A Prayer In Spring

(For some reason, this didn't post when I scheduled it a month ago.  What's up, blogger?  So here it is now!  It's still relevant!)

I'm a big Robert Frost fan.  But then again, who isn't?  I have a nice little book of his poems sitting on my art desk, and once in a while I pull it out and read one of my favorite poems.  It usually cheers me up, because a lot of his poetry is so down to earth and lighthearted.

One of my very favorites is a poem called A Prayer In Spring, and I like to read it when the flowers start blooming and the bees are out.  It helps me to remember to slow down and enjoy spring while it's here.

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.
Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.
And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.
For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

 I got some nice pictures of a couple of the early flowers coming out in my yard.  They're so early this year! 

Snowdrops

Snow crocuses

Don't forget to stop and smell the flowers sometime.

Garden Report: Broken Pump

(I decided to steal an idea from Tom Naughton over at Fat Head; whenever he posts about his farm doings, he titles it Farm Report.  Since I don't have a farm yet, I decided I'd call my posts about garden stuff my Garden Report.  That way, you guys will know what you're getting into before you start reading.) 

When I bought my little Aerogarden 3SL a few weeks ago for a mere $30 on clearance, I didn't realize that it was a pretty low quality model.  I would have hoped that, at its original price of $50, it would at least last a few months or maybe even years.  It's hard for me to part with money, and when I do, I like to get the highest quality thing I can afford.  I knew I was buying a cheap Aerogarden model, but I didn't know it was a very badly built model. 

The reviews on Amazon had a lot of talk about how the pump frequently stopped working, and sometimes the lights would then stop working as well.  So I paid extra attention to my 3SL to hopefully take care of this problem before it ruined the whole device.

Sure enough, a few days into owning it, the pump stopped working, as I wrote in a previous post.  I simply cleared the holes of the bubbler as best I could, and it seemed to work just fine.  I would have to do this every day or two, but I figured that would be that and the 3SL and I would live happily ever after.

Except, one fine day, the bubbler just wouldn't work no matter how much I tried to clear it out.  The bubbler might have been clogged further in; for some reason, even though it had screws that could be unscrewed to remove the bubbler, I couldn't get it to detach completely.  However, I didn't think that was the problem; the pump just seemed to be getting weaker.  I wasn't really sure what to do, but I didn't want to leave it running and burn out the pump before I made up my mind about how to handle it.  So I turned the whole unit off and moved the seed pods from the 3SL to the three holes in the Bounty whose seeds never germinated. 

Then I took the 3SL apart!  I enjoy taking apart electronics and seeing if I can fix them.  I was pretty surprised when I opened that baby up; I'm sorry I didn't take any pictures of it.  Inside, there's two circuit boards, a tiny pump, and some wires.  Surprisingly simple.  But it was very illuminating.  I instantly found my problem, and also the reason why so many other 3SLs were breaking down.  The whole thing inside was covered with water.  The pump didn't have any one-way valve or anything, so I think when it shuts off at night, water runs down the tube, into the pump, and then it starts leaking all over everything else.  Sigh.  What a terrible design. 

I had a couple of options, but I decided to go with the simplest solution, which was to cut out the original pump and aerate with an external pump.  Which is fine, because I was actually thinking about getting a pump for the Bounty anyway.  The Bounty doesn't have an aerator built in; it just trickles water over the seed pods every so often.  I heard that with an added aerator, the plants grow much faster (plants like air; who knew?).

Now, picture time!

After cutting out the pump, I very thoroughly covered the hole with packing tape.  I took the plug from the top of the 3SL (that covers a little opening for an extrernal pump tube) and used it to plug the bottom of the tank, and then taped that on as well.  It doesn't leak a bit.

Here's the annoying little pump I pulled out of the 3SL. 

And here it is next to my new pump!  Kind of puny.

Here's all the supplies I got for the project; a small pump, 8 feet of tubing, two check valves, and a couple sizes of air stones.  All told, it was about $20.  I could have gotten it cheaper, probably in the $15 range, but we got a more expensive "quiet" pump.  It says it's the shape of silence.  I wish it was the sound of silence, because it's surprisingly noisy (it sounds like a small fan).  But, I guess that's a sacrifice you have to make in the name of indoor winter vegetables.

