Garlic And Non-Landscaping

Sweetie and I planted both Elephant and regular garlic cloves last November. They were peeking from the ground in December and by the 8th of April, they looked like this!

Elephant Garlic

Regular Garlic

I am excited for July when we harvest these beautiful looking plants! I need to find a spot in the basement to hang the braids because we'll have so much more than we had last year.

I'm honestly a little curious about the brussel sprouts. You can see its progress as of April 8th in the background of the picture above. Just a short 17 days later, it has exploded! As you can see below, the plant obviously wintered well. I'd go so far as to say that the winter enhanced its appearance! I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing and I haven't done any research, so other than being a big and beautiful green, I don't know if this is promising for actual sprouts or if I should be trimming it or something. *shrug*

Brussel Sprouts. I stood my keys up in front as an attempt at some sort of size comparison.

That's the only progress I have to share that was even slightly intentionally started. Everything else in our yard that is blooming is a perennial and requires no effort on our part. This is season two of no mulching and the weeds are already thriving. I confused some dandelions for poppies the other day because their bright yellow heads were so much bigger than I had seen before. The purple deadnettle is making for some impressive ground cover.

Purple Deadnettle as of April 8th. It's already bigger and expanded further.

We don't have the prettiest yard in the neighborhood, but the birds and the bees are very happy for what we provide them! I haven't seen many honey bees but the bumblebees are prolific around the seas of purple. They apparently love the stuff. Far be it from me to take away their beloved food ;-)

Garden Update ... In December?!

To say this fall and winter season has been mild would be an understatement. I live in Missouri and as of today (December 8th) the closest I've seen to snow was the 10-minute flurries that happened in November that one night when temps dropped below 30 and there was moisture in the air.

You might remember back in May that Sweetie and I decided to try our luck with cauliflower and brussel sprouts even though they are plants that should have been in the ground way before Spring. They didn't do much outside of growing leaves throughout Spring and Summer. However, once Fall struck they started producing!

Here are some progress in pictures:

Cauliflower

November 22nd: A bit smaller than a baseball	December 6th: Harvested cauliflower
The other (sad) cauliflower that will feed compost

I was worried that an evening of freezing temperatures (which didn't happen, btw) would ruin the cauliflower so I had Sweetie run out and harvest them. One has brown spots and just looks all-around icky. The other looks great but is small. This is the product of a season of non-gardening. So if you want to grow cauliflower, and don't want to baby it like they instruct in the gardening forums, this is what it might look like. Small but otherwise perfect :-)

Brussel Sprouts

November 22nd: About marble-sized	December 8th
Droopy sprouts

The brussel sprouts probably should have been staked. Now I know for next year! I read on gardening forums that brussel sprouts can thrive in snow so I'm letting them hang out until they look like they're done, or until they wither and die - whichever happens first.

Garlic

December 8th: Elephant garlic shoots

December 8th: Regular garlic shoots

Leaves

Sweetie and I have also raked the back yard. I don't know if either of us will get the motivation required to finish the rest of our property. To be honest, our front lawn and one side lawn are mostly weeds anyway so I really don't care if they get smothered from leaves.

Garden Update - Fruits Of My (non)Labor

I noticed it had been exactly a month since my last garden update and enough has happened that I figured I'd go ahead and fill you all in on what's changed since June.

First off, a note: I'm a mother nature sort of gardener. I do my best to let the garden go as it naturally would. That means I don't water (unless we haven't gotten rain in a few weeks), I don't use pesticides, and I don't do a bunch of soil testing/amendments. Basically, if it's meant to be there, it grows well and I'm rewarded.

The eggplant still seems to be going well. Each plant has a big purple bulb starting. It's been exciting to watch the progression!

Blooming - June 18th

Bulbous start - June 27th

Getting bigger - July 11th

I might have messed up the onions. I'll know more in a few weeks. A few days ago, I was out staking the various plants that needed staking and thought the carrots and onions should be done by now so I pull them. The onions were still tiny and since I dug them out, they still had their roots intact. I checked online and they aren't supposed to be harvested until mid-September. Oops! Hindsight 20/20, I should have checked online beforedigging them up. I decided I had nothing to lose by replanting them so that's what I did. They didn't look happy at all the next day so I might have killed them but I figure I'll wait until they turn brown before I pull them out for good.

