sow, weed, water, wait

Guys, I planted my plants. Not in containers. In the ground. Crazy, right?

So about a month ago, Levon (noroomforhipsters.com) asked if I'd be interested in helping him re-start their garden. They're lucky enough to have a big sunny yard, and had a garden that they shared with a couple other families, but when they left town and rented out the house a couple years ago, the renters mowed it over and let the bermuda grass go wild.

With talk of Levon & Ashley skipping town and renting out the house again, they saw fit to rope me in as an equal-shares protector and maintainer of the garden, with the incentive of pretty much giving me free reign.

So we tilled up a big patch of grass, and then let it sit there for a couple weeks, while I scrounged up a rag-tag bunch of plants and the weather made some characteristically unexpected turns. Then, finally, on Saturday the planets aligned, and Levon and I both had free time, plants, and a sunny day.

Six hours later there stood something that we could pretty unashamedly call a garden. A pair of mounded beds full of peppers and tomatoes, a nearly level raised bed (without the soil to fill it, as of yet), a fledgling bramble of raspberries and blueberries, and brick-lined pathways connecting it all.

It is, at the very least, a start, and will hopefully continue to push back the lawn, until we're ding-dong-ditching zucchini on every porch within a mile radius.

BBQ or original flavored?

Been saving a lot of seeds at the farm lately. Might as well, right? It's pretty easy with most annuals, and you don't have to buy seeds again next year just to let half the bag spill and fall between the seat in your car. Also, seed-swaps are pretty nifty. So far this season at Beardsley we've saved seeds from tomatoes, zuchini, okra, sunflower, marigolds, purple coneflower (echinacea), and luffa (the dried-out squash-like fruits can be used as sponges). For a more detailed account of seed saving, check out Kat's blog here. Here's some photos from the sunflowers:

"Russian Mammoth Sunflower" next to "Russian (kinda) Average-height Farmer"

We got over 2lbs of seeds from a couple of heads

Abraham lived a hundred and seventy-five years.

"Then Abraham breathed his last and died at a good old age, an old man and full of years; and he was gathered to his people." - Genesis 25:8

While I was away in Charleston, Abraham the Tomato went from a promising shade of green to a beautiful, but fateful orange, as his vine withered away. Now it's entirely possible that this was his destined hue, as they were, from the outset, mystery tomatoes. It's sad, nonetheless, to see his vine pass on without bearing offspring as numerous as the stars in the sky. His partner, Sarah, is still clinging to life, but shows signs of an imminent orange transformation as well.

Plants know what they're doing.

It would appear that the trick to a self-sustaining home container garden is to let your landlord install a sprinkler system, position your containers strategically, then leave town for a couple weeks.

I had been getting kinda nervous about the state of my meager stand of veggies as I drove around the midwest, from one "excessive heat warning" to another, and I hoped that no one had re-positioned the lawn sprinklers that had been so graciously sharing their bounty with my garden.

The first thing I noticed when I pulled back into Eleanor St. after two weeks away was a gigantic frenzy of vines floating at the top of my bean trellises. Luckily they were actually the Tennessee Cornfield beans, and not some volunteer weed from the flower bed. And what was that, hiding under the canopy of vines? Could it be a tomato? Indeed, each of my mystery tomato plants now bears a single fruit whom I have named Abraham & Sarah, in hopes that they will be the first of many blessed tomatoes.

The potatoes are doing fine. I guess. Won't really know until I dig them up. Mustard greens are harvestable and boy do they pack a punch. The broccoli is still sterile, not much hope for them.

Also found this guy crawling around on the beans and thought he might appreciate a photo-shoot.

The other thing I was a little hesitant to abandon for two weeks was my kombucha scoby. I didn't have the supplies on hand to prepare a full batch for it to work on while I was away, so I just left it in a couple inches of leftover tea with a bunch of sugar and crossed my fingers. I guess it appreciated my effort, since the culture was twice as thick (about 3 inches) when I got back.

I went ahead and split it since it actually tore while I was trying to get it out of the jar. I've been trying to think of new experiments to try with it, instead of just using the standard black tea + sugar combination, so I brewed up a couple quarts of super-concentrated bissap (a Senegalese drink made from hibiscus flowers and LOTS of sugar, similar to agua de flor de jamaica in Central America) and plopped the thinned-down scoby on top. Fingers crossed.

water+sun+dirt=food

It's a garden update!

Tomatoes are flowering and looking strong, no fruit set yet though. Haven't had any problem with insects on the tomatoes yet, so I think their slow progress is due to limited sunlight.

The beans are really starting to take off despite numerous transplants and rough handling. Even the two that I moved to the shallow flowerbed next to the porch are working their way up the railings! It's pretty fun to see their progress day-to-day and guide the inquisitive tendrils. I don't really know what these are supposed to look like full-grown, so hopefully they're on track.

Potatoes are going crazy in their buckets! I was worried I hadn't given them enough soil, but they don't seem to mind at all and can't even hold themselves up anymore. No big bug problems on the taters either, must be a combination of the containers and luck.

Greens and broccoli are pretty unremarkable at this point.

Well there she is, in all her minuscule glory.