Gardeners of AW, unite

Added peas and cucumbers on opposite ends of the the back of the garden bed yesterday, and got a lovely soft rain today. I'd love to trellis both, and join the trellis to make a triangle, but I'm not sure what I'd plant under it. I don't think I have anything that likes partial shade at the moment.

The other seedlings are still indoors, since we're barely getting out of the 50s, but the garden is slowly coming alive. I am sorry I put the cherry tomatoes out. I don't think they'll pull through.

Thanks for the thoughts on Brussels sprouts. I'm a little worried the soil is too soft for them, but maybe I'll just give one square a go with them. They look so cool, I love eating them, and it's nice to hear others have had success with them.

mccardey said:

Made chutney with all the green tomatoes and sweet chillis, and hot chillis and apples and some other stuff - all of it from the last of the autumn garden. The house smells amazing!

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This sounds so very good! Those of you with good warm weather and gardens coming in - all the greens sound wonderful. I want to see pics of your pretty gardens!

Major seed planting effort this weekend. I do have some things up, in small seed trays indoors, which now require re-transplanting. Up here in the far north I've found that transplanting seedlings from tiny trays to larger pots, and then later (late May) to the garden beds gets the best results. A bit fiddly, perhaps, but I can sit in the sunshine, provided there is any, and do it at a relaxed pace, so not such a bad activity.

In a fortnight or so, I will be digging a plethora of dirt, and adding more to some beds, and that, my friends, is NOT one of my favorite garden activities. Last year while I was doing the same thing, I had a black bear dash past me at a distance of about 15 feet, chasing the mama moose and two young'uns who had done the same thing about three minutes before.

Up here we don't worry overmuch about garden pests smaller than that.

caw

http://lostinfieldsandwoods.wordpress.com/2014/05/02/the-buzz/ < MY BEES ARRIVED YESTERDAY!

Sounds like quite an experience, Caleb. And more stings than I had in my lifetime.

By coincedence our bees arrived yesterday too! But ours came under their own steam. (Each year, around May, we get a wild swarm arriving and taking up residence in the southern wall.) The sound when they pass overhead is loud. We can hear them coming two gardens away.

lol nice.

I've been stung by so many bees and wasps over the years because I am always tromping through the woods and fields and climbing trees and mountains and whatever else.

Great read, Caleb. I'm going to enjoy your bees without getting stung!

Mrsmig, I have a box of tomato plants, eggplant, peppers and a Hibiscus on my dining room table because temps have dipped below freezing the past few nights. Before that the wind was 40mph in sustained gusts. It tore my tulips to pieces and covered everything in dust. So we eat around the greenery and pretend it is a centerpiece. --s6

Now all

CalebJMalcom said:

http://lostinfieldsandwoods.wordpress.com/2014/05/02/the-buzz/ < MY BEES ARRIVED YESTERDAY!

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This is so exciting! I look forward to more updates!

mrsmig said:

My husband got my veggie bed all tilled and raked and ready a few days ago. I bought some seedlings but delayed putting them in because a lot of rain was forecast. It turned out to be not just a lot of rain but a continuous downpour of Biblical proportions. The seedlings are still in the house, waiting for the ground to dry out a little before I plant them.

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We had so much rain here (better than snow, if course!) but somehow my cucumbers in the ground still managed to look pretty exhausted. I think I'll have replanting everything I've planted except for the onions by the time spring is truly here.

shakeysix said:

Mrsmig, I have a box of tomato plants, eggplant, peppers and a Hibiscus on my dining room table because temps have dipped below freezing the past few nights. Before that the wind was 40mph in sustained gusts. It tore my tulips to pieces and covered everything in dust. So we eat around the greenery and pretend it is a centerpiece. --s6

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Clearly, you're smarter than I am, Shakey. Mine just keep looking sadder and sadder in the garden bed. I'll just hang my hat on the peas and keep hoping...

My window sill is turning into a jungle at the moment...

Years ago I taught classes for newly arrived immigrants. I had a memorable class of Vietnamese refugees, people my own age, officers who had fought with the US and then had been imprisoned for years after the war. One of the guys, Di, was a ship's captain turned packing house employee--very recently reunited with his wife and seven teenaged children. Since he fought with Americans in the war, his English was pretty good. He was a little guy who embraced Kansas because he always wanted to be a cowboy. He wore boots, jeans and a fancy belt with his name tooled in leather. Even though we have lost touch I still count him as a friend.

One day after class he invited me to his house to see his garden. It was the 30th of March. I followed him to his rented house and sure enough, there in the backyard was a magnificent garden, plowed, plotted out with strings and stakes and just beginning to sprout. Four or five of his kids were manning hoes.

I gasped and told him it was waaay too early. Even though we were having an early spring, spring in Kansas is a shady character. He was bound to lose it all and he'd better order more seed.

There aren't many ship captains in Western Kansas but if I ever run into another one, I will not bother to argue with him. Di kept pointing to a page in a garden book that I had loaned him. It showed a seasonal map. He kept saying, over and over, "March 21! First Day of Spling! It say right here in the book!"

Luckily it was a warm spring. Di's tomatoes were up and the corn was about ankle high when the blizzard hit in April. --s6

Good heavens, Shakey, you tell the best stories.

