Garden Thread

    WE HAVE SPROUTS.  I REPEAT, WE HAVE SPROUTS.

I'm just poking my head in here to say that I have not yet killed my indoor basil plant, which is a victory considering I accidentally overwatered it at first.

We have a triangular front garden that gets lots of sunlight and also has some shadier parts to it, and normally my mom and I pull up a bunch of weeds and half-assedly plant some annual flowers every spring just to keep it from looking totally barren. This year, I want to appropriate some of that garden for herbs. The basil will go in for sure, but I also want to do rosemary, sage. and lemon balm or lavender - I'm very interested in planting herbs that I can use to cook with, as well as herbs that are good for bees.

So I planted everything yesterday, and it looked great (well, as great as dirt with tiny bits of green in it looks). I visit today and already a bunch of stuff has been nibbled at by insects (not sure what). I have strong doubts of anything still being alive when I get back in 3 weeks. I sprayed everything this evening with neem oil, not sure if that'll help.

I will check in again tomorrow before our redeye. Any suggestions? Some sort of soap+water solution?

Sprout already dangit!

What Liz said. 

But while we're on the topic of insect repelling, this might not help right now, but the other thing we do here at Dick 'n' Hisses manor is plant marigolds in the corner of every bed, and try to get nasturtiums going, too.  We did the whole nematoads route one year but it didn't seem to do much, so now I'm all about passive bug control up until the nuclear toxic shit breaking point.
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oh boo hoo there's still 4 feet of snow on mine.


otoh, my first few sprouts are up!

Yikes!  Maybe the first part of that report is more accurate than the second part?

We started seeds this past weekend, tomatoes, bell peppers, shishito, and eggplant. Life is easier since we discovered that cotton and okra grown just fine when casually scattered on the ground. I'll be spending the next eight weeks haranguing Wifemate in the middle of the day to adjust the planters/individual cups into the sunbeam. Sunday I went to get another pack of Shishito out of the freezer, and there are still so many beans in there. And now that I think about it, a giant pack of frozen tomatoes down at the bottom. Surely this year won't be as crazy productive as last year?

This Saturday is supposed to be a little warmer, maybe it will be good to get out to the plots and clean them up a little.

See, I think you're doing great with this!  That's absolutely my model for growing herbs that will re-seed themselves and spread.  I mean, look!  You've established a patch of parsley, and now you have more room for other stuff!  

To wit, this is my garden at its absolute neatest:


Those bushy plants in the middle of the gravel path?  That's the catnip I don't have to bother planting anymore, because it very helpfully jumped the beds and now grows itself!  That slight hint of dill flower you can see in the lower left corner?  That's from the patch of dill that's now self-sowing on one entire end of the garden fence!  You can see just the tiniest hint, kind of right in the middle of the gravel at the bottom of the picture, of our lovingly-tended cilantro field, which mostly grows itself on the path just out of frame to the left.  Three key herb crops that don't take up any space in the beds proper, and need no specific tending!  It's self-perpetuating gardening at its finest.  Some might call them weeds, but some lack vision.  

Looking at that picture Liz 'n' Dick posted, I'm reminded that my gardening goal for this year is to keep the garden tidy enough that a poisonous toad doesn't move in again.

In orchard news, I got my shipment of baby trees from Trees of Antiquity last week, and got around to opening up today (I mean, it's not like I was going to plant them with all that ice...).  I had remembered ordering a pear tree (an heirloom from the Philadelphia area), but I'd completely forgotten what the second tree was.  Turns out it's a Pink Ume Apricot!  I'm so excited!  I really hope it works out, because there's little I like better than showy blossoms and then a fruit I can make elaborate-process pickles out of!

Yesterday was the first meeting of my neighborhood garden club for the season. A couple years ago, we made a pollinator station on a corner using native plants. This year, we want to do 3-4 more. It's interesting to hear various philosophies among members. At one end of the spectrum, we have an older, somewhat eccentric gentleman who filled his lot with unkempt prairie that the neighbors hate. We have one lady whose husband is a landscape architect and who only plants native species (she can be a bit self-righteous about this, but she's cool). We have a boho-hippie who loves to talk sustainability, but insists on amending the soil with peat moss. We also have fancy ladies with big houses who prefer showy plants like roses and Japanese maple. 

I'm somewhere in the middle, since I regard myself less as a gardener and more as an amateur botanist. I could never go all native because if I want to enjoy the beauty of those plants I'll take a walk in the park.  My postage stamp yard isn't a wild ramble; it's part of my home environment. I want plants and arrangements that make me happy when I look outside and even happier when I go outside for a frolic. Although I like the idea of planting natives for the purposes of drainage and hardiness, I also think that prairie plants make poor specimens - I mean, they're meant to grow along the highway and that's just what they do. 

Am I alone here? Who else has a gardening philosophy?

Well I came back from my weekend away to find a couple things:

-yay I have a fairly healthy crop of pepper sprouts now
-boo my labels somehow got mixed up so now I can't remember which side is which in the 1st tray, and which of the many subsections in tray 2 is which pepper either

The second wave of seedlings were started this past weekend -- one type of tomato (seeds we saved from a volunteer from last year's garden), a few types of basil, one type of tomatillo, cumin (!), and scads of flowers.  This is totally new to us, starting our own flowers seeds!  We always have lots of marigolds in the garden, for pest repellence, so this year we're growing our own.  Along with some zinnias, dahlias, and snapdragons.  Crazy!