weekend update

On Saturday Stacy and I hit the Garden Fair. Vendors were much the same as previous years. Cloudy, windy, and cold outside. I came home with 2 packs of seeds from Seeds of Change (lupine and pumpkin) and 2 tomato plants (Sungold cherry tomatoes). I hope I don't kill them.











Sunday I finished sewing my "potato bag," and planted the spuds. I ended up buying a roll of non-woven weed barrier fabric on my way home from the Garden Fair. I was hoping for something woven, but that was the "professional grade" weed barrier — too expensive and only came in ginormous rolls. Ultimately, I think I made the bag too big. Plus, I'm worried the dog will get into them, she was curious. Maybe I should ... I dunno ... move them to a regular planter? Sigh.

straw bale beds

A few weeks back, I picked up a copy of Fine Gardening from the magazine swap rack at the Santa Fe Library. There was an article by Amy Stewart of Garden Rant about raised, straw-bale gardens. When I saw the article, the photo in it looked familiar. Then I remembered her recent post about having to wear "nice" clothes for video shoots about gardening:



Sure enough, there's a video with Amy talking about her straw bale garden. Some more digging (ha ha) turned up Amy's original post from back when she first started the straw bales. And a link from the video comments turned up this discussion thread started by a guy who calls himself "Strawbaleman." He shares lots of great photos of his gardens:







Maybe this could work in the side bed, along the south-facing wall.

seed starting today

The franken-seed-starting setup is back. Made even more ghetto fabulous this time with the addition of keg-party-style plastic cups.

From Baker Creek:
· TM190 - Al-Kuffa Tomato - 2 cups
· TM156 - Tess's Land Race Currant Tomato 2 cups
· TM178 - Roma Rio Grande Tomato (from last year) 1 cup
· HB101 - Genovese Basil 2 cups

From Seeds of Change:
· Zapotec Pleated Tomato (from last year) 1 cup

potato starts

My Red Ruby potato starts arrived today from Kitchen Gardens. They'll have to wait in the fridge until next weekend — we're off to Denver tomorrow.

Looks like I'll also have to run to Big Orange + get some landscape fabric to sew up into a potato bag.

trimmed the chamisas today

Probably should have done it about a month earlier, when we pruned the apricot. I tried to "listen to the chamisa," but they were ornery, and full of dead wood.

There was hacking.

2010 garden fair

This year's Santa Fe Master Gardeners Garden Fair is coming up. I'll have to see if Stacy wants to go again.