I had a dinner table of friends rolling when I repeated your squash adventure.

Shakey that's an awesome story.

Was at Lowes yesterday. Found some very sad creeping phlox, but not to the point of complete death, for three dollars each and packs of six pansies for a dollar each. While all my garden is out on my grandmother's acreage my landlord, I live in a duplex, has given me permission to garden there. So flower beds in the front for clearance prices!

Caleb, remember that clearance price strategy this fall. you can find great, if shopworn, perennials for almost nothing at the end of the season. the cooler weather and a little TLC usually does the job. it would be a great way to start a big perennial border at your grandmother's place.

I love clearance shopping in the fall for plants... I also have no shame in digging "dead" plants out of dumpsters during the summer and reviving them.

Rodgie Junior is one of my pet plants, a sago palm, named after my son in law who dug it out of a dumpster during a blizzard. --s6

Let me know how the Black Pineapple does. I had some seeds for it started but the seedlings damped off. --s6

Spent yesterday (Sunday) all day doing a variety of garden work. Prepared two raised beds for potatoes, cut up the seed potatoes (4 varieties). Watered many sprouting seed pots, planted more seeds, etc.

It was California weather. Honestly. I lived in the East Bay area back in the 1980s, and yesterday was reminiscent of that. It hit 74F at my house at two in the afternoon. That's an unheard-of temperature for early May in Anchorage, Alaska. Completely clear blue sunny sky. Trees are leafing out early, too.

Last year at this time we still had plenty of snow on the ground, and we got 8 inches of new snow on May 18. In any case, if ever there was a year where I could cheat and sneak in garden starts early, this is the one. The only problem is we haven't had any rain, no precip of any kind for weeks. We could really use some, not least because the possibility of wildfires is becoming pretty strong. Anchorage is a city filled with woodland parks and lots of stuff to burn.

Allegedly we are supposed to get some rain beginning maybe Wednesday.

caw.

97* on Sunday! I am taking this as a warning of the weather to come and vowing not to overextend myself water wise.

I look forward to posting garden news again. I'm visiting my son in Austin right now, but as soon as I get back. Providing of course western New York figures out it is really spring.

Pulled the old rosemary that didn't do well over the winter, chose a new spot for the herbs, and planted rosemary, cilantro, and thyme, and basil last weekend.

We turned over the soil in the rear of the backyard and next week will plant Big Boy tomatoes, jalepeno, peppers, and cherry tomatoes. Maybe eggplant again. We have no place else to plant the vegetable/fruit garden, so it has to be in the same spot.

Planted my 2 box gardens today 1 full of okra, the other with carrots, started celery, and zucchini. I'm not sure the zucchini will survive, but everything else has done well here in the past.

Seem to have lost multiple rose bushes over the winter though. :/ Not sure how that happened, they are supposed to be hardy to colder than it got, and there weren't any ice storms or anything. Still waiting to see if the two figs survived their 2nd winter.

I have been clearing stubble and trash from the flower gardens since 9 a.m. My Mother's day gift is 3 hours of help from a daughter. This particular daughter is no outdoors woman. She has Boo Radley's complexion and an almost comical spider phobia. Still she did put in her time and made a nice lunch for us to boot--iced tea, steak sandwiches and potato salad. She even washed the dishes. But best of all, she did not narc me out to the man.

You see while I was clearing the bed by the mailbox I found a cute little marijuana seedling. About ankle high. I have no idea where it came from. The stuff grows wild in the pastures and we are at the very end of town.

Now this is mere ditch weed and not at all what the serious, or even desperate, weed smoker would ever consider. It has been 40 years since I was in the serious weed consumer group but even I know that ditch weed gives you a headache and not much more. Not worth the trouble to fold it into a brownie batter.

Still, it was kind of cute, so I weeded all around it and added some decorative rock as fencing. I viewed it as a posthumous Mother's Day gift from the late Mr. Shakey.

Not so our kid.

She had a certifiable hissy fit. Something about its being illegal. (The children of hippies: brainwashed by the establishment!) She was going to take a hoe to it but I stopped her. I said it was clearly a gift from Dad in memory of our college daze. She called me a burnt out old bat, but affectionately, and desisted.

We went back to work but she had a card up her sleeve. Our small town has a very keen law officer. He patrols the city several times a day. It is a small town and we citizens make it a point never, ever, to call him Barney to his face. It pisses him off something fierce. Calling him Gomer is even worse.

After about 30 minutes of dusty, backbreaking work, we see Barney chugging down the road in his big fancy white pick up with the brown and gold Sheriff's star on the door. He is driving real slow, looking for law breakers and miscreants on the 8 streets of St. John, Kansas. So my kid flags him down! She steps right into the road, waves him down and points to the mailbox garden.

Needless to say my heart is hammering like a Ginger Baker solo. I'm not in Depends yet, but a couple more experiences like this and I will be. My kid smiles sweetly as Barney rolls down his window. She gestures to the six bags of garden refuse parked next to the mailbox and asks about the landfill's schedule for dumping.

As soon as Barney turned the corner I hoed that ditch weed into oblivion. Just another brick in the wall--that's me! --s6