I set the two Aerogardens next to each other in our computer room.  I think they benefit from being close together; the 3SL gives the Bounty some heat from its CFL, and the Bounty gives the 3SL more light from its mega bright LEDs.

And now I have a little oasis of green growing things in the dead of  winter.  Chad's keyboard (the musical kind) is night next to this, so I usually come in and sit on his piano stool and just watch the lettuce grow. 

I'm not the only one who enjoys the green growing things, either.  I found this guy the day after I installed the pump.

I actually installed the pump over a week ago, and the plants are ridiculously big compared to these pictures.  I'll be sure to post again soon to show their progress.

My New Garden Toy

I spend a little time over at the Square Foot Garden forum through the winter.  There's not much to talk about, plant wise, but it's nice company in the dead of winter with like minded folks who are also itching to start planting.  One of the people there said she got an Aerogarden for Christmas, and not really knowing what that was, I decided to spend some time researching it.

What I found out is that Aerogardens are small hydroponic systems that take the thinking out of hydroponics.  When I think hydroponics, I usually envision crazy tubes and light setups, plus lots of ph testing and carefully balanced nutrients.  Apparently, the Aerogardens are set up so it's neat, compact, comes built in with everything it needs, and takes a universal liquid nutrient.  Then you just pop in seed pods that the company sells, push a button, and it pretty much grows itself.

Now you might not think I'm interested in something like this.  I mean, I may not have a very big yard, but I do in fact have a yard and soil and gardens to work with, and I don't really need to depend on a hydroponic system to grow food.  However, if you were thinking that, you clearly don't know me very well.  The instant I saw these adorable little growing devices, I started wanting one something fierce.  I mean, how cool would it be to have fresh lettuce in the middle of winter, or a fresh vine ripened tomato?  Just being able to watch something grow, even herbs, would fill up my dreary winter days!  I suppose I could plant some seeds in pots and put them under my grow lights in the basement, but somehow that's not the same.  Partially because, once seed starting season comes (mid February for me), I could no longer grow indoor lettuce because I would be starting outdoor onions, which are far more important and pressing.

The thing about Aerogardens are that they're very expensive, in my opinion.  The smallest, cheapest one sells for $65 on Amazon, and the extremely nice ones are nearly $300.  I would certainly pay that much if it grew as much as my outdoor garden, but not for a device that has up to 9 slots to grow things (that's for the big one; the small one grows 3 plants).

Well, as luck would have it, Chad and I were walking through Walmart last night, looking through their outdoor gardening section (yes, I am obsessed), and I happened to spot a display of small Aerogardens on clearance.  They were the small cheap ones, originally selling for $50 in Walmart, marked down to $30!  So I grabbed one.  I figured this is a cheap way to see if I like the system.

It's the one with three holes to plant in, and it came with the herb kit of basil, dill and parsley.

It came with the device, a bulb, three seed pods, and a bottle of nutrients.

I'm not exactly a fresh herb person.  I like growing herbs, but I always forget to use them.  I mean, what would I use fresh dill in, anyway?  I rarely use the dried dill I have.  And although I like parsley, it doesn't exactly have an amazing flavor or anything that would make me want to use fresh over dried.  I do, however, really enjoy fresh basil, even if I don't use it very frequently.  So I ended up digging the seeds out of the dill and parsley pods, and putting in some Black Seeded Simpson lettuce and some Baby Oakleaf lettuce seeds in those pods instead.

Now it's all set up and running.  Since getting this yesterday, I have found out that this particular model is the worst one they sell and it's not uncommon for the motor to stop running or the light to burn out.  Still, even if I only have a 60% chance of having a good experience with this thing, it'll be fun trying.  I set it up in our dining room so I can watch it grow, although I think I want to move it to somewhere more out of the way.  The light is really bright, and kind of takes away the nice ambiance I have going on.  The nice little trickling water sound it makes is a nice touch, though.

