Showing posts with label vegetables. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vegetables. Show all posts

Monday, May 10, 2010

Mother's Day Garden

Mother's day in the garden is always fun! There is so much growing here in Central Virginia! The air is sweetly scented with honeysuckle and roses, and the birds are washing in the fountain!
My pomegranate has a bloom...


Just the one so far. My neighbour has spoken about cutting down the trees- especially after one of them broke off in the gales this weekend!
My daughter loves these chive blossoms- you can pick them and use them to make a pink chive vinegar!


My potatoes are getting huge- so I added a lot of mulch around them. After I watered them a LOT because the wind had dried out the ground so badly. I also transplanted one of the zucchinis I was growing into this bed.


The other one remains in the pot I planted them in:

Black Beauty Zucchini




My broccoli is beginning to flower too!


See the tiny little floret in the middle there? Just the first three I planted are blooming yet- but I suspect the others will soon too.
You can also see that my lettuce and spinach are doing great too...



I mulched around the broccoli because it'll help the roots to stay cooler, hopefully preventing it from bolting!
Something is munching on my spinach- but I am not sure what it is.
There are other triumphs occurring...


PEAS! Yes, large numbers of pods have been spotted on my pea vines!


These are a shelling variety- so I have to wait for the pods to fatten up before I get to pick them.

I also have baby tomatoes.


These are the sungold ones, so not much longer until I can actually eat them ;) And they are not the only ones...
The other tomato is blooming!


And so is the other pepper!!


And in the best news of all- the decapitated pepper has sprung back:


Look at all those new leaves!
My beans are growing like the proverbial weed. I nicely used a yardstick so you could see that ;)


As are their cousins the lima beans:


Those I did not measure for you!
Speaking of beans, take a look at these blackeyed peas...


They were part of my daughter's science experiment- she chose to grow blackeyed peas from the jar of them we had for cooking. She is quite proud of their progress- and I am amazed at how well they are doing.
I have a couple of swiss chard plants too. Here is one. Yes, I have picked a couple of leaves from the chard, spinach and lettuce. They make great salads!


And in the square next to this one, I transplated the other of my straightneck yellow squash- whose sibling can be seen in it's original pot below...


The carrots are also doing well. The wind dried out the soil terrible though and it seems kind of rocky.


Finally the showpiece- corn with roses! Yes I measured that for you too...


Monday, May 03, 2010

May in the Square Foot Potager

I like to refer to the garden as a Potager.  Because it has beautiful blooms, and it has veggies and herbs too!  I do keep them somewhat separate.  Sort of.  That is to say the kitchen garden is near the kitchen.  The roses are all over, the irises invade various spaces and the herbs squish into wherever I can fit them.  The herbs are really my favourites.  So are the roses.  And the vegetables.  OK I don't have favourites!!

This is the herb garden.  Well, it is the square foot garden I set aside for herbs.  You can see some of my new aquisitions there- top left- Chamomile.  Just above that is Greek Oregano (I love oregano) and borage just above that.  That big thing in the middle is, I think, Tansy.  It's a volunteer.  As is the teeny tomato plant next to it- right behind the almost blooming chives!  Ignore the weeds please, I forgot this garden yesterday!
The rest are basil, with a small appearance from the kid's strawberries on the far right.

Meet straightneck yellow squash.  We planted the seeds last week.  There they are sprouting.  Yes, they are in a pot.  They are in a pot because I ran out of room in my vegetable garden and because squash and zucchini kind of go mad in the garden.  Since only I and my daughter eat them, I have one of each.  I will also have a pink winter squash once some of the spring veggies make room.  Which might be a little sooner than I'd like- the warmer weather is not helping!


That's zucchini there.  I bought heirloom varieties of these because I knew that growing them from seed would let me :)  I am hoping to have somewhat resistant plants because those horrid squash bugs try to get my plants every year.
Meanwhile, the peas are blooming.  I love their flowers!  We should shortly be seeing pods- so I am excited.  I am hoping for a second pea crop later this year- it will be my first year trying for an autumn crop, so we'll see how it goes.  I might give up when summer comes- it gets overwhelming here in the humid South!  (Particularly if you are English born and bred).

The cool crops are looking rather nice.  There are the lettuces and spinach, ready to pick a few leaves.  The shallots are looking good, and the garlic there at the end- well they look pitiful but never mind them- look at the broccoli!!
The plants in the other bed are producing flowers, I hope to harvest some soon!

See what I mean about the lettuce?
Yes, the bright green (volunteer) lettuce is in the spinach bed...


No flowers on these ones yet...


Here are the green beans.  They have really taken off all of a sudden!  I guess they liked the hot weather!
You can see the new sage hiding there on the right between the beans and the carrots.

