Last week our family did some dog-sitting for a dog who loves to be outside.  Since our current home is such that I don’t feel we could just put her out on a cable by herself and she’d be happy, I took advantage of  “mandatory” outside time and spent the week pulling weeds out of the existing garden bed.

It wasn’t quite as much work as I’d anticipated.  We’d had quite a bit of rain, so the ground was soft and the weeds came out easily.  I got as many of the roots as I could as well, so hopefully  those big bad nasty weeds won’t be back.

It is nice that we moved into a place with an existing garden space.  It already had a small perimeter fence even, so that’s a little less work I have to do.  When Andy moved the garden beds over, one of them broke, so right now there are five garden boxes.  I may just make do with that amount, because I think I like how I have them laid out at the moment.  There’s not a huge space to view, but I did take pictures.

This picture below is a straight on view.  The garden shed on the right is actually outside the garden space. I’m debating extending the garden out to the shed.  The hose box right at the front will be coming out of the space, as will the garbage cans on the left.  That left corner has an existing compost bin- but it needs to be expanded a bit.

Also, if you squint and look very closely in the picture, way in the back you can see a tiny red stop sign.  To the right of that is a tiny white blob the size of a pinhead.  THAT is the community garden that I am on the waiting list for.  I am number six on the list, and they are planning on adding more gardens next year,  so I have a good chance of getting in.

Here you can see a little better how I have the gardens laid out at the moment.  There’s enough room between the beds to work, and then it also leaves a nice space at the front of the garden for some in-ground tomato plants.  If I don’t get my community plot I will have to drastically reduce the number tomatoes I grow next year.  Also, if I decide to extend the plot in this direction towards the shed, that space will also be a couple of raised beds specifically for eggplants and peppers this coming year.

And then here is the view from the other side.  You can see my raspberry bush on the outside of the garden over here.

 

It’s a decent enough space.  There is also a small raised bed off the back of the house by the deck.  There were everbearing strawberries growing in it, but the rabbits ate those down to nubs, so we’ll have to see if they come back.  If they do, I plan to fence it off and see what kind of a strawberry harvest might be possible.

The next step is to have Andy level the beds and actually get them ready to receive compost.  Then I plan to line them with cardboard or newspaper, and then he’ll fill them up with compost.  My ultimate goal is have at least three of the beds ready to plant for when the spring thaw comes.

As for the upcoming dormant season, I’m making my plans for seed starting.  I don’t have any southern facing exposure here- except one small window on the upper level.  I plan to re-pot my fatalii pepper in a hanging pot and give him that spot.   I do have some nice east and west facing windows with ledges below them, so I’m thinking about starting a pair of dwarf tomatoes in pots, and see if I can manage to find them enough sunshine there.

For seed starting I have a small spot in our downstairs bathroom that one of my plant racks will fit in.  Andy can hang some lights on there- and that will be good for some of my seed starting.  The other plan is  a little drastic.  On our sleeping level in our home (split level, so the layout is wonky) we have a solid security door that goes out to the deck and the backyard.   This door is south-facing.   Andy is keeping an eye on our local Habitat for Humanity Re-Store to see if anyone brings in a single-paned glass door that he could put in instead of the security door.  If he finds one, that will let a TON of sunshine into the house, AND I can put my green growing rack in that spot in front of a sunny window.  Between that and the smaller rack in the lower level bathroom, I can get a good head start on next year’s growing season.

Plans are exciting.   It’s way to early to really start planning what I ‘m planting, but it’s exciting to think about!  I do know that I have some seed stock I need to refresh and new things I want to try.  One difficulty with the planning is that I don’t really know when I will know about the community plot.  I gave my notice to my current garden that I won’t be back.   It’s mostly cleaned out now except that I want to head back over there and pull up a patch of mint to put in my garden here at home.  So right now I have to plan as though the only garden space I’ll have is the one in front of me.  That makes it a little challenging to figure in everything that I want to grow.

But it will work out.  I’m just thrilled to have the space in the first place.  It is amazing how much I came to love my time in the garden at the last house.  Every morning I would take my coffee and wander through the garden slowly.  Looking at every plant, pulling weeds, adjusting trellises and support systems.  I’ve missed that time, and I can’t wait for spring to get back at it.