Yes, that's a fruit basket on the right, and a fruit basket shaped cookie jar on the left.  Why do you ask?

I may be getting the largest, nicest version of the Aerogarden, but there's a story behind that and I'm also not 100% certain I'm actually going to receive it, so we'll save that for another day.  Until then, at least I have this little beauty trickling in my dining room.  Lettuce usually takes about three days to sprout when I grow it in seed starting mix, so I think by the 26th or the 27th it should be up!  I'll be certain to post updates.

Garden Tour

It's been such a mild winter here in western New York (and all of New England and the Mid Atlantic as well), and I've been hearing crazy stories about how how spring bulbs are starting to spring up already, and garlic is a foot tall in gardens.  I got pretty curious about what's going on in my garden, so I took a stroll around the yard with my camera (and a good pair of boots, because it's muddy!).

And what do you know!  The daffodil bulbs really are sending up shoots.

They're pretty small yet though, as you can see by their size compared to those leaves.  And it's not all the bulbs; only the ones that are more out in the sun are popping up.  The ones more in the shade are still sleeping.

Actually, I left some bulbs in the garage too long because I didn't know where to plant them, and I noticed they had started to sprout.  So not wanting to waste something awesome, I stuck them in some vases.

So far, only one has bloomed, but it's such a fun thing to walk into the kitchen and see a beautiful blooming hyacinth.  Plus, it smells awesome.

And you know what?  My garlic is coming up, too!

But it's certainly not a foot tall.  It usually gets about that big before it gets covered by snow anyway, so I'm not worried about it.  It is, afterall, called German Extra Hardy and can withstand some pretty frigid cold snaps.

One thing I worried about with this warm weather was that my apples would break dormancy too soon and their buds would die.  However, it looks like they're nice and sleepy still and should make it through to spring.

So while I was out there, I took a picture of my newest toy, too.

I got it all together on the Sunday after Christmas.  It was quite a project, but not as bad as the reviews made it out to be.  The box came with two pieces that weren't supposed to be there, and two pieces that I needed weren't there.  Thankfully, they're not pieces that are structurally necessary, so I just put it together and contacted the company about it. 

It's a really cool little planter!  The planting space is about 6 inches deep, and the space underneath is good for storage.  The clear plastic is pretty sturdy, but the black plastic, which covers the base part and is the tray for the soil to sit in, is flimsier.  However, the frame is very sturdy and well designed, so if the plastic breaks, I figure I can replace it with wood or some other material and just keep reusing the frame.  I like it a lot! 

It's currently sitting in the cleared out raspberry spot.  It's less windy there, and there's no threat of falling ice, but in the spring, we'll move it over to it's permanent home on the south side of the house.

There, between the raspberries and the concrete slab.  And if I like it, who knows?  Maybe I'll get another one and put it where the raspberries are.  I don't know what variety those raspberries are, but I don't like them very much.  The canes and the berries are really waxy, and my fingers are so sticky from wax after picking them.  Plus the berries have a crumbly berry disease, and I'm not at all sure how to help the poor plants.  But I suppose that's far enough down the road that I don't need to think about it right now.

So there's what's going on in the ole garden.  It may look asleep, but things are still growing!

Dreams of a Greenhouse

As a homemaker, I don't usually get much time off.  There's always something to be cleaned, cooked, or picked up.  But every Thursday, I try to give myself a little slack to do whatever I want to do.  I still feed the mouths and  do the dishes, but otherwise I just chill.  And today, that chilling involved a lot of daydreaming.

As I've mentioned before, I live on a small lot in the city; I cram as much garden stuff as I feel comfortable with, but I'd really like more room.  One thing I really dream about having is a greenhouse.  I'm not sure why.  It's not like I really know how a greenhouse works exactly, or what kind of advantages it has.  I mean, I know you can start your plants early in a greenhouse and it keeps things warm for warm loving plants like peppers and melons, but it seems like there's something I'm missing.

