Gardening

I was able to get to the garden today and take some soil samples. I still had to shovel about a foot of snow out of my way first, but when I got too the soil it was soft, wet but soft.

I learned today that some amending needs to be done. I already new this so it was more a confirmation then not. All the levels need to bee increased a bit. Except for the pH levels their were all in range.

I did take five samples from different parts of the garden. It's kind of cool to be able to get a different result twenty feet away from the same plot of soil. It shows that you need to keep good records and be aware of what your plants need.

So all I have to do know is wait till the snow melts and amend the soil so I can start planting. I suspect that will be in early April.

Fig Tree

Back in May at the herb sale I picked up a bay laurel and turkey fig tree. Transplanted them both in new clay pots and have been keeping them in full sun on my front porch. (The front of the house is a southern exposure.) It has been eight and a half weeks since all of that has taken place when I purchased them both they were the same size.

Now the fig is about four times the size of the bay, Truth be told the bay laurel is a very slow growing plant. So it is going to take the bay several years to catch up. But how cool is that the fig is growing quit nicely and some one told me I wasn’t going to get figs for thirty or more years. What do they know?

Front Yard Garden

This growing season as not been a real good one here in eastern PA for much of the year thus far it has been cool and raining. So a lot of what I have planted is taking for ever to grow or not at all. I planted a large veggie garden which I will talk about later. What I wanted to talk about was the small garden in my front yard.

I planted the entire front garden the weekend of the 15th of May which is the last frost date for this area. Except this year we had two frost warnings later that month I was lucky I didn’t lose anything, not even my basil which is very tender.

For the entire month of June everything was growing very slowly if at all until the last week of June going into the Fourth of July weekend. Then we had success with growth and fi

nally some warmer days with out any rain for some of them.

Now that it’s the middle of July we have some nice growth and very pretty results. My cotton is starting to come along quite nicely after such a horrible start. So I hope to see flower buds on it soon. With in the next week or so, cotton is new for me to grow so I’m not sure when the proper time for flowering is in my area. A guess says end of the month early next month so we will see.

The Amaranth is doing nicely also soon I would like to make some dye from that and see what I can get. What has been weird is the new growth of leaves has been green then turning red. Yet when I started it in March it came up red and staid red until now with the new growth. This is another plant that is the first year for me so I will see how it goes and show you the yarn that I dyed with it when I get that far.

The rest of the front yard is zinnias, herbs, veggies and some other little flowers. They have started doing well and I’m finally pleased with how it looks. When I planted they garden the first thing I did was to trim back the azalea bushes to a quarter of there size. With all of the rain they have grown back to half there size of when I cut them back.

We all so have three roses bushes that I just cut back to allow new growth in and with the flowers and herbs that I planted they have become the focal point instead of the rose bushes. So all in all everything has worked out and I hope to have a good rest of the season weather wise. Only time will tell.

Garden

Since March I have been working on enlarging my garden plot from a 12’ by 18’ to 12’ by 100’. The process though not difficult has taken longer then expect to the point I had too wait to plant some of my early veggies till all the prepping was done.

In March we of course started with the layout of the garden. Since the garden is placed in a nursery row the width is 12’. There is not much we can do about that until we decide to remove some of the old nursery stock. This would give us a total width of about 30’ give or take a little.

After staking out the garden we wanted to till it under add compost and till again. The area hasn’t been worked in several years about 25 to be exact and a couple of years ago when I had a garden there some of the produce did very poorly for a number of reasons so this year the addition of compost will correct some of that. We added a total of 25 cubic yards of compost to 1200 square feet of garden. So with that amendment and some other tricks of the trade there should be no problems with the lack of nurturance.

We wanted to get all the tilling done before we put up the fence it just made it easier to till and add the compost to the garden. This was all fine and good until we got a cold snap and the rains came. Making it very difficult to do either chore, so finally we were able to get the garden tilled, composted and fenced. This was all completed on the last day of April not to bad, I did want too get the early veggies in a couple of weeks prier but that wasn’t going to happen.

After all the work to get the garden ready and protected for the new seedlings I started this year, it decided to rain, and rain, and rain and yes rain some more a full seven days of rain to be exact. If it wasn’t raining during the day it rained at night so the garden was too wet to work in.

After it did stop raining and we had a couple of days with no ran and sun, the earth dried enough to be able to work and I finally got my early veggies planted. So I was able to get the cabbage, cauliflower, celery, broccoli and cotton in the ground as of Friday. Thank God because I was getting worried I wasn’t going to get them in at all or at least too late to produce before they went to bolt.