The carrots weren't very well developed, as I had anticipated. I was still looking forward to eating the little baby roots but Max beat me to it. The good news is, the next round of carrot seeds can be started in mid-July so I think I'll put those in soon.
We've taken clippings from the basil a few times already. None of them are very big but it's been in excess of 100 degrees for the last few weeks so that's to be expected. Luckily, they're shaded by the tomato plants so they didn't burn and die.

I really have no idea which way the cucumber is going. One day it will look all wilted and ready to die. Then when I come home in the evening, it will look perky and strong. Upon inspection the other day, it does look like it's getting infected by something. Some of the vine is yellowing and some of the blooms have webbing around them. When I planted it in a pot, I knew I wouldn't be watering often so I used a moisture-retaining soil. I think that might not have been a good idea. It would have worked well for the lettuce, but I don't think cucumber likes to be soggy. The soil doesn't ever really dry out until about 10 days after watering. So the sadness in the plant might also be due to the sogginess.

Sweetie roasted the first of our harvested garlic the other night and said it was tasty. I wasn't feeling well so I didn't try any. Still plenty of opportunities though, as there are 6 other bulbs waiting.

Picking the first flowers off the tomato plants definitely gave them a boost in growth! Some are almost 5 feet tall! The cherry tomato plants are fruiting wonderfully. We have a good handful every day. Unfortunately, all of the other tomato plants have blossom end rot. I'm not surprised since our area's been in drought conditions and I only water on Sundays (if we didn't get any rain throughout the week).

There is only one pepper on one of the 6 pepper plants. Again, it's not surprising. They love the sun but not the high temps. I don't even have any blossoms. This week has maintained below 100 degrees so I'm hoping they'll get blooms going soon.

The lettuce is officially done. I pulled it and plan to plant the next round of carrot, radish, and beet seeds in one of the pots in addition to the garden. The next round of lettuce seed doesn't start until mid-August, and I'm thinking it will share with the cucumber pot given the soggy soil in there.

That's it for now! Hopefully next month I'll have tons of bountiful harvest pictures to show off ;-)

Garden Update - Peekin' Pods!

My last post was to assure everyone that I have my fair share of gardening oopsies and failures. Now on to the good stuff happening outside!

Of all the things we tried planting for the first time this year, the only ones that seem happy are the onions and eggplant. The eggplant seems to be doing well. Something's munching on the leaves but not as bad as on the cauliflower & brussel sprouts.

Eggplant - getting attacked by something

I have no idea what onion is supposed to do, or if I should have divided them, or when they're ready - but they look healthy to me.

Onion

I had better success than I expected with starting from seed. Granted, the season isn't over so I don't know if they will produce fruit - but so far they haven't withered and died! I mentioned in the last post that the rosemary never even sprouted and the radish were hit & miss, but the rest seems to be coming along. This year's seed starters included basil, carrots, cucumber, and garlic.

The basil seems to be doing pretty well. They're not big and bushy yet, as seedlings would have been, but they are definitely past the dying stage so I'm pretty sure we'll have a good amount of basil by the time the tomatoes start fruiting!

I have no idea what to look for in carrots. Here's the tops - they look good to me but as I found with radish, I won't really know until they're ready for harvest.

Carrot tops

The cucumber looks better every day. I'm not used to it being so small but it started from seed in May. I'm hoping it has a chance to develop fruit before it gets too hot for it to survive.

Cucumber looking happy!

The garlic has also been harvested already - and early. The general rule of thumb for garlic is to harvest on 4th of July, but the signs of readiness include completely died back tops. When we returned home from vacation, that's what we saw (except one plant that still had one lonely partially green blade, lol). We had a very warm winter, a sliver of spring, and summer-like weather since mid April. So I'm thinking it was just ready early this season. We haven't tried any yet since it's still curing but they look like the same stuff you'd get at the store so I think it turned out okay.

As of March

Harvested May 25th

Finally, an update on the "typical" plants. They all look nice and healthy. I picked the first flowers off the tomatoes to encourage more plant growth. I've had a few people mention they've already had tomatoes from their gardens this season and I have to admit, I'm a bit jealous!

Tomato plants

Pepper fruiting!

The peas have already come and gone. I started a second round at the end of April like like did last year, but it was too blasted hot and they are just hanging out at about 5-8 inches tall. I need to just go ahead and rip them out and feed the composting bin. I'm a little bummed about our shortened Spring.

The lettuce is doing great other than the one container getting munched on by whatever (deer?). The romaine and spinach both really took off.

More lettuce mix and Romaine

Spinach

Overall, the flowers aren't going as well as I'd hoped but some are popping up and that's a plus in my book! The alyssum is flourishing like crazy! There's also snapdragons, nasturtium, and something else I haven't identified yet.