There it is again- with the carrots in the top right.
I usually end up feeding the carrots to our rabbit- and M'Lady who loves them.

Limas look good too.  The white things are rose petals- we've had a lot of wind lately.

Which also explains their presence in the corn too.  There is also a rose limb in the corn- because the rose wants to go there.  Actually the rose is next to the corn and one stray, blooming limb likes it in the corn bed.  It'll be dealt with once it stops blooming ;)
Meanwhile the corn keeps growing, even when the new neighbour puppy comes to visit and tramples on it!  You can't see that one...

Oh look- the new rosemary and some Swiss chard!

The advantage of buying my peppers, is that someone else, with a greehouse, can give them the start they need.  EARLY enough :)  So now they are blooming.  There are three varieties- a bell, a poblano and a jalapeno.  One of each, in separate pots.  I think this is the poblano.
Here it is, full length- next to the new peppermint.  Also conveniently contained in a pot.  I will not let it go free to run in the garden- the lemon balm, motherwort and apple mint are already having too much fun!


The sungold in a pretty pot near the ugly tiki torch :)  I love the tiki torches... they work pretty well if you don't accidentally tap the gnats inside the area you are in!

The other tomato, the bell pepper I accidentally decapitated and the jalapeno pepper.  Oh, and the squash :)
Don't worry, the decapitated pepper is growing new shoots, so I still hope for some yummy bells from it!

Potatoes.  I need to bring the soil level up a little.
Well actually I am thinking more of mulching up some, but I still need to do it ;)

Blooming comfrey- going a little wild :)


The white bloom there is valerian!

Pineapple sage (also new) and a wormwood (yes, it is new too).
You can't see the new lemon verbena I planted- because I have yet to photograph it!!

Look at the lovely peonies!  They smell wonderful too!



And the third of our irises- the blue and the yellow are still going strong.
(That's a sow thistle behind it- these run along the ditch and it is really hard to get rid of those and the grasses with them!).












See- told you the blue was looking good!

Happy gardening!

Thursday, April 08, 2010

Spring-Summer-Spring-Summer

Back on the rollercoaster rider of a Virginian spring- today in the 80's, tomorrow the 60's, 70's the next day, then back up to the 80's.  I am still a little worried about my seeds- cool weather crops don't like warm weather much.  I really should know this by now!






The peas are really growing now... it's just about time for me to go appropriate their trellis and put it up for them to grow up :)  I am beginning to regret this variety, I should have gone for the more heat tolerant one again.  I do have some of those ready for a autumn crop...

My potatoes and broccoli are really coming along.  I have yet to get the bed set up with the new sides here, but you can see how the broccoli (back row) and potatoes (all the other squares) look.... I am hoping the hot weather is going to dissipate and let them all grow a nice crop of little potatoes :)





I have shown pawpaws on my blog before- this is the annual flower shot :)  The bottom one is newer than the top- and we now have three pawpaw trees in bloom.  I am not happy about the third- it is in a BAD spot!  They are extremely difficult to re-locate though.

The lilacs are already blooming- just stunning.  I love their scent.  And they are such pretty flowers, I am thinking of drawing them :)

Even the roses are getting ready to bloom!  Typically these roses are May or June bloomers, so to have buds in early April is a little early!  But that's the weather for you.

Right now though, everything is coated in a sticky layer of pollen.  There are several culprits, but here are the two main ones in my garden...


White Pine.  The flowers are quite something aren't they?  These are wind pollinated trees, so the stuff is blown hither and yon all around the neighbourhood.  It is truly unfortunate for us that there are two right in our front yard- they are not especially nice trees!

The other culprit is a birch- in this case a paperbark birch.  These 'catkins' are the birch flowers- another wind born pollen bearer!  I am not as upset with this one- because I truly love birches- and the 'paperbark' is fascinating.  Wonder if it makes for a good canvas...

There are signs of my lettuce, beet, chard and onions popping up, and I believe I saw a carrot or two this morning as well.  I also found two 'wild' lettuce and chard plants growing in my beds- volunteers from other years.  I wont complain though, I love these little visitors!  I'll save posting pictures of those until another day :)

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

seeds


seeds
Originally uploaded by Spinneretta
I was thrilled when the weather forecasters told us what the weather would be like this week. Sunday was about 60 degrees F (about 15 degrees C) which is warmer than it has been for AGES. An unusual cold winter for us- normally we see warm patches here and there, but not this year.
Today they say it will reach 74F (23C).
So it is not too surprising that I got out my seed packets and planted some seeds- in peat pellets inside :) Truth be told, most of these could probably go outside too, BUT my square foot beds are not quite ready- the snow covering them and the rain after just made this happen a lot later than normal!

The kids helped me plant the seeds- DD was especially excited because she is looking forward to eating them all ;)