I do have to get the early seeds in which I will probable do tomorrow. I was more worried about the plants since they were becoming leggy. While I was playing in the garden some one brought me a gift of tomato plants, all thought it is early to plant them for this area I decided to go for it. I figured they had a better chance of surviving in the ground then in a box. So I had to do some quick thinking on were to plant theses little guys in an already planned garden. I figured out a good spot and got them in I was given several plants of heritage and roma, I was also given some fun tomatoes such as black, pink, yellow, gold, purple and green. So I should have a lot of fun with them and a very colorful salad.

One last thing on this very long post when I had the garden a couple of years ago something had gotten in and was taking a bite out of every thing. Never eating the whole fruit or veggie, so I tried to figure out what it mite be. But nothing was coming to mind and I found nothing livening in the garden or even an escape route. Till one day I found the culprit it was a box turtle. So I removed the little guy and sent it on his or her way. Well while getting every thing together this year the turtle is back and I have decided to make it the official guard turtle of the garden. So there should be no more thieves in the garden with this little camera shy guy around. Well as long as you don’t take its picture anyway.

The Children are here

My little seedling children arrived, If you believe this or not on Friday the 13th. Most of them took only three days to germinate, the celery and soap wart are being suborn in when they wish to be born. While I was checking in on everyone today I did notice what looked like some celery pocking through. So we will give it a few days to see what happens.

The first set of pictures are from last Friday when they started showing there little leaves. The second set of pictures was taken today. So they will be a week old tomorrow and are doing really well.

In the nest few days I will be getting the rest of my seed in the ground so they can sprout. These seeds will be the summer veggies. Such as tomatoes, peppers, herbs, ect. As they grow and develop I will blog about them as well.

Philly Flower Show

I was at the Philadelphia Flower Show yesterday; this year’s theme was Bella Italia or Italy. It was absolutely gorges; the main display was a Roman Palace. As you walk in to the hall you were welcomed by the Palace walls and the formal garden that went up to the Palace it’s self. Around the long garden were four square formal gardens, all of this had statuary of the time and made for a beautiful place. That I felt you could really imagine your self being there. In ancient Rome that is.

One of the things that I enjoyed the most with this years show was that most if not all the displays had vegetables and or herbs among the flower beds in the front yards. What I have herd was that is common practice in Italy and most of Europe. I have also seen some people in this country do it as well, my self included. I just don’t see it as common practice here in the US. Which is a shame, if people would start producing there own food in there front yards they would be able to feed them selves, families and neighbors for the whole season. If they can, freeze or preserve in some other way they could have food that would keep them feed all year long.

Perhaps one day that will happen. The show was a wonderful place to be yesterday, with the onset of snow lurking upon us. I did come home with some wonderful ideas and lots of memories. I didn’t get anything from the market place; they have wonderful things at wonderful prices that I can’t afford at this time, so maybe next year.

Seeds 2

The rest of my seeds came today, Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy. Finally some hope of spring from this very cold winter. I my self am not a winter person I like warmer weather. I would be perfectly fine with a nice 70 degree temperature all year long. I know I lose the wonderful seasons or I could just move some place that had a nice even temp. range all year long.

I do have a list of all the seeds I got for you all to look at below have fun.

Broccoli, Basil, Beets, Snapdragons, Cabbage, Parsley, Henna, Phacelia, Celery, Oregano, Woad, Zinnia, Pickles, Rosemary, Indigo, Cerinthe, Paprika Pepper, Sage, Dyers Broom, Kiss me over the garden gate, Cayenne Pepper, Thyme, French Marigold, Zucchini, Eucalyptus, Fullers Teasel, Nasturtium, Spinach, Soapwort, Hummingbird Plant, Egg Plant, Weld, French Marigold, Sun dry Tomatoes, Bachelor Button, Amish Paste Tomatoes, Sweet Pea, Tomatoes, Jacobs Cattle Bean, Tri Pack Snap Bean, Yin Yang Bean, Garbanzo Bean, Carrots, Lettuce, Cauliflower, Rice Pea, Pomegranate, Sesame

Seeds

Today was seed ordering day; I do realize that it may seem that I’m jumping the gun a little bit. But in true reality nothing can be further from the truth. You want to order your seeds as soon as possible so you are garneted you will get the seeds you are after, especially if you are some one that likes to pick up some rare seeds.

This year I was able to order a whole assortment of seeds from heirloom veggies, cooking herbs, dyes plant, fiber plants and flowers, of course because no garden is complete without some flowers.

If you are a gardener and haven’t ordered your seeds I suggest that you may consider doing so. Not only will you get the seeds your after you may also chase away the winter blues with the hope of the upcoming spring.