Even so, I still wish I had room for one.  A special little place for my plants, where I could start my seeds outside instead of my cramped basement; somewhere warm enough so I can get more than one shriveled little sad looking pepper on my otherwise healthy looking pepper plants; and maybe ever somewhere that I could extend my season and have fresh homegrown greens through the winter.  What a lovely thought.

But do you see a place for a greenhouse here?  Really?

Property line is easy to tell on the left; right property line is just passed the clothesline.  Back line is about where the compost is.

I mean, I guess there is a bunch of space in the center there.  But how silly would that look?  I would like to sell this house within 10 years, and I think a giant greenhouse in the middle of the lawn would make it a bit hard.  The garden is probably going to be a problem as it is.  Maybe I could put a greenhouse over the whole of the garden, and then just take the thing down when we go to move...  But a greenhouse that big would probably be pretty expensive.  Plus, I'm not sure how well you can grow spring crops in a greenhouse.

Well, in my dreaming this morning, I started wondering what kind of little greenhouse-like things garden companies sell.  Well, let me tell you; quite a few!  Most of them are either tall plastic pop-up things that pretend to be mini greenhouses, or short plastic pop-up things that go over an existing garden.  But I found a couple of them that are both a raised bed garden and a greenhouse at the same time, and this one in particular kind of caught my eye.

I happen to have a spot on the south side of my house that's still (miraculously) empty.  Between my raspberry canes and the cement slab next to the side porch, there's a space that's maybe 5x5 feet that's empty lawn.  Now we do  get some chives that grow there, and some mint that's crazy wild, but this thing is cool enough to put over those things.

However, it's also a spot where, every late winter/early spring, a huge chunk of ice falls off our room.  And I mean huge.  Usually 4x2x1 feet and weighing at least 100 pounds.  It sounds like the roof is coming in when it falls down.  And the greenhouse would be right in the way of that.  Shoot.

Ahh, but!  They also make a smaller one.

And this one looks like it's small enough to avoid the impact of the ice boulder.  It's 2'x4', and is meant to sit against a wall.  Which is perfect, since I have a wall right there.  It's empty underneath so you can put supplies there, but I probably won't do that.  It'll just be nice to not have to weed that whole area.  It usually gets full of monstrous weeds by the middle of summer because we don't mow that side of the house, and certain unnamed husbands don't weed wack but once or twice a season.  And also, I'm lazy.  Although it might be nice to get all those bags of compost out of the garage.... hmmmmm....

Anyway, I already bought the little greenhouse, lol.  It was $249 on Amazon, but Burpee had it for $199, plus I found a 20% off coupon online.  Score!  So after the $25 shipping, it was only $185, woot!

My plan is to fill it with premade raised bed soil mix and then plant peppers in it!  I'm so excited to actually grow peppers and maybe get something from them!  I've tried peppers every year since I started gardening, and every year I'm disappointed.  They do sooo well in my basement; they're tall, with thick stems and bushy leaves, and some even start getting buds by the time I start hardening them off.  And they still look nice when I put them in the ground, but they stop growing so quickly, start looking a little small, and then the peppers, once they start coming, are so small and sad looking.  The only time I got decent peppers was when I grew jalapenos, and I've heard that hot peppers can withstand colder weather better than sweet peppers.  Which is good to know, living in the north, but I don't like hot peppers.

I've seen some other northern living people do great with peppers when they grow them in greenhouses or hoop houses, which is great.  So I'm hoping that my new toy will act as a greenhouse and keep my plants warm enough to actually get some peppers!

I guess we'll see how it goes.  Even if it doesn't increase my pepper yields, it'll be nice to have more growing space and a place to maybe start some seeds early (or have lettuce late in the season), and somewhere sheltered to harden off my plants in the spring.  Yay!

To totally change the subject, check out what Chad and I saw in the backyard the other day.  Keep in mind that we live in the city.

As far as I can tell, he's either an 8 or 9 point buck.

I'm pretty sure he was after this lady.

