a few things

in the garden- not much, but there is stuff growing. One blue collard from last year, actually producing since I took all the catmint out of bed eight. (Ate most of this with salmon and quinoa for dinner). There were green caterpillars. I plucked them all off, and fed the two smallest to Tucker.

Big soft leaves of nicotiana. The borage has succumbed to something - heat a few weeks ago, or insect onslaught- but the nicotianas are fine. Self-seeded into several garden beds and since I wasn't planting, I just let them be.

Some herbs that weren't looking so great at the end of summer heat, are doing better now- sculpit, which I cut back to remove all the funny balloon flowers- 

and winter savory in particular- this one so hard to get a good picture of. I'm considering giving it a severe cutback, trying to plant the main stem as a cutting, and restart the original plant branching out further down. Not sure if I will loose it, though. In spring, maybe.

I do miss having sage and rosemary. Will have to try again with those . . . 

Look at this surprise. Even though the plants are scrawny, got their leaves eaten continually by deer and/or rabbits, and look stricken from aphids or some other pest, there's quite a few skinny little beans forming.

And these two pods look like they actually might give me the beans. It's the kidney beans I planted on a whim one day, at the wrong time of year too. Ha!

not much

in the garden, so I admire more what is there. I was out pulling weeds (purple dead nettle mostly) from beds five and seven, noticed right away that the one which I'd mulched with cut monarda stems just recently, already the soil is softer and holding moisture. Here where it's been untouched and bare all winter except for the weeds, dry and compact. I took a break after weeding to just sit and admire some of the foliage colors- especially the ones that are kind of blue-green: lovage

catmint 

the one collard

Lavender.

Then found myself once again staring at a plant, feeling sure I recognize it, but not able to remember its identity, if I want it or should pull. 

(I thought it another catmint at first, but those have toothier margins)

Had the same experience with a bug. Twice the other day I saw an oblong beetle fly to a plant stem and settle. I instantly had the urge to step close and slap it between my hands- felt sure it's a bug I don't want around, but I couldn't recall why.

Later I remembered ha, of course- it's that beetle that wrecks part of my garden every year. I wonder how how the emerging insects will do with an empty garden. Will they leave, looking for host plants elsewhere? or stay around and eat other plants instead. 

I'm mostly thinking of the pests, in that case. I'm glad if the beneficial ones are still around, and anxious if they don't have enough plants! I saw a black swallowtail yesterday landing on the lovage and carefully curling its abdomen to lay a single egg on a leaf here, another one there. I'm planting a few flowers for the hummingbird- though maybe it would have enough with just the black-and-blue salvia.

Which is coming up now!

spring

makes me antsy to get out and do things, build. Forsythia is blooming, time to plant out lettuce but I don't have any seedlings ready. I need to trim the eunoymus, turn the compost pile, clear old leaf litter and replace mulch on the perennial beds, reset some bricks that edge the garden beds where they're leaning wonky, etc. I just don't have the energy yet. I went out yesterday and cleared weeds from one garden bed again, and that wore me out. 

It was the long bed #1, which had chard and strawberries last year (that never fruited). The weeds are so thick in all the garden beds because I didn't mulch properly in the fall. You can tell by how bare the ground is, now that I've pulled out the dead nettle and other stuff. It was nice to see a few bees out foraging on the nettle flowers on a warm day, but I still don't want the stuff all over my garden anymore. Here's the bared strawberry plants. They've spread, but the older plants I originally put in, aren't much bigger than the new plants. And I don't know if any will bear, as I didn't feed them in fall.

A few of the previous years' leaf beet chard rootstock sprouted new leaves. (You can see how far the strawberry runners spread- they weren't planted this close to the rows of chard!)

I cut all those baby leaves off, plus those from one likewise newly-spouted old collard plant in bed 8 with the catmint (it's very small)

and used them in a dish with the cowpeas. Finally I have cooked my cowpeas! I though it odd that after soaking, only some of them had doubled in size. Forgot to take a picture of the final dish. I found (of course) conflicting info online how to cook black-eyed peas: soak or not. I went with a two-hour soak before cooking and don't think it was enough. Had to simmer them longer than the recipe said and they just got barely tender, not creamy. Basically the recipe was: sauté onion, garlic and a bit of minced celery, simmer with the cowpeas in chicken broth and water, add bay leaf and some spices- the main one was thyme which I didn't have so I used summer savory. 

It was not really a hit. It was okay, but nobody really liked it. And the fact that two years' worth of saved dried cowpeas only got me one small meal (I had to cut the recipe in half), was beyond pathetic. My husband said "you were successful! We're eating it!" but I cringed inside.

I do appreciate how lush the cowpeas grew (pic from last season below), and how little they were bothered by pests and disease in my garden- but they just didn't give me enough output. True there'd be more dried peas if I hadn't eaten so much as fresh green beans, but I still think it would have just made a handful of meals, is all.

