Fortunately*

Unfortunately I was sick all last week and my loyal readers were deprived of my garden updates.  Fortunately we have entered another beautiful month here in the sunny Duke City and I can, in one post, catch you all up on what's been happening in my garden.

Fortunately my radish bed is full of beautiful foliage.  Lots of leafy radish greens and smaller carrot greens.  Unfortunately, if I poke my fingers around the base of the radishes, I'm not finding any plump tap roots.  It maybe that, as last year, I grow lots of radish plants but still have a disappointingly small harvest.  According to Mr Brown Thumb this could mean that both my garden beds in the past two years have lacked in phosphorous and potassium.  Additionally, the radishes have run out of time.  As per my agreement with my mother-in-law, it's time to empty this bed of vegetables and fill it with flowers for my sister-in-law's graduation party.  Fortunately, the carrots are small and cute.  I may sneakily leave them in the bed and plant flowers around them.  If I'm lucky the carrots will pull through in ways the radishes didn't.

Unfortunately, the pea pots are another mixed bag.  The plants have not grown as much as I would expect, remaining about a foot and a half tall.  I assume this is because I planted them rather late and the weather is too warm for them.  They really haven't made much use of the tomato cage I so thoughtfully put in the pot for them.  Fortunately, they're still going to produce something!  They are cute pea flowers and even some peas all over their diminutive vines.  We'll get some fresh peas before cucumber plants take their place.

                                                                            Fortunately, the Nasturtiums are coming along fine.  While they do wilt a bit when they're thirsty, they bounce back better than I expected they would.  I expect that in another month and a half or so they're going to be big beautiful plants.  Unfortunately they're also out of time.  That bed too needs to be filled with flowers by the end of the month instead of filled with small vines that might eventually produce some flowers.  I will probably end up buying a flat of snap dragons to fill in the bed, leaving as many Nasturtiums as I can.  I really really want to eat a Nasturtium flower.

Fortunately, the roses have survived my pruning and are, for the most part, covered in lovely blooms.  The two biggest roses are causing some trouble by letting their old branches (that I so carefully pruned) die off and just sending up new growth from the roots.  And on one of them this new growth, though pretty enough and producing flowers, in trailing along the ground.  Which is weird.  Unfortunately, the successful blooms mean I have to start dead-heading which I have never been around to do before.  This means I've very likely to screw up.



*Since this post seemed to be full of mixed-bag type updates, I based the writing off one of my favourite picture books as a child.  I may not have been successful.

Garden Update: April Showers

Yesterday, in the aftermath of the first precipitation we've have in months, I went out to take stock of my little plants.  Most of them are doing great.  I'm suspect that this will be a good year.

There's nothing quite like peas.  They are the heralds of spring!  They grow before most of the other vegetables and the way the seem to stretch up toward the sky lift my heart.  There are about seven plants in each pot and as usual, I'm afraid I over planted a bit.  The peas in both pots seem to be doing great though.  A few of them have grabbed hold of the tomato cage I stuck in their pot.

Carrot with round cotyledon.

Carrot with elongated cotyledon.

The radishes are doing great.  They're beginning to look like actual plants.  Time to thin out the dense spots a bit.  Even more exciting in this bed, the carrots have sprouted!  Back in my college garden I sowed carrots every year and only once got any to germinate so it's thrilling to have some success this year.  I planted a rainbow mix this year so I've been looking carefully for differences in the leaves of my carrot plants.  Some of them appear to have normal looking round cotyledon while others came up long and thin, like grass.  I only assume that they are both carrots because they both came up en masse at about the same time and they're both now sporting their first sets of true carrot leaves.  There's one other surprise in the radish-carrot bed.  Something came up with the radishes that is clearly neither a radish nor a carrot.  I let it grow because I was curious.  I don't know what my in-laws planted in this bed last year but it looks like a very large grass right now.  Any guesses?

The agave that I repotted is not looking so good.  It, and most of it's pups, have lost their happy green-blue color.  Now it mostly matches the wall.  In the research that I've done since the repoting, it looks like I shouldn't have watered them all after I was finished and I should have left them under the porch instead of against a sunny wall.  Live and learn, I guess.  I'm still hoping that it's succulent constitution will give it the strength to survive.

Lastly, two weeks ago I threw some seeds into the planter around the mailbox out front.  I didn't record the varieties and threw away the seed packets so I don't know exactly what I put in there.  I know there were some nasturtiums because, as I've said before, I'm curious how they do in our dry climate and I wish that everything I planted I could eat.  There were also some snapdragons because their color matched the nasturtiums and I know my mother-in-law likes them.  I also added in some sort of red lettuce for two reasons.  First, I thought the colored foliage would look nice with the flowers and secondly, I really like mixing flowers and vegetables.  The second reason goes against my mother-in-law's gardening ideas so I guess a minor act of rebellion is a third reason.  We'll see if she notices.  Yesterday, I noticed that something, one tiny little cotyledon, was poking out of the soil.  It is, of course, way to small and immature to identify so we'll just have to wait to see what's coming up out there.

What is it?

A Birthday Planting

I have a friend who lives down in Aid, an hour south of Duke City.  Much like myself, he has a fascination with growing things and regularly plants gardens.  He also tends to move frequently, abandoning his gardens before they can provide him with much.  Last weekend I got a chance to go visit him, just after his birthday.  I thought a nice present might be a pot planted with a small tomato and herbs.

When I brought the idea up over lunch, he was enthused, but didn't show a particular interest in the pot.  Instead he wanted his plants in the ground.  We took a look at his place, evaluating it's potential, and at the selection of seeds and plants that the small city's stores could provide us and came up with a plan.

There was a deserted flower bed in front of his house which he wanted full of flowers.  There was an empty side yard he thought should be full of produce.  There were also some trellises affixed to the fence bordering his backyard that he thought needed adornment.  The soil, of course, was little more than sand.  Having one afternoon, no tools besides a folding shovel and a broom handle, and a small budget, this present had become quite a challenge.  At the local Walmart we grabbed some seeds, a flat of marigolds, as many bags of soil amendments as I thought I could buy, and a seed starting kit for the vegetables that couldn't be planted yet.

We dug up the flower bed in the front, weeding and turning in bags of soil as we went.  Marigolds were spaced out and planted, as was a packet of Nasturtium seeds.  The Marigolds looked looked like the best plants for taking some heat and neglect.  I've never grown Nasturtiums I've been wanting to try them (since I've read that they're edible) and their color matched the Marigolds.  The bed looks a little sparse right now but I hope that once the seeds sprout it will fill in and look rather cheery.

The side yard had a small circle dug up and lettuce seed broadcast into it.  I surrounded it with some stones so that my friend would know which part of the sand pit to water.  The trellises along the back got some blue morning glory seeds planted beneath them.  My last apartment had some Morning Glories climbing up the fence during the summer, which I though were very nice until I visited the Botanical Gardens and saw their bright blue variety.  They were stunning and hope these do just as well for my friend.

Inside, drinking water and cooling down, we prepared the seed starting tray.  Twelve peat pellets were planted with Garlic Chives, twelve with Sweet Basil, and twelve with Flat-leafed Parsley.  A full thirty-six got divided between Roma Tomatoes and some slicing hybrid that I can't recall.  I've never had much luck with those seed starters so I can't hazard a guess at how many plants it will actually produce.  However, my friend says there's no such thing as too many tomatoes.  I would love to see him in August if all thirty-six reach maturity.