Greens

Morning Glories

Brooklyn Horror

I have just a few ornamental plants in the garden for color, but this is one of my favorites.

It's a coleus called "Brooklyn Horror". I've got it in a hanging basket with some trailing petunias and Goldilocks.  The contrasting foliage colors look fantastic!

Beans are fun!

They take forever to come up, but boy are they fun to watch!  Their thick beanstalks and huge leaves, even as they are just coming up out of the ground are so amazing!

I read on a gardening website to expect 2,400 beans for every 1 1/2 square feet of planted bean rows.  I'm starting to think maybe it was a mistake to plant 60 bean plants....

Hope my friends, co-workers and neighbors won't mind taking some off my hands later this summer!

My pollinators are stupid

These honeybees can't get enough of the pictures of flowers on the bags of dirt! Won't touch the flowers 2 feet away.

Cantaloupe: Round 2

After the squirrel squishing of my last cantaloupe seedlings, I'm trying it again!

But a couple of days later, he's already chewed off the first set of leaves.  Doesn't seem to fancy the second set, though.  We'll see if this plant makes it!

Pea Shoots

Off to a late start due to a lack of planting space, the peas are now coming up in our new raised beds, built by my husband, Evan. Sauteed pea shoots are one of my favorite dishes at our local Chinese restaurant, but I'll resist eating them!

They send out delicate little tendrils that wave in the wind until they find something to grab onto.  

 I have to keep an eye on them daily, though, or they easily grab onto their neighbors instead of climbing the trelis.  Once they wrap themselves around another plant several times, there's no separating the two without hurting someone!

First harvest

Today we harvested our first crop!  Lettuce, cress, arugula and herbs which I mixed in with some peas, feta, olives, cucumber and avocado for lunch.  We dressed it with Sotiris's olive oil from Kalamata--grown in his own backyard!  It was so fresh, the leaves still tasted like plants--almost a little gamey--nothing like the salad we get from the store.  We were so excited to sit out in our garden enjoying its bounty!

Happy cucumber

After a couple of days coming home too late from work to check on the garden, I stepped out on Saturday to a gorgeous blooming cucumber!  The plant has 6 beautiful yellow blossoms and you can already see the tiny cucumbers forming at their bases.  The plant is still quite small, so I can't imagine how it will be able to bear the weight of the fruit unless it matures pretty quickly! 

Tomato seedlings are like kittens

Not realizing how successful my tomato seeds would be, I planted two whole packages of seeds. I figured less than half of them would come up, but ended up with a 99% success rate!  Now I have all these lovely little seedlings, but only room for 6 tomato plants in my garden.  I can't bear to throw away the plants that didn't make it into my planters, so I'm still caring for the extra seedlings until I can find good homes for them.  I feel like I have kittens to give away!  If you have a sunny spot on your patio or yard (and you live nearby) let me know!

Mouse melon fails to thrive

I was so excited about my mouse melon and special-ordered seeds from a garden catalog.  I sowed them indoors about 3 weeks ago, but only three of the 9 seeds I planted came up. 

These tiny seedlings are supposed to be ready to go out this week, but they look so delicate and fragile, I don't have the courage to put them out--especially not with a rogue squirrel about!

Strawberries

The squirrel got to most of the strawberries on the upper deck, but the Sequoias on the lower deck are doing pretty well considering they went through a pretty heavy windstorm last week and lost many of their leaves.  My husband tried his first homegrown strawberry this week and reported that it was the most delicious strawberry he had ever eaten. 

I'm happy to report that my special-ordered woodland strawberry (frais de bois), which spent the better part of last month on the brink of death, has finally decided it is happy enough to bloom!

I'm not expecting high yield from these guys this summer, but it would be nice to try one or two of the purportedly intense-flavored strawberries, which are hard to find even at specialty stores in this country.

Squirrel attack

Caught a squirrel red-handed this morning crushing my tiny cantaloupe seedling while munching on the petunias I planted in the container for color.  Upon inspecting other areas of the garden for further damage, I discovered that he had also snipped off nearly every strawberry on the upper deck and had made a mess of several containers.

This squirrel views any open patch of dirt as a sign that buried treasure lies just beneath.  Short of covering every container with a wire cage, I'm not sure what I can do to keep him out. He touches my tomatoes, though, and he's dead.

34 degrees and holding

May 8 and last night the temperature dropped down to 34 degrees!  Stupidly, I moved all my seedlings outside this past weekend thinking there would be no way we could have a cold snap this late in the season.  Fortunately, all of the plants came through with no sign of damage.

Minnesota Midget

I chose this bush-variety of cantaloupe in hopes that it would be small enough to grow in a container and without taking over my whole backyard.  It was very satisfying to grow from seed, springing up strong and tall in just a week.

I'll try transplanting a couple of them outside this week and see what they do.  Some cold weather coming, though, and I doubt they are frost tolerant.

Herbs

I tried to start my herbs indoors in March, thinking that I'd be able to transplant them outside when the warm weather arrived.  I use herbs in great quantities during the summer, and it would be great if I could snip them off as I need them instead of buying them from the store.  After two months, however, the ones I started indoors would really only work as micro-greens in a cooking application! 

No matter--I went to the store and bought mature plants instead.  I now have a great variety of herbs scattered across the garden.  I'm using them ornamentally--fitting them into just about every open little space in the garden.







Here are a few of my favorites:

Have you ever seen basil like this?  I'm not sure if the variety is "spicy globe" or "pistou" (I found it unlabeled at a garden store), but it has tiny fragrant leaves and grows in a tidy-looking globe shape.

Parsley. I use this almost nightly in my cooking.