Too bad tomorrow is only October 1st!

 

I’ve gone back and forth on doing this post for some time now.  But I figure since the whole point of this blog is note-taking on the garden, I better get these notes down before I forget.

Nine days after my last posting, we were informed by our landlord that we needed to move.   It was a blow we definitely were not expecting.  Our plan had been to purchase that home.   And as I looked at my garden that very next day I was so torn between crying and cheering.  Because my garden really was spectacular.  I have never had a garden grow like this one!  Everything I planted was growing, and growing well.   I started planning and preparing, and 19 days after that, there was no more garden.

Amazingly, we got some harvests.  I managed to harvest all the garlic, although it was a little on the small side.   We had several bunches of carrots, scallions, beets, a nice pile of green beans, the celery and the swiss chard.  We’d enjoyed the lettuce until it bolted- and had so much I was giving it away left and right!   We harvested and fully enjoyed three nice sized heads of broccoli as well- those were a real treat!

The tomatoes I dug up and transplanted to two separate growing spaces.   Amazingly, all 52 plants survived the transplant process, despite their maturity.  I had dug up plants that were bearing fruit already! But I was determined to not leave a scrap of plant behind for someone else to benefit from my labor.  That really showed the resilience of tomato plants!  Transplanting them did seem to set them back a few weeks though, and I won’t get the spectacular harvest I’d have gotten had they stayed where they were.  And of course, I can’t save seed from a single plant this year.  They were all bunched together as they traveled to their new homes in the back of my van.

What I especially was excited about seeing in my garden was the progress of the winter squash.  My plan to get them to grow up a ladder and trellis worked perfectly- and it was very clear that had we stayed, that blue hubbard squash would have taken over the entire garden.  But it was growing exactly how I’d hoped- and there were dozens of baby squashes on those plants.   Next year, we will revisit the winter squash using the things I learned growing them this year.  The biggest thing was that I did have to continually attempt to manipulate the plants.  I needed to coax them to grow where I wanted them to grow- moving and adjusting gently daily.  That paid off after a while, and then I could just let them grow and tangle themselves on the growing mediums I had for them.

My gardens were producing WEEKS before anyone else’s was in the area.  Part of that was my quick sowing of seed as soon as I could get in.  But part of that, I really feel, was the fact that my growing medium was solely compost.  I didn’t get fancy and mix anything it.  It was just compost from the local composting facility.  When we tore the gardens out it was clear that the compost had settled a lot, and had we had another growing season, we would have needed quite a bit more to fill the boxes back up.  But using the compost straight up produced amazing results as far as growth.

My nemesis (other than the landlord, lol) were the squirrels, of course.  They dug and dug and tried to dig some more.  My method to foil them was multi-faceted.  Initially when I planted the seeds, I covered the beds with bird netting.  That keeps all animals out, and I would leave the netting on until the sprouts were a good inch above the netting.  Then I would carefully lift it off.  Later on, as the plants grew and there was more space in the dirt, the squirrels came back.   The first thing I tried doing was spraying my plants with a hot pepper spray.  I took the hottest hot sauce I had and mixed it with water in a spray bottle and sprayed that everywhere.  That seemed to deter the squirrels, but it wasn’t perfect, and I thought it could get tedious spraying everywhere everytime it rained.   So instead I went and bought an institutional sized bottle of cayenne pepper and sprinkled that everywhere.  That seemed to work well also- but again, every time it rained I needed to go out and reapply.  A little time consuming, but it saved my plants from the squirrels.

In the end, we completely tore the garden out.  We didn’t leave a scrap of anything growing.  We harvested what we could, and ripped up what had yet to come to fruition.  Someone else was not going to get to harvest the fruits of my labor…

Anyway, we move on.  We have a garden space here at our new home, which, while still a rental, we have no danger of being asked to leave.   Andy moved my raised beds over here, and the next few months are going to be spent re-arranging, filling, and preparing the beds for spring planting.  I am also eyeing a community garden that I can literally see from my backyard.  I will be seeing if I can rent a space there next year for a tomato trial I wish to do.

The best thing?  With a garden, there’s always next year.  Armed with the knowledge I obtained this year, I cannot wait to see how next year’s garden works out.  I am already looking forward to it.