Snapdragon

Unidentified, lol

View from corner

Blackberry Lily (perennial division from a friend last year)

Garden Update - Oopsie Daisy!

Lest anyone reading this believe that I've got amazing gardening skills - this is a post with the not-so-successful attempts in our gardens. I'll have another post in a few days of the stuff that's growing well!

First off, here's what happens when you don't pull weeds for an entire Spring.

Top Right: Empress Wu Hosta
Bottom Right: Hosta
The rest: weeds!

An assortment of color and texture - weeds

We take good care of our weeds!

Strawberry patch under netting, weed patch to its left

Those are some impressive weeds! Some of it's stinging nettle, which I honestly considered encouraging it to border the bed as a way to discourage Max from bothering the berries.

I'll start off the updates with the things we tried for the first time and seem to be failing at: cauliflower and brussel sprouts.

The brussel sprouts and cauliflower have been great food to something (Sweetie thinks it's deer). All that remains are the stems. They're pretty sad looking but I'm not pulling them until they're dead. I'm curious if the cauliflower head will still grow without the leaves, and if so then I'll just cover the head with the leaf of something else to protect it from the sun. I can already see the brussel sprouts forming in the forks so they're staying in the ground until they either produce fruit or die. I'm optimistic by nature :-)

Brussel sprouts - most of leaves
chewed off but the buds are there!

Cauliflower -
one naked, one almost there

This year, we also started stuff from seed for the first time. Of the things I planted seed for, rosemary was the only thing that never even sprouted. I've heard it's a finicky plant so I'm not terribly surprised about that.

The radish has already come and gone, and what did form into a radish was delicious. I don't know why, but it didn't occur to me that root vegetables should have the soil loosened as deep as I expect the edible root to grow. So about half of my radish crop didn't form bulbs, but more like fingers or yarn. I read how to prepare the leaves as a way to salvage something from this lesson but I never got around to it and the leaves turned to compost. Oh well.

The only radish picture I have past seedling stage

The lettuce is doing great, other than one container of lettuce mix that something is getting a good meal off of. Again, Sweetie thinks it's deer. She said she'd noticed tracks in the garden. I suppose that may also be what's eating the cauliflower and brussel sprouts.

What's left of the lettuce mix

Free dinner for the wildlife, only one of my charitable contributions!

The flowers aren't going as well as I'd hoped. The alyssum is flourishing like crazy but everything else is pretty lackluster! Out of the 30 or so snapdragons I planted, only 4 have turned into discernible plants. In the row of nasturtium, so far there are 3. Some other plants are growing, and they look like intentional plants, but I don't know what they are yet.

Snapdragon

Unidentified, lol

View from corner

Garden Plantings

Every year I think I'm going to try my hand at starting veggies/flowers from seed and every year we end up getting plants at some great plant sale. This year was a combo. I have some started by seed and some from the plant sale at Sutherlands. The sale was 89 cents per 4-pack which is far too much for us so we're giving 2 of every vegetable to my parents. This year we're trying (for the first time) cauliflower, eggplant, onion, and brussel sprouts. We also got tomato (cherry, roma & orange), purple sweet bell pepper, red sweet bell pepper, and an italian sweet pepper that looks like a hot pepper. By that point, we'd caught the "plant-sale bug" and started browsing the flowers as well. I was very pleased with my restraint. We ended up only getting marigolds and a border flower called Kimono Yellow Celosia.

Here are some pictures of the front garden. After the pictures, I've given a complete list of what I've planted from seed for 2012.

View of the front garden from about the middle of our lawn.

View while squatting near the corner of the garden

Kimono Yellow Celosia 

Radish

Snow Pea blooms

Sweet Pepper

Onion

Eggplant

Cauliflower

Brussel Sprouts

Spinach

Mixed lettuce (romaine stump in middle)

Here's a complete list of what I've planted from seed for 2012:

herbs:
basil
rosemary


veggies:
carrots
cucumber
garlic
peas
radish
tomato

lettuce:
lettuce mix
"rocket" lettuce
romaine
spinach

flowers:
purple & white alyssum (annual)
daisies: pom-style (perennial)
daisies: wild african (annual)
foxglove (perennial)
lupine (perennial)
marigold (annual)
maiden pinks (perennial)
nasturtium (annual)
snapdragons (annual)
snow-in-summer (perennial)
zinnia: pom-style (annual)