Well, I'll have to re-evaluate that. In another part of the backyard, my rhubarb is emerging! I really would like to make pie with my own rhubarb and my own strawberries again, but I probably will have to settle for just half of that being home-grown this year.

More pics to come.

things got eaten

By the bugs! My favorite, amaranth 'calaloo', I have totally been unable to keep ahead of the beetles by hand-picking them every morning like I used too. Every morning far more are riddled with so many holes and spoiled by frass, not usable. I've finally sprayed with insecticidal soap (second dose today) but don't know if the plants will recover enough to be worth picking from again. Half them got pulled and tossed already.

Here's the beet and turnip-rutabaga bed in the foreground- not much better shape. Most of the beet foliage ruined- I think from whitefly or leaf hoppers. 

Turnip-rutabagas are definitely getting damaged by whitefly. I've sprayed them, too. The roots are all still quite edible, though- but I miss not being able to use the greens, and I'm sure I'd have bigger, healthier beets and rutabagas without the damage.

My collards have also been swarming with whitefly, and harlequin bugs (took me a while to find those culprits). And all are getting munched by slugs too, I think.

All the actual turnips rotted. I had to empty most of that bed and throw them away. 

But the cowpeas on the other end of the bed are doing grand, I just hope they actually give me some beans to eat (planted out kinda late this year)

And in the next bed over, the yellow summer squash is amazing! I took this picture several weeks ago, it's now sprawled large enough I can't walk through the aisle between the beds. Getting one or two nice-sized squash per week out of there. Very little sign of disease, no bug damage I can see!

Swiss chard

and leaf-beet chard are faring okay. Some leaf hoppers spreading disease, but when I start to notice symptoms, I cut out what I can eat and cut the rest down to the ground, bundling most of insects away with all the anemic foliage to the trash. The chard grows back quickly if watered heavy again, gets kind of a fresh start for another week or so.

Tomatoes- eh. They don't look great. The cherry and purple cherokee tomatoes are discolored, the larger varieties small sized and lots of leaves look unhealthy. It didn't seem like aphids, probably some kind of virus causing wilt- I cut out a lot of sickly foliage again and redid the mulch.

Kind of a blah year, aside from the squash, and the herbs which mostly seem unbothered. I'm wondering if next year I should grow more new varieties of things (as the yellow squash and cowpeas have done so much better than zucchini and green beans for me), or just scrap the garden altogether and do a solarization to kill pathogens in the soil . . . 

garden update

But again, without pictures. I have not been out there enough- almost six weeks of very minimal garden work and it's all overgrown, shabby, full of bugs. Whitefly, aphids, leaf hoppers, striped beetles galore. At least I'm pleased to see the birds, skinks, spiders and dragonflies frequently- I'm sure they're eating some pests! Haven't spotted a preying mantis yet, but I was pleased a week ago to see a snake in the grass- and even more so today when trimming some grass away from the garden edges, I found two baby snakes! They were no thicker than a pencil, in fact at first glance I mistook them for a worm- but not as shiny, very dark, and when I looked close I could see the minute perfect scales, the shape of the head. I really wanted to gently catch one and take inside to briefly show my family members- but the first one quickly darted into a gap under a brick, and the second one I found disappeared when I stepped aside to pick up dry leaf and a container. Oh well.

We have been eating beets, collards, swiss and leaf beet chard, blue kale, turnips, amaranth greens, turnip-rutabagas, the occasional tomato, plenty of herbs. I have not yet tried pulling any carrots, though some look ready enough and they could stand thinning. No green beans or cowpeas yet, though the plants are growing. Last week I cut summer savory to dry for winter- it was prolific again this year. My fenugreek grew lovely tall and I kept it by the door to enjoy its scent, but now it is dead (insects?). My figs are doing alright. The other day I pulled the largest turnip-rutabaga- it was 2.5 pounds! Made enough "baked turnip whip" dish it fed my family for four days (the kids get tired of it but my husband likes it a lot). I was surprised but glad that in spite of its large size, this turnip-rutabaga still had tender flesh, and I cooked the leaves like most greens, they were good too.

Today I finally pulled the garlics. None had very large bulbs, though altogether it more than quadrupled the amount of cloves I started with. They are curing on a mesh chair seat under the deck in breezy shade, will show a picture after I've rubbed off the dirt next week. The hardnecks seemed to do better than the softnecks, so probably I will grow just those next year, though I haven't tried the flavor yet. That bed is mostly empty now except for the leeks- I lost a few but still have enough.

Also the tomato bed is a mess. I wasn't out there doing garden work for so long, the plants started to fall over because I hadn't tied them up to the stakes again, and they fell and dragged the supports over too. Haven't yet made the effort to go straighten it all up yet. Difficult to get out much because the heat hits hard once it's past 10am.

