Somebody's Seven!

It was an informal, private affair. Dinner included mushroom pizza from Little Ceasers, chocolate ice cream and homemade cake with chocolate chips and sprinkles.


She got what she had been reminding us every single day for the past 6 weeks: Fake money, candy necklace, paints, and a notebook.

She was practically beaming. We all shared in her joy on her special day.

Some more than others.

First Brush Strokes

In the summertime, the house does not shade the garden area as in this photo. Go ahead--click to enlarge. There will be 3 blocks each 13'x13', separated by 3' strips of lawn. the blocks will each have 4 raised beds that are 3'x8'x8" deep, and one in the middle 3'x3', surrounded by 18"-24" wide paths with gravel or pavers. On the side there will be three 13'x18" wide raised bed strips for trellis crops. Can you detect the design influence of Mel Bartholomew? Yep, mom had a copy of his original book way back in the late 70's. She left it laying around where just anyone, including impressionable young children, could pick it up and read it. Plan to fill those beds with 50/50 topsoil/peat blend from a local dirt dealer. Beyond the garden, a little shed with a trellis on its south side, and a larger traditional plot for sprawling heavier winter squash that won't do well on a trellis. In the back, there will be rows of fruit trees spaced roughly 7' apart, in mulched beds, which will be pruned and trained severely never to exceed 7-8' tall. Got that idea from Dave Wilson Nursery. Left a nice space for a good size grape/kiwi arbor that will double as a party pergola. Might not get built until next season but you never know. Then there's going to be a blackberry patch and a raspberry patch...and then maybe some taller bushes such as blueberry and aronia, along the south fence line to screen the neighbor's swimming pool (which is just outside of this frame)...yes I have put quite a bit of thought into this already.... why?

Empty Canvas

My yard. My future garden and orchard. My solace and my sanity. 75' wide by approx. 120' deep. Dreaming of the possibilities....

New Kitchen Faucet

Picked it up at Ikea for $50. Isn't it beautiful? I like it because it is so tall, I can rinse out gallon milk containers with ease, wash the biggest pots without jockeying aroung the old small faucet. See how small the old one was in the pic on the right? Plus the new one has a very cool looking sideways handle. I installed it all by myself and it doesn't even leak so I am feeling pretty invincible right about now. We also had fun shopping for the necessary nipples too, mainly because once we were told by the big plumber sales guy at the plumbing supply store the actual name of the little connector thingys we needed, it was hard to keep from giggling.

Like the brush on the left? It has a suction cup on the bottom. I had to have it. Please ignore the bowl of kitchen scraps, it's been way too cold these past 3 days to take it the 7 steps out the back door to the compost pile. It doesn't stink yet so I figure oh well.

Chance Seedlings

Did you know that most of today's mass marketed apple varieties were were originally discovered growing wild from seed? Old varieties such as Newton Pippen, Arkansas Black, and the famous Cox Orange Pippin. More significantly, today's supermarket staples like Golden Delicious, Ginger Gold, Jonathan and Granny Smith (among many others) were all originally discovered as volunteer plants found sprouting at the edge of the orchard or in a compost pile. However, we are always cautioned by the “horticultural industry” (growers and university research programs) not to plant the seeds out of our store-bought apples because they will not grow “true from seed”--like that's a bad thing. We are told that the resulting plant will most likely give small sour ugly non-disease-resistant sparse (unmarketable) mutant fruits, therefore a waste of time and effort. I think that the horticultural industry discourages folks from planting apple trees from seed, for their own reasons--so that they can sell us, by exclusive license, grafts of their supposedly superior product. Excuse me, isn't the new catch phrase “biodiversity”? Don't get me wrong, the university breeding programs have their place; after all, they gave us Liberty, Gold Rush and Enterprise, didn't they? In fact my favorite eating apple happens to be Gala, which is also the result of a controlled breeding project.

Before I did the above little bit of research, Junior Gardener and I had planted the pips from a Granny Smith and a Gala apple into pots set on the kitchen window, she with high hopes but myself with low expectations. I schooled her with what I had been lead to believe- they probably won't sprout, but if one of them does, don't expect it to have edible apples on it. Well every last one sprouted and are growing very well on the cold January window sill. So now who knows. Maybe one of them will eventually bear fruit good enough to find its place along side it's parents at the supermarket. Then we will be getting the last laugh collecting the license fees when our little tree is propagated for commercial use. Or maybe we'll just get 7 sturdy unnamed sour crabapple trees to feed the birds in winters to come. Whatever. It's all good. Won't it be cool to be able to say to friends and admirers that my little espalier row of apples along side the driveway was planted from super market apple seeds. Of course apples won't usually come into bearing until 7-10 years from seed. Apparently there are ways around that as well. I am so inspired now that I plan to have a row of supermarket pear seedlings on the other side of the yard, as soon as I get some more pots for the seeds.