There was also another lady in the neighbor's backyard.  We had to do a bunch of shouting and waving of arms to get them to get out of our yard.  (Note: always be careful around deer, especially bucks, during breeding season!)  They came back a few times; sometimes they were just laying in our yard in front of my garden!  What the heck?  We shooed them off every time, because I certainly don't want them getting cozy.  Deer are the most destructive animals in my yard.  Which is silly, because the closet woods are about a mile away.  Ok, half a mile away, but still, that's half a mile they have to walk through the streets to get to my house.  Across a busy road and a school and sardine-packed houses.  Silly animals. 

My Big Garden Dreams

It's been quite a while since I last blogged.  Again.  I have a habit of doing that sort of thing; one minute I'm totally into something, and the next I don't want anything to do with it for months or years at a time.

Like gardening.  Around September, I'm usually getting pretty sick of gardening.  Which is ridiculous, because that's when so many of my plants come to harvest, but for some reason I just get bored with the whole thing.  Then around December, usually when the first catalog appears in the mail, I'm so ready to start gardening again that it's embarrassing.  "Weren't you just sick of gardening like yesterday?" I might hear from certain unnamed husband.  Yes.  I was sick of gardening.  And now I'm not.

I have so many big plans for my garden, which is silly because my garden is very tiny.  Somehow, on roughly a 40x70 foot piece of backyard (that's very shady in one corner and has the house shadow during half the day in the rest of the yard), I've managed to plant and grow:

2 apple trees
4 blueberry bushes
2 five foot long raspberry brambles
1 2x4 foot strawberry patch
4 4x4 foot raised vegetable beds
1 1x16 foot raised vegetable bed
1 2x4 foot raised vegetable bed
As many veggie buckets as I can find space for
Two pretty nice flower gardens
Not to mention room for a swing and a clothes line

Here's a bad drawing of what it looks like.

My back yard

As you can see, it's quite cramped.  The driveway abuts the neighbor's property, but we do have about five feet on the other side of our house of ground where I put my strawberries, a small veggie garden and a patch of raspberries.  And yes, the flowers and compost at the very back of the yard are actually partially off of my property.  But the house behind ours is condemned, so whatevs.  I don't think anyone will mind too much.

So yeah, small city garden with big country dreams.  I keep looking at the catalogs and dreaming about what I wish I could do.  I wish I could put an arbor above the entryway for my main garden and grow grapes on it.  I wish I could have a greenhouse or hoop house to grow peppers and melons.  I wish I could grow pumpkins or winter squash.  But I have to face the fact that I have a small shady yard and that I have to be happy with what I have right now.

One of the more major things I'm doing next year is planting new raspberries.  The last couple winters have been killers in our area.  2013/2014 was what they call an open winter; we had almost no snow at all.  Which is great, except it was also extremely cold.  We got down to -15 or lower for weeks, and the ground froze five feet deep.  That killed my raspberries to the ground.  They did miraculously send up new shoots, but being summerbearers, that meant that I would have to wait until the following summer to get any berries.  Well, the winter of 2014/2015 was equally cold, except it also had record breaking amounts of snow.  I think we had four feet of heavy packed snow in our back yard, which protected the bottom part of the canes but the parts that were above the snow died off.  The hard winters were especially rough for the patch on the north side of the garage, and they started dying off from some kind of disease shortly after spring came around.  I decided that I was tired of dealing with harsh winters and raspberries that weren't up to the challenge, so I pulled up all those canes, dug in a lot of really good soil amendments, and planted some runner beans there to help boost the soil fertility.

The raspberry plot after adding lots of good stuff

I read about a cool new raspberry that Cornell University bred a few years back called Double Gold.  It's a blushed gold everbearer raspberry with high disease resistance, designed for cooler regions (Cornell is afterall in NY state, just like me).

Double Gold raspberry

There's a nursery that Cornell had grow it for them that's actually just an hour's drive from here, so I'm totally thinking about driving up there instead of paying $20 shipping.  The cool thing about everbearer raspberries is that they produce on first year canes.  As in, they grow a cane and then berries form on it the same year.  Whereas summerbearer canes, like the ones I have, grow canes one year and then produce berries on it the next summer, which is ok as long as the canes don't die back every winter!

