Gardens I have Known: A New Beginning

Gardens are great at many things, not the least of which is tethering us to the larger cycles of nature.  Most of civilization's advancements revolve around protecting us from those cycles.  Roofs, walls, furnaces, air conditioners, global agriculture and shipping all shield us and make us ignorant of the seasons, the closed loops of growth, death, and rebirth that surround us.  A garden, on the other hand, involves us in those cycles, allowing us to observe and celebrate their intricacies.

Today I want to introduce you to an exciting new cycle in my life. My wife and I have just brought our first house.  With it comes a yard which doesn't look like much now but offers a lifetime of gardening to me.  Finally I can set to work building those cycles up around me.  I can care for the soil and know that I will be around to reap the benefits.  More, I can plant and know that I will be around to harvest!

The front yard is pretty generic for our area.  It reflects this houses history as a rental property with low maintenance but bland landscaping.  It's covered in red rock with one fruitless pear rising out of the very centre.  ion the photo you can see that we are battling a host of weeds that spring up between the rocks as well as the muddy dirt where I've replaced the house's water line.  I'm not exactly sure what I want it to look like but I have some ideas.  I would like to plant it with water-wise but useful plants.  Pinyon Pine and prickeless Prickly Pear are at the top of my list.  I know I want to leave it open enough that it will feel inviting to our neighbours when my wife and I sit on the porch in the evening.

In the backyard I have let my imagination run wild.  Now it is empty but for weeds but in my mind it is overflowing with life.  I would love to have a small patch of grass for the kids I hope to have, edged with dwarf fruit trees and day lilys.  Where  there is now a concrete slab, the foundation of an old shed, I would like to erect a chicken coop.  By the edge of the covered patio I would love to build an horno.  And, of course, I envision many garden beds.

I hope you will join me, reading along as I construct a new garden around my home, a garden as unique as I am and as long living as I wish it to be!

A Day of Reckoning

Well, the fateful day came, that day when, in accordance with the deals, all the vegetables were dug up and replaced with flowers.  Countless radishes were sacrificed on this day.  And then, at the graduation party, no one went outside to admire the new flowers.

Still, I did get a good sized pile of radishes (which weren't, surprisingly, all as black as "Black Spanish Globe" would have me believe).  and even a pile of diminutive peas.

The carrots were, for the most part, left in the ground and have since had a growth spurt.  They are doing much better than they were before.  Perhaps they were just waiting for some marigolds to be planted near by.

 

Also, I've planted two of the beds in my mother's garden with some seeds I started on my window sill about a month ago.  I'll make a full write up of that later.

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.

My Secret Garden

In addition to pruning roses for my in-laws, planting gardens for friends, experimenting with propagation, and planting some things of my own, I've been tending a secret garden that no one else knows about.  Well, tending probably isn't the right word.  I've just been watering it and admiring it.  I found it, around the side of the house, when I was situating my worm bin.  Can you see it?

It becomes a little more obvious if you step up onto a pile of brick.  You see, my secret garden is hidden from view, up above eye level.  That's why it's just mine.

Yes, it's just a pile of moss growing on the chimney.  For many of you, that might not be that special.  But many of you don't live in New Mexico.  It's too hot and dry for moss to really grow much around here.  The closest thing I frequently find get is the lichen that grows on my beloved Watermelon Mountains.  So finding a patch of fuzzy moss is a rare and special thing.

Of course, since it's a tiny garden filled with small non-vascular plants it helps to get up close to really appreciate it.  Moss is so interesting.  It's fuzzy and slightly squishy.  It comes in variety of textures and colors.

And then there are the "flowers".  When it spores the moss sends up little stocks which can look like flowers dotting a grassy hill.  The different kinds of moss even seem to send up different stocks.

Unfortunately this garden probably won't last the whole year.  I'm betting that even with my extra care it will get too hot this summer.  The moss will dry up and die.  My secret little garden will become a brown, barren place.  At least until fall or maybe next spring.  Then it will be cool enough and moisture will collect.  I'm sure at that point a new crop of moss will spring to life!

More Scraps

I just wrapped up another experiment in kitchen scrap propagation.  My subjects this time were an inch off the top of a carrot and an inch off the bottom of an onion.  Both vegetables were suspended in water in soda bottle greenhouses*, using the inverted top to hold them at the water's surface.  I can report one possible success and and one failure.

The carrot did not really show much growth.  There may have been a hint of leaf production but nothing substantial and no root development.  The portion of the carrot the remained submerged looked rather nice, though it had a mildly slimy texture by the end of the experiment.  The top portion of the carrot shrivelled up and discolored.  Next time I plan to keep just the stem part out of the water.  Next time I also need to find another way of suspending the carrot, as it kept tipping over in the bottle's neck when I changed the water.

