow rate. There are a couple of pathetic little guys, like that adorable jalapeno pepper below, and a few flowers as well, so not all hope is lost yet.





The basil in the garden bed is doing fantastic. We luckily still have plenty of that for more margherita pizza and pasta sauce. I <3 basil.





I think I mentioned that I packed the beets way too close together. They are maturing now and I have gathered 4-5 so far. All of them are radish sized. I've been saving them up to roast a bunch all together for salads and just to eat by themselves. I’m a sucker for roasted beets, especially when paired with some chevre.



The other thing that was packed to closely together was the carrots. Not ready yet.

 

Lots of eggplant now! Since learning of my husband’s hate of eggplant (after six years of eating lots of eggplant), I get to enjoy these bad boys all by myself. Our brussels sprouts plants are starting to develop the little buds that grow into brussels sprouts. We're both getting excited about this. Mike, who is turning into a picky eater before my very eyes, still loves brussels sprouts.

 

The corn seems to be doing okay. We have cobs formed in the stalks and a couple of them look ready to go. We haven’t harvested anything from them though.





The cucumber plants continue to produce lots of cucumbers. We are starting to get to the point where I should learn how to can them so they don't end up going back into the compost.



I just planted this butternut squash about six weeks ago, but it looks like it might work out. There are a couple of flowers forming already, so I’m a happy girl.



Potatoes. They look as if they are wilting and ready to harvest. I’m going to wait another week or so before pulling one out and seeing if they're ready. I don't want to pull them out too early since last year’s came out the size of gumballs.





The tomatoes are still fantastic. A handful of cherry tomatoes are ready for picking every day and the roma tomatoes are just starting to redden. I've decided to freeze tomato sauce when I get to the point of too many tomatoes to deal with. I'll let you know how that goes when it happens.

Some other things that did not get photographed:

Beans and peas. Seriously slowing down on production, and I didn't get much to begin with! I’m pretty disappointed by this.

Lettuce and spinach. Not doing great. Pretty lackluster year for these guys.



Berry bushes and vines. They are covered with a bunch of the stuff in the photo above. I haven't seen them in a while! I've been working on clearing this area out to finish the fence, so hopefully I will be able to tell how everything is doing soon.

Pumpkins. The pumpkin plant is also buried in this prairie. I was able to look at it the other day and it didn't look very good. I’m not sure if it is just getting crowded in by the grasses or if it hasn't gotten enough water or if the soil on that hill is crap or what. It’s a mystery. Mike has been most excited about this plant, so he will be one sad kid come Halloween. I’ll have to take him to a pumpkin patch :)

That's what our plants are up to this month! How are your plants/gardens doing so far this summer?

Our Garden 2013

In my desire to plant everything in the world this year, I've run out of room.

My eggplant spilled over into a bed near our patio and I put our herbs into a planter by our outdoor dining table. The strawberries ended up in a pot on the deck.

The herb garden has pineapple sage, cilantro, rosemary, basil, mint, peppermint and a marigold. I'm very happy with how well this pot is doing. I have aspirations to freeze all of the extra herbs this fall so we have some all year round. 

I purchased berries in early spring and waited way too long to plant them. When I finally did plant them, I thought they were goners. A couple weeks later, I went out and purchased new ones and planted them in-between the dead ones. A week later, the dead ones have come back to life! So we now have a ton of bushes that will someday bear lots of fruit (hopefully!) Please ignore the massive amount of weeds.

Blueberries and raspberries. There is also a blackberry bush not pictured. Really excited to see how these turn out.

Also, the rhubarb that we inherited is doing great! I didn't realize it, but we have about six times this amount on the other side of our shed! 

So here is the main attraction, the garden.

In our first bed, we have tomatoes, peppers, potatoes and onion.

First up are roma and grape tomato plants. I am a weird person and prefer romas over any other tomato for most uses. And also, they can well so they are perfect for our garden. The grape tomatoes will be perfect for salads. Sliced in half, they are great on sandwiches too.

These are our peppers. There is a mix of sweet peppers (left), bell peppers (center), hot banana peppers (right) and jalapeno peppers (bottom left). Peppers are something I kind of shy from at the supermarket since they tend to be full of pesticides, so I planted a lot of these. Below the peppers are my onion and potato plants (bottom right). The onion was just a sprouted bulb that I bought and planted in the bed. I have already used it for chives, so it is a little short right now. Fingers crossed the potatoes come up. I planted organic potatoes that had sprouted. Last year my potatoes took a few weeks for the leaves to reach the soil, so I'm hoping that they are doing okay. It would be great to have potatoes this year because organic ones are so expensive.