I'm such a rambler.  I really meant for this to be a short post with some ideas for my garden next year, but I've already gone on a ton!  So maybe I'll shorten things up a little.

I managed to save a lot of seeds last year, so I really don't need to buy many.  I do want to try a couple new varieties, though.  My plans for new plants are:

 Cherokee purple tomato

Dragon's Tongue

New York Early 

Cosmic Purple

Not actually new, but I need more

Hidatsa Sheild

Sweet Pickle

I haven't really decided on lettuce yet, but I would like to try a crisphead type (iceburg) to go with my green towers romaine I already have.  I need to get some shelling peas too, but that's one of those things were it doesn't seem to matter what variety you get because they're all the same.  

So those are some rough plans so far.  I'm still dreaming about the greenhouse and the grape arbor, but I guess those will have to wait a while until we can buy our country home. 

Wall-o-Awesome

Over the long, dark days of winter, I found myself reading an unusual blog.  Somehow, through one of those long link clicking trails, I'd stumbled upon a blog called Ask Jackie on the Backwoods Home website.  She's such a cool lady!  She answers all kinds of canning questions, plus she blogs a lot about her life as a homesteader in zone 3 Minnesota.  I think I spent about three weeks reading through her entire blog, and ended up with strong desires to start canning and longing for my own farm and chickens.

One thing that caught my attention while reading through several years of her blog was how she uses a product called wall-o-waters to get her tomatoes out soon enough to get a decent harvest.  Living in Minnesota and having a pretty short season, I assume this is just about the only way she can get a good harvest.  I assumed, having been gardening and homesteading for several decades, that she wouldn't be using them unless they really worked, so I decided I'd check them out myself. 

I'd actually heard of wall-o-waters before, but I guess I figured they weren't worth the effort of expense.  I mean, so they give you a little head start, so what?  But when I read up on them, I found out that you can actually start your plants 6-8 weeks early!  And then I started thinking about how that would effect my harvest.  In our part of NY, I can put tomatoes in around the end of May, and don't get any ripe tomatoes until, at the earliest, the beginning of August.  Our last frost date is around the middle of October, but I usually tear the tomatoes down about a week before then just so I can get everything to bed before bad weather comes.  To make things easy, we'll call that two months of harvest.  I got about 30 pounds of tomatoes last year.  If the wall-o-waters give me another month of harvest, that means I could conceivably see a 50% increase in my tomato yields.  Holy cow! 

This is, of course, just speculation, but the thought of all those tomatoes was just so tempting.  I had originally planned on only getting one 3-pack of the walls, but Chad convinced me to get enough to protect all 8 of my plants.  (I accidentally ordered four packs instead of three, so now I have four extra to experiment with.)  Only time will tell if I'll actually get another month of harvest.

I actually ended up buying a knock-off brand by Gardeneer called Season Starters because, at the time I bought them, they were only $11 for a package of three (whereas the wall-o-waters were $17 for a similar pack of 3). 

I can tell you already, after a week and a half, that these things are awesome.  The weekend before last, so April 19th, we were having some great weather; it was in the 60s and 70s, and the soil was very warm.  I saw in the forecast a week and a half of very cold weather.  I knew that I could plant the tomatoes that day, five weeks before our last frost date (I had originally planned on putting them out four weeks before the last frost date), or I would have to wait two more weeks because the soil would be too cold.  So I decided to put these walls through the ultimate test.

The tomatoes before I planted them.

I got the tomatoes in the raised beds, and then proceeded to fill up the walls with water.  That's not too hard as long as you have a bucket to put the walls around while you fill them, and a decent hose (and patience).  I was worried for a bit that they would be too big to fit in my square foot garden, but I was eventually able to convince an 18 inch circle to fit into a 12 inch square just fine.  I then tied up the tops with some nylon twine and waited for the cold weather to hit.  And boy did it.

You have to understand that even in western NY, a snow storm in late April is pretty crazy.  

The temps went down into the 40s on Tuesday that week, then into the 30s on Wednesday and Thursday, with at least three nights into the 20s with bitterly cold winds.