A pansy peeking over a variegated sage.

You can never have too much dill.

Creeping thyme--a good ground cover, I hope this guy will fill in the spaces at the edges of my raised beds.

Disaster strikes!

Earlier this week, several of my seedlings reached the top of their little greenhouse, so I decided it was time to remove the top and let them live out in the open.  Big mistake.  Not only is my home very dry, its also too cold for young seedlings.   Overnight, nearly all the seedlings that had not already leafed, shriveled up.  Top back on and several days later, they still haven't recovered--nearly all the hot peppers that hadn't progressed beyond the sprout phase have withered and/or died (strangely, the bell peppers are ok, but growing slower than before).  But now I have an odd mish-mash of tiny sprouts and larger seedlings pressed up against the tops of their containers.  The solution: cut out the larger plants from the tray and move them out of the greenhouse while leaving the smaller ones inside.  

I've learned two important lessons from this experience:
1.  never take the top off your greenhouse before the plants are really established; and
2.  don't plant several varieties of plants in the same greenhouse.  We made the mistake of growing bell peppers and several types of hot pepper all together--a problem because each variety grows at its own pace. 

When we start the tomatoes in 1-2 weeks, we will definitely keep this in mind!

Mouse Melon

I've been searching the web for cool plants to grow and came across the mouse melon. 

Also known as a cucamelon or a mexican sour gerkin, these plants look like tiny watermelons and taste slightly sour.  I must have these in my garden!

The beginning

11 days ago, Evan and I planted our first seeds: 1 variety of bell pepper, 5 types of hot peppers, parsley, chives and basil.  We are starting them indoors about 10 weeks prior to the last frost (little unclear when this is exactly in Jersey City, but we think around May 1) in small plastic greenhouses.

The pepper seeds sat there for a few days before forming tiny white sprouts.  At about 5 days they took off, growing fuzzy white roots, shortly followed by the beginnings of a green stem.

At 7 days, leaves uncurled from the seed pods of the hot peppers.  The bell peppers, seemed to be taking their time, however, with most still in the fuzzy white root phase.  The herbs were doing even less well:  buried deeper into the soil, there was not even a hint of growth.

Finally, after 9 days, the herbs began to come up, with the chives leading the pack.


Now, at 11 days, the growth is almost visible by the hour.  It's amazing to see a tiny speck unfold itself to 20 times its original size within a matter of days.  Evan and I are so proud of our seedlings.  We cheer them on and delight in each new leaf.  They have reached the top of their greenhouse lids, so its time to keep them uncovered and move them near the window. Hope they aren't too traumatized by their move and exposure to the elements.

Heather and Leah's college garden. A minor victory!

Heather and I have never been content to be like other people. When we moved into our on-campus apartment in 1999, we decided that we needed a garden. And so, we proceeded to build a garden that was the talk of our college! Needless to say, no other campus housing could boast their own "Koi pond" and mini-farm! We grew beautiful lettuces, succulent strawberries, crisp sugar snap peas, and a collection of useful herbs. Heather was particularly fond of the Stevia growing by the front door. This little garden was more than a place to graze, it was a well used study space too! Thanks to a sturdy hammock swing, we could spend plenty of time surrounded by our bounty.

UCSD's campus isn't what you'd call urban, but there was no real opportunity to get your hands dirty. Anyone who knows me, knows that I need to have dirt under my nails. It was soothing to go outside and pluck a few leaves, investigate new blooms, and just maintain our little porch garden. I'm sure many people thought we were nuts to have invested so much time, and money, into a garden that would be ours for only a year, but it turned a temporary campus apartment into a home.

We lost some fish to an unfortunate beer incident, and an adorable pot of Armeria to theft, and had some tragic plant loss due to an angry transfer student, but overall, we gained far more than we lost. I don't think either of us can look at a Fuchsia now without thinking of Jimmy. (The variety of Fuchsia we bought was called 'Voodoo', and since Heather and I were taking "The Gods of Rock Guitar", it felt appropriate to name him 'Jimmy' after the song "Voodoo-child")

Growing a garden isn't just about cultivating plants after all, it's about growing memories, and literally putting down roots. I can think of no better way for Heather and Evan to start their new lives in a new house, than to grow a garden. Even if it isn't in California.

Jack: 90

When I was a boy, my brother Earl and I used to have to go out and pick the potato bugs off the plants, because we needed those potatoes to eat in the winter.  We'd just take a stick and brush them off into a pail.  They were about as big as a beetle and boy did those bugs breed fast!  By the time we reached the end of a row, we'd walk back to the beginning and the plants would be covered in bugs again. 

Earl and I used to enjoy it when we were sent out into the garden to weed.  The plants were high enough that we could lay down between the rows and no one could see us.  We'd pull a weed or two every now and then, just so we'd have something to show for it if we were caught, but otherwise, we would just lay there in the warm dirt, enjoying the sunshine.

Heather: 30

Fruit and vegetable gardens have been a feature of my family's backyards for generations.  My grandparents still tell stories of the gardens they've had over the years and the meals that were cooked with their own produce.

My grandparents called theirs a "truck" garden, which typically refers to small-scale farming for local sale or bartering.  But since they never sold or traded their crops, I think what they had was more akin to a victory garden.  Victory gardens were home vegetable plots that families were encouraged to grow during WWII to alleviate pressure on the food supply.  By contributing to the war effort, they were also a way for individual citizens to show solidarity with soldiers.

The concept of victory garden fascinates me--that you can connect with another individual in spirit through the act of growing your own fruits and vegetables.  As I start my own backyard victory garden this summer, I hope to connect with my grandparents by exchanging stories and capturing their memories of gardens.