And then there’s the catnip plant and the basil. I also planted marigolds in random spots around the beds for pest prevention. They also look pretty cute if I do say so myself!

In the next bed, we have carrots, beets, cucumber, spinach, lettuce, Brussels sprouts, and eggplant.

Not much to look at yet, but hopefully in a few weeks this bed will be full of action. This is my first year growing Brussels sprouts so that should be fun. Last year, my beets were eaten when they sprouted so I’m hoping to actually get to have some this year. I bought two different kinds of eggplant. The eggplants in the flower bed are Japanese eggplants and the eggplant in this bed are more traditional globe eggplants. I love eggplant! I am hoping to pickle cucumbers this year so we’ll see how that goes.
 

The last garden bed is kind of empty right now. There are strawberries in the middle and a few marigolds around the edge. I planted corn on the left end of the bed and pole beans, snap peas and peas on the right end.

So there you have it! I still have a few more things I want to plant on the hill – pumpkins, squash and watermelon – but we’re getting late in our planting window so I may not see much of a yield there. I’ll update you all in a few weeks to show you how it’s going!

Building a Raised Garden Bed

I’ll be the first to admit that the Notre Ferme Urbaine household was a little over ambitious with our garden plans. Three raised beds, a chicken coop, a fence? That’s a lot more work than we are used to doing. But we had big plans this year and we were not going to give up on that. The garden beds were not too difficult compared to the fence, but took a lot of planning and required a lot of lumber.



Mike thinks I'm crazy about my views on pressure-treated lumber, but everything I read said that you shouldn't trust it to grow your plants around. Heck, Lowe’s has a big warning sign in front of their pressure-treated lumber, so I was adamant about using untreated pine (cedar is a really good option if you are able to find/afford it). One thing about untreated is that it does not last as long (like only a few years) so you have to keep that in mind. I've read that putting linseed oil on the wood will help preserve the beds longer. Because I am an extreme novice in woodworking and life in general, please do your own research if you are using lumber for your garden beds and decide for yourself.

Our beds are two feet high. Most raised beds are a foot high, which is a good height. If you're crazy like me and want to add a lot of work to your project, you can go to two feet. The primary reason I chose two foot high beds was for pest protection. Hopefully keeping it raised this high will keep out some of my crops’ predators. It will also be helpful for keeping our chickens and dog out of the beds. Also I don't have to bend over as much to pull weeds!



Okay, first step: purchase a ton of lumber that requires you to take it home in two trips in your mid size car. The first two beds are a standard 4x8 size and each required four 2”x12”x8’ boards, four 2”x12”x4’ boards, four 4”x4”x2’ posts, and some nails. When we got to Lowe’s there was a pack of 2”x2”x2’ posts all ready to go and we decided that would suffice for the 4”x4” posts. Just to let you know…they do not suffice. Taking this shortcut was stupid and not a shortcut at all. The boards kept popping out of the posts and it took forever.



Because I’m a terrible blogger, I only managed to get a couple of pictures of the construction of the garden beds. Basically, we nailed the posts to the long eight foot long boards. The posts were put in three inches from the top, leaving three inches to be put underground. Then we added the short four foot long boards to the posts.



At this point your beds are half done. Then you can add the rest of the boards to the bottom. It took both of us to turn the bed over, but after that it was easy street. We both took some turns hammering the posts into the ground.





Once we had the beds somewhat put into place, we had to level the ground a bit and fill in any cracks with dirt. Then we hammered the posts in some more.



I lined the beds with garden cloth to get a jump start on weeds. I don't totally trust garden cloth after what we had to go through with clearing out the garden and the fact that weeds are already popping through the garden cloth in the coop, but I put it in anyway.



We had to order four cubic yards of compost/soil mix and also used our to bins of compost to fill our three garden bins. Then we added 20 bags (1.5 cubic feet each) of organic vegetable planting soil.



All done! I have started filling them so I will let you know soon what I put in them. Things are slowly falling into place!

Stuff we still need to work on:

• Clearing out all the weeds (again) and laying down mulch.
• Putting up compost bins in the corner.
• Getting the fence done! Trim, post caps, a gate!, filling in gaps with soil.

If we wait too much longer, summer will be over! Hopefully in-between the two weddings we have coming up we will be able to get some stuff done. Stay tuned!