The onion seemed to be growing.  There were, at least, roots forming, as seen in the photo.  There was no indication of top growth, suggesting that next time I need to leave more onion on the scrap.  The onion, too, would benefit from being suspended in a different way.  In this case tipping wasn't an issue but the outer layer of the onion that was in constant contact with the bottle began to rot.  The onion is buried in the carrot bed next to my mystery garlic.  We'll see if it survives being planted out and grows.

I probably would have allowed the onion to grow more before moving it but I need the green house for another experiment (seed starting for a three sisters garden).  Stay tuned for more scraps!

*I will have to make a post dedicated to these.  Probably in the fall when there aren't so many interesting growing things to post about.

Garden as Memorial

My grandfather, who's garden I have written about before, suffered a massive and unexpected heart attack and died recently.  I've spent the past two weekends down in the city of the City of the Crosses helping out my grandmother in any way I can.  I don't know if this is normal, but for our family that means yard-work.

I helped my father do some heavy pruning on a fig tree that suffered some damage this past winter.  I built row covers to keep rabbits out of the vegetable beds.  I helped tie back my grandmother's favourite rose to protect it from the 60 mph winds.  I did it all because I know it's what my grandfather would have been doing.

Nor was I the only one.  When the kids next door heard what had happened, they marched over, solemnly hugged my grandmother, and announced that they would weed her garden for her this summer.  It was touching how, after years of playing in the garden, they knew exactly how they could help.  They also swept her porch and planted seeds in a vegetable bed.

My grandfather once told me that two things in his life made him more proud than anything else.  First, that he had raised four good daughters.  Secondly, that he had positively impacted at least one plot of land.  He viewed his garden as a form of stewardship to the earth and liked to think that he had made a lasting mark, by improving the soil, in that area.

The garden was once one of his passions, a joyous project.  I hope that now it will continue to grow as a living memorial to him.  I hope that as my grandmother, myself, the kids, and other continue to tend the garden we will also be tending our memories of him.  I hope that neighbours walking past the garden will think of him.  I hope the garden continues to grow for a long time.

Gardens I Have Known: Part 4

At my last apartment I had a nice little garden.  This garden, I think, epitomises me as gardener right now.  It was poorly planned, badly timed, and improperly utilized but still beautiful, ambitious, resourceful, and a heck of a lot of fun.

We moved into the apartment at the very beginning of July.  This is not, of course, the right time to start a garden.  Still, I started working on it, claiming that I was just going to start preparing the soil.  I would weed it, turn it over, and maybe have it ready for some fall crops.  That is not what ended up happening.

About the same time I finished pulling out the mess of dead wildflowers, left by the previous tenant, some tomatoes, ready for transplant, appeared on the break room table at work.  Of course, I couldn't turn them down so I carried home one "Cuor Di Bue" and planted it.  But one tomato looked lonely so I searched for other plants to add in.

I acquired mint, thyme, oregano, garlic, and chives from my mother's garden.  Free first, cheap second, as the saying goes.  I swung by Lowe's for some soaker hose and just had to pick up some other plants while I was there.  I got two more tomatoes (Mr. Stripey and Patio), two chili peppers (NM Big Jim and Garden Salsa), Thai Basil, and Flat-leafed Parsley, and a Cucumber for a big pot.  That Saturday I could help adding a Fennel and a Rosemary from the farmers market.  In September I dug up another patch and planted Daylilies that I helped my mother divide out of her yard along with Cauliflower, Radishes, and as mix of Lettuce.

I laid down soaker hose and mulched it well with free grass clipping.  Tending this little garden was my favourite escape.  My neighbours all praised it and thought about digging up the lawn in front of their apartments too, though no one actually got around to it.

Ultimately, some of the plants did well and some did not.  The cucumber was productive.  The chili plants gave us more chili than I could really use.  I got a huge bowl of radishes that I offered to the neighbours.  The rosemary, on the other hand, dried up.  The parsley shrivelled up.  The cauliflower was devoured by caterpillars and the lettuce never did much of anything.  Worst of all, the tomatoes never ripened.  I picked a huge bowl of green tomato-marbles before frost to no avail.

Then, in January, we moved out.  What would have happened this year if it were still my garden and I could start on time?  Would the daylilies have established themselves?  Would the garlic have come up?  Could I have gotten tomatoes this year?

I gained alot in that garden.  I started a worm bin that will enrich my future gardens.  I began to learn how to make due with what I have available, both physically and time-wise.  I think in that garden I actually became a gardener.

So, where do I go from here?  Surely this isn't going to be the high point of my gardening experience.  I should just be the beginning.  The metaphorical plant have finally established themselves in the garden of my mind and now I should look forward to a long summer of lush growth.  That's what this blog is for, tracking the physical blooms of my mind-garden.  I can't wait till my mind sets fruit.