I went out and checked the walls daily.  The tomatoes, despite my desperate fears, were fine.  The air inside the walls was frigid and damp, but there was no frost damage to the plants.  On the first cold night, Chad and I went out at 9PM with hot water bottles to put into the walls next to the plants; no luck.  There was no room at all to put the bottles inside, and in fact, I ended up nearly crushing the one plant while trying.  So instead, we laid the bottles between walls.  By that time, the water was starting to freeze pretty good, and we had just enough time to get the bottles out there and run back inside before frost bite started setting in.  I got very little sleep that night, worrying about my plants and what I'd do if they died.  I kept telling myself that I could just buy starts from the nursery, but that didn't ease my worry at all; after all, most of my plants were heirlooms and hard to find varieties.

The next  morning, I went out with several gallon jugs full of hot water to place around the walls, hoping to help thaw the frozen water and keep the plants safe.  They were fine!  The water wasn't even frozen any longer, and the tomatoes had survived with no problems.  I was shocked!  Dumbfounded!  Amazed  by the power of water, and the determination of my tomatoes to survive.  For the next few days, I hunkered down inside and decided not to worry about the tomatoes.  I left the extra water out there as insurance, but didn't refill the bottles with hot water after that first night.

Then this week, the weather started thinking happier thoughts and turned warm again.  I opened the walls up to let some fresh air in, and to get a good peek at how everyone was doing.  Despite spending a frigid week inside tiny green cells, it looks like everyone is fine; and not only that, bet I'm positive they've all grown by at least an inch or possibly more!  Can you believe that?

My side garden tomatoes with the added insurance bottles.

A peek in at one of the beef tomatoes.

The main garden.  I added two extra walls to start early squash in.

Look at how happy this cherry tomato looks!

I still have yet to see where this will lead, as far as harvest goes.  But if they're doing this well at 3-1/2 weeks before the last frost, I can only imagine what they're going to look like by the end of May, when I would normally plant out my tiny tomatoes.  Will I get tomatoes by the fourth of July?  Wouldn't that be cool!

As a bonus of accidentally buying too many walls, I'm going to start some summer squash early to see how they do.  I set up the walls yesterday to help warm up the soil, and plan on planting the seeds this weekend sometime. 

Garden Review

It's April, and in western NY, that means it's time to get outside and get digging.  It's pretty muddy out, though, so every time I go out to the yard, I have to wear these:

And I'm out every day, because I'm just so excited about the return of spring.  The flowers are blooming, the birds are singing, the earth is greening.  The hill sides are even turning from brown to red as the tree buds swell and ready for opening. 

I suppose I should back up a bit and mention last year's garden, before I jump ahead into this year.  We had a nasty winter in 2013-2014.  It was not only incredibly cold (many weeks of -10 degree weather with up to -40 degree wind chills), but it was what they call an open winter; there was hardly any snow on the ground.  Combining those two things wrecks a lot of havoc on nature.  Many plants died; I lost my dwarf  blueberries, my Russian red kale, my raspberries died down to the ground, and our chock cherry even died back a bunch.  On top of that mess, we had a very cold and rainy summer.  It seemed like it rained every other day.  I didn't have to water but once a week, whereas in a normal summer, I have to water every day. 

Despite all that, my garden did remarkably well!  I got the best tomato crop I've ever gotten, even though everyone else in the area was having a terrible tomato year.

That's a 1.3 pound ox heart tomato.

Not all of  my plants did as well as my tomatoes, but it was a successful year, all around.  Because I'm a huge nerd and I love numbers and spread sheets, I kept track of how much produce I harvested and multiplied it by how much we'd pay for it if we'd bought it in the store.  By year's end, I'd harvested $356.77 worth of fresh produce.  I call that a success. 