Anticipation

Ever since the week before Christmas, Randazzo's had them lining the checkout lanes by the gross, each one 30” tall with giant beautiful blooms in not just red but pink, white, orange and everything in between. I resisted the urge to buy because I knew that any day now my own treasure would be sprouting a bloom twice as spectacular as any fruit market amaryllis. I planted my bulb 6 weeks ago per instructions, watering faithfully (not too much). It sat there like a giant soggy onion doing nothing for 6 weeks. Then suddenly a few days ago this:

Is that a tongue? I think its mocking me.

Things that are Purple

My list of purple garden crops for 2009 (yes I plan to grow all of these):

All-Blue Potatoes
Bolivian Rainbow Hot Pepper (purple at one of the stages)

Violetto Cauliflower, Falstaff Brussels Sprouts
Hungarian Breadseed Poppy , Carbon Tomato
Lavender (the flower), Purple Tiger Hot Pepper

Purple Beauty Sweet Pepper
Crapaudine Beets (more of a mahogany black)
Flame Lettuce, Dragons Tongue Bush Beans
Forellenschluss Lettuce
Burgundy Onions, Burgundy Okra
Painted Mountain Sweet Corn (ok not purple per se but ears can have blue or burgundy kernals)
Orach, Purple Pole Beans
Pepino Dulce, Purple Sprouting Broccoli
Purple Asperagus
Purple Haze Hybrid Carrots
Purple Globe Radish

Rosa Bianca Eggplant, Rosita Eggplant

Blue Bean Vine (a.k.a. "dead man's fingers", an akebia relative, just for fun)
Chinese red noodle beans
Blackberries, Blueberries, Aronia Berries, Grapes
Not pictured: Purple Tomatillos

Purple things that will not be growing in my garden this year:

purple kohlrabi-mine is "Gigante", a white variety

purple-top turnips, mine will be white and golden

purple plums- I'm planning Green Gage and Toka (red)

purple sage-mine will be just plain old sage-colored sage

red cabbage-too obvious

I am also impatiently awaiting the release of new purple varieties of Pumpkins, Cucumbers, Paw Paws and purple Karelas. What's the hold up, breeders?

Speaking of Tomatoes

Traditionally, January is the month of garden planning. However I began planning mine back in August, so by now the plan is pretty much done. I'm also using a spreadsheet to organize and calculate my choices. Spreadsheets are a very powerful tool, and one must be cautious that such power be used for good and not for evil. So far, 2009's garden will cost approximately $1,614 not counting the stone mulch, cubic yard of vermiculite, and lumber for the 15 new raised beds. Ok maybe that's a little extreme but I have been on gardening hiatus for about 6 years and I guess I'm just making up for lost time. Also the fact that the new house has about 1/3 acre yard with basically nothing except grass, Only 2 trees and is fenced in, makes me a little giddy. Included in that amount is 18 fruit trees and a hedge of Leyland Cypress so don't roll your eyes like Pakman.

I did narrow my tomato varieties from about 25 down to 11 finalists and feel very good about it. They are:

Regular Red Slicers:

New Big Dwarf: Only 60 days, determinant 2' tall plants, producing 12 to 16 oz fruit, going to grow this one in containers.

Stupice (rhymes with "eureka"): 55 days, smallish fruit but sets in cold weather

Longkeeper: supposed to be able to pull up the entire plant, fruits and all, right before a killing frost, and hang the whole thing upside down in the basement and have constant supply of vine ripened fruit through January-February. Cant wait to try this one!

Caspian Pink: Cooler weather plant supposed to rival Brandywine in taste.

Specialty cool colors:

Copia- Red/orange fine vertical stripes

Big Zebra- Green/yellow fine vertical stripes

Ananas Noir-Mottled rainbow colored, photos I have seen show mostly green/purple outside w/ red core

Carbon-purple tomato, supposed to less prone to cracking

Banana Legs- so I can make yellow spaghetti sauce to top red (tomato-flavored) pasta and a sprinkling blue cheese of course.

Currant tomatoes:

Matt's wild cherry- just to see what all the hype is about

white currant-so I can make a salad with tiny white tomatoes, pink fleshed radishes, giant purslane and Bull's Blood beet greens.

(pic of bananalegs is from tradewinds fruit, rest are from gettle.org)

New Years Resolution

Holy crap--that last post was longer than War and Peace! In 2009 I resolve to try to keep future blog posts under 500 words and I vow to find the cable to the camera so that I can include more interesting and relevant photos in an effort to appease those of you with ADD. Until I find the cable, please enjoy these old selections from my dusty archive:

The first 3 are original, but this last pic of the perfect tomatoes I couldn't help myslef, I swiped it from http://www.heirloomtomatoplants.com/ because this is a picture of exactly how my tomatoes are going to look this year. Honest.