I did tidy up some of the yard today in preparation for my husband to mow- he doesn't always know where the edges of perennial or garden beds are because it got so messy. So I trimmed edges by hand, picked up sticks fallen from the wind, laid down a few as boundary markers. Dismayed to find the deer have eaten all my hostas again (I didn't get out to scatter irish spring soap, dang it) plus the solomon's seal and disappointingly my newest azaleas which we had bought from friends of my husband (they have a very extensive azalea garden it was a so lovely to visit and I was so happy to have these striking azaleas- one the salmon-colored flowers are shaped a lot like daylilies). The deer also knocked over some of the protective wire fencing I'd circled new baby trees with- I lost three redbuds and the persimmon. Glad they didn't get the pawpaw yet, and the spicebushes are okay too.

The pretty mixed-parentage japanese maple is doing fine on the sideyard, even though the fencing doesn't extend high enough to prevent deer from nibbling the branches, they haven't touched it. My tithonias over there are kinda pathetic, not very large yet, but I hope they grow enough to give some blooms. Milkweed has sprung back better than ever, but I see no caterpillars (though on the carrots, dill and rue I've found plenty of swallowtail caterpillars, and the other day saw a swallowtail butterfly in the yard!)

Also happy to see goldfinches visiting to check out my echinacea patch again. The echinacea plants look better than ever this year, I'd like to hope it's because I removed (by hand) the mealy bugs two years in a row.

The wren, cardinals and catbirds frequently come up on the deck, and I think I saw a fledgling last week too. I am sad the hummingbird has not come back again. My black-and-blue salvia isn't as large this year and not flowering yet; the cardinal climber vine is growing up its supports but hasn't flowered yet either. 

What else to say? I need very much to get out and clean up the other sideyard where joe pye weed is gloriously battling with gladiolas for space, falling all over the lambs-ears and the swamp milkweed is getting choked out by grass, dandelions and sprawling vinca. Just haven't felt the energy yet. It was enough to do a bit of cleanup and weeding today, see the state of things. 

more spring stuff

Today pricked out the tomato seedlings into pots. 

Over half my tatsoi got eaten by a slug before I remembered to put out a beer trap. A single slug I think, because I only caught one medium-sized slimer, and the remaining three tatsoi are undamaged now. 

Squirrel is (as always) irritating me by digging in the beds. Where the peas, collards, lettuces and chard are planted it does little damage- I just fill in the holes again.

Where the young beets and turnips are coming up, quite a few have gotten destroyed. I put wire mesh over those beds, held down with rocks- but the squirrel digs through the mesh! Must be very determined to recover whatever nut he remembers hiding in that spot. Grr. I need to finally fence the garden, or build a few frames with chicken wire to cover the beds that are direct-sown more securely. 

My rhubarb is making funky fat flower stalks. Cutting them off to encourage more foliage instead. 

Delighted to find that the wormwood survived winter!

Bed of collard greens, tatsoi and tokyo bekana (although this picture from a week ago, plants are bigger now!)

Pink clematis is blooming!

spring planting

Carrots and beets are sprouting. Yesterday I planted out into the garden beds shelling peas, yellow snap peas, the collard greens and half the leeks (rest are too small yet). Today planted out the leaf beet chard, swiss chard, arugula, tatsoi and tokyo bekana. Those last two shown here, crowding their seedling tray. Pricked directly out into the ground.

Almost all the beds have something in them, now. And there's a lot more still to plant! But I hope to stagger some of it- tomatoes will go in where the lettuces are, green beans and squash into the beds that have snap peas, amaranth greens where the shelling peas are, and so on.

Delicate little true leaves emerging on my parsley and chervil seedlings. 

The overwintered tokyo bekana in greenhouse bolted- I emptied the pots to re-use. Greenhouse stands empty now ready for the next round of plants- tomatoes, peppers, marigolds, amaranth . . . 

There's a robin been frequenting the messy bed between the pannicle hydrangeas, where salvia and wild chrysanthemum are emerging from leaf litter. He sang short bursts and poked in the litter and eyed me, came pretty close after a while, just across the bit of grass from the garden bed where I worked. Cheering. Even better was to see the perky little wren flit about, I just saw and watched it for minutes. Wren makes me feel happy. There's a cardinal appears to be nesting in the large holly shrub. I can't wait for the return of catbirds, and the skinks.

chilly

Cold snap today. All my seedlings are tucked into the greenhouse.

My parsley is up! Tatsoi and peas pictured here- 

Collards getting bigger! In a few days when the freezing temps are past, I'll consider planting them out.

March snowfall

Too cold in the mini greenhouse outside today!

So all the newly-potted seedlings are sharing space with my houseplants indoors, crowded by the windows. When I get more seedlings started, I'll have to set up the tiers of benches.

For now there's some on the floor-

Yesterday these collards and chard were wilted from transplant shock, this morning have perked up quite a bit.

One tray of arugula is on the worm bin with the coleus plants.