The winter we had in 2014-2015 was just as cold as the year before (actually, it was colder; we had the coldest February on record, seriously), but the difference is that we had a ton of snow.  I think at its deepest, the snow was probably three feet high; of course, that's not counting the snow drifts or the places Chad piled up the snow as he shoveled it (probably 5 feet high at the tallest).  The snow was a huge pain when we had to shovel it, but it did a lot of good for the garden.  It provided a lot of protection to plants and kept the ground from freezing so deeply (or at all, in some places).  Plus, I hear old timers call snow white fertilizer because of the tasty things it leaves behind as it melts.  I'm not entirely sure what it leaves behind, but I tend to believe old timers.

I've been super anxious for spring to get here.  I have lots of lovely plants in the basement going, gearing up to get planted in the next month or two:

Lettuce, coleus, petunias, and catnip.

Tomatoes, kale, onions, peppers, and unsprouted cabbage.

A close up of my tomatoes.

And a close up of my peppers!

I'm experimenting with wall-o-water type things this year.  They're a water filled ring that you put around your tomatoes (or other plants) so that you can set them out early.  The water collects and holds solar heat through the day, and then that heat keeps the plants from freezing to death at night.  I'm planning on setting the tomatoes out four weeks early, which I hope should give me a much bigger harvest!  And I figure if I kill off my tomatoes by accident, well, that's ok.  It was a fun experiment, and I can always go buy starts at a nursery. 

I bought two new blueberry bushes to put in pots last fall.  I waited until the local nursery was having a half off sale.  They were out of the bushes I had originally wanted, but by dumb luck, they had forgotten that they had a bunch of Pink Lemonade blueberry bushes in the back!  Pink Lemonade blueberries are, well, pink blueberries, and I've been wanting some of those bushes for years now.  And now I have two!  I stuck them in the old blueberry barrels with some coffee grounds and hoped for the best.  We ended up pulling them into the garage midway through winter, because we were sure they wouldn't make it with -16 degree nights.  And, as far as I can tell, they have made it.  The buds are swelling and greening up nicely! 

I bought a couple blueberries at Home Depot last week, too, to act as pollinators.  The PL blueberries are mostly self pollinating, but the tag says they do better with some friends.  So I bought one Polaris, and one Chandler.  I ended up putting them in the front of my main garden.  It's hard to see them, but they're behind the green fencing on the right in this picture.

The main garden, all ready for planting.

And here's a close up of one of the new blueberry's buds, ready to open:

I had the best batch of compost last year that I've ever had, and I got a lot, too, so the gardens got a great boost last fall.  I only had a couple of soil tests left from last year, so I only got to test a couple of my squares this spring.  But from what I can see, that compost must have been pretty awesome stuff, because it looks like I have plenty of N, P, and K to last me through a good part of the season.  Woo!

Gee, there's lots of updates, actually.  I haven't even gotten to the apple trees.

Can you see them?  They're those sticks in the green fencing.

Last year I bought two dwarf apple trees; one Goldrush, and one Liberty.  They did surprisingly well last year; I even got one little apple forming, but Chad made me pick it off.  Sigh.  But he was right.  Apparently, if you let these dwarf apples fruit too soon, they'll stop growing any taller.  Their full size is 6-8 feet, and they're currently about 5 feet, but last year they were only about 3 feet.  I think I'll probably let them fruit a little this year.  I'm excited to try my own apples! 





The exciting thing about these apples is that I'm going to try growing them completely organic, which I hear is quite a challenge.  Obviously whoever said that didn't have access to Google!  I found tons of info on the best ways to grow apples organically, and I've already started getting to work on it.  I gave them a good spray of Neem oil as a dormant oil, to kill off any overwintering bugs, and once they fruit, I'm going to bag the baby apples so worms can't get access to them.  Take that, nature!  Plus, I have an amazing micro ecosystem in my yard.  Because I use no pesticides and no artificial fertilizers, I have a lot of natural predators that keep the pest population in check. 

Hmmm... anything else?  I guess nothing major.  I guess I'll finish this post off with pictures!

Our front garden.

Crocuses!

And one little snow drop.

My side garden with the strawberry bed (on the right).

The long box in the main garden.  That's garlic coming up.

Another view of the main garden.

Baby lupines coming up!

One of the raspberry brambles.

And our chives!

Happy spring, everyone!  Make sure to get outside whenever possible!