week(end) update

Tuesday I went to the farmers' market this week, in search of tomato plants. Turned out The Vagabond Farmers were selling starts there! They are farming at the Farministas space this year, so that's a nice bit of continuity. They didn't have any Robesons or Sungold, so I ended up getting a Black Krim (another black Russian type) and a Yellow Pear. I think they both have slightly longer growing times, so fingers crossed. I'll probably go to the farmers' market again this week and see if anyone has basil and/or marigolds and/or something for the front door pot. (Also planning on getting actual food.) Traditional tomato-plants-in-my-car photo:



Wednesday Put them out to harden off.

Sunday Planted tomatoes. Don't remember, but I must have finished the bottle of Superthrive Stacy gave me before she moved. Will need to get some more of that as well.


[click to embiggen]

Some details from the pano: volunteer dill growing from a crack in the flagstones, protected by pieces of firewood; chives are blooming; the culinary sage is also blooming, don't remember that ever happening before.

weekend update

As promised, The Tomato Lady posted earlier this week that it was time to finally take the row cover off! Man, were my tomatoes squarshed-looking. I tried to free a few ends, hopefully they will spread out some more. Plenty of flowers under there. The Sungold has set fruit and I even found two ripe ones waaaay in the back. We ate them.









I picked up a couple of sage plants and a shishito pepper plant at the Farmers' Market, they're doing ok.

weekend update

Saturday   I finally put the row cover on the two tomatoes. Basically wrapped the cages and secured it with mini binder clips. Italian parsley has croaked. Maybe I'll pick up a pepper plant at the Farmers' Market for that spot.



Set up some sprinklers in the yard. Plan to do several rounds of watering/weed germination/hoe under, then seed grass. Hit the bindweed with the hoe.

I also plugged in the coleus I picked up Friday night at Albertsons (sigh).





Sunday   Rain! And hail! In between showers, planted poppy mallow by the little patio retaining wall, and the leadwort in the front-door bed.







Planted the grass and put up some janky chicken-wire-and bamboo-stake nonsense to keep the dog out of it.





The east bed is looking pretty good (fingers crossed).

weekend update

Rain! Starting Thursday and going thru Monday, we had a series of afternoon thunderstorms that netted us 1.3 inches of rain over the past 5 days. Weird! But good!

Saturday, we went to the Farmers' Market, where I picked up 2 basil plants to replace the frost-killed ones from NM Plant Co. and 2 pepper plants (1 Lunchbox, 1 Jalapeño). Put the basil in the raised bed and the peppers in the side bed Saturday before the rain. Read later that the Tomato Lady recommends waiting to put out peppers until after June 1. Oh well. Maybe I'll rig up another set of foam things like I did for the tomatoes and hope that, plus the south-facing wall will help keep things warm enough.

New basil:



Peppers:



After planting the peppers and basil, Bram helped me hand-pull the Kochia and rub out the little red pigweed/Amaranth seedlings. The weeds are loving the extra rain (and before that, the watering for the grass plugs). The grass plugs are doing fine, if not spectacular. The clover mix is definitely popping. I'm debating whether or not I should rake up the straw, or leave it. Hopefully I can pull up the netting as soon as the clover gets tall enough to cover the straw. I'll be leaving the flagging tape to keep the dog out until things are pretty well established.



Sunday I took a trip over to Plants of the Southwest and picked up some starts: 6 Reiter's thyme; 3 Mexican evening primrose; 1 dill; and a half-pound bag of the Buffalograss/Blue Gramma yard mix. I'll fill in some bare spots later this summer. Dill went in the raised bed with the other herbs.

Dill and other basil:



Thyme went in around the yard flagstones (it's a creeper/groundcover, not edible as far as I know):




Primrose went in along the the little wing/retaining wall. I love primrose and how they self-sow and volunteer about. Maybe they'll establish a colony or something.



Out front, 2 of the 3 beardtongue penstemon seem to be failing. Bummer.

Robesons for dinner!

Picked the first two big Robesons. Made a giant caprese salad for dinner: smoked (Trader Joe's) and fresh (Montañita Coop) mozzarella; basil (Farmers' Market). Also, broiled, prosciutto-wrapped shrimp. We ate it all.


[Photo by Bram]

app plate with sungolds

Jim + Stacy + Bernice came over for dinner. Appetizer plate had: (clockwise from bottom right) sungold tomatoes; homemade pickled radishes (Farmers' Market); homemade rosemary-chipotle nuts (Sunflower bulk section); and hummus + pita chips (Trader Joe's).


[Photo by Bram]

tomatoes

The Sungold tomatoes I got at this year's Garden Fair are going crazy. It's been raining in the afternoons/evenings, and the drip hose kept things nice before that.



I've been buying Sungolds at the Farmers' Market the past couple of weeks. Looking forward to things getting ripe.

garlic!

Harvested the garlic this evening. Back in the fall, I took the last bulb in a bunch we bought last spring at the Farmers' Market and planted the cloves. So I have no idea what kind they are. They're small, but so were their "parents."

White House veggie garden

All the garden blogs have been atwitter with the news that there would be a vegetable garden on the White House lawn. And even those who scoffed that Michelle Obama was just doing a photo op (wearing dressy clothes and breaking sod with a rake?!?) at the official groundbreaking were all happy to see the FLOTUS in more appropriate (and grubby) clothes today:




[pix from the HuffPo style section, via GardenRant]

I know, I know, it's another photo op, but that's still pretty damn cool. The whole White House veggie garden thing is really great exposure for gardening in general, and those kids from Bancroft will probably remember the First Lady getting down in the dirt there with them all their lives. What a great way for those kids to learn about real food.

Just don't assume you need a White House staff or a lot of money or expensive equipment to grow some of your own food. I remember our huge veggie garden in Michigan. I'm pretty sure Mom + Dad planted it because we didn't have a whole lot of money, and growing your own was (and is) cheaper and better than most stuff in stores. I'm guessing most kids today don't know that. (Local exceptions of note: Monte del Sol charter school here in Santa Fe not only has a student-tended garden, but they also eat what they grow there for school lunches; Camino de Paz, a Montessori school up in Española, not only farms as part of the curriculum — the kids also sell the produce at the Santa Fe Farmers' Market.)

Sorry, this is kind of rambling and disconnected. The upshot: our new First Lady is pretty kickass.

compost bin

We started a compost pile after moving in, but it was never contained and properly started. So today, got some worms at the Farmers' Market in the morning, and some straw bales in the afternoon. The guys at the Feed Bin took one look at my 2-door, 1991 Sentra sedan and burst out laughing — I had bought eight bales for them to load. They crammed three in the trunk (left open), two in the back seat, and one in the front passenger seat. I had to go back for the other two (trunk). Good thing they're only four blocks away. The inside of the car was at least three inches deep in straw after I got everything unloaded. Spent a couple hours clearing out space for the bales around the existing pile of yard-clippings-and-mummified-lime-rinds crap, stacking the bales around the perimeter, turning over the contents, watering, and adding the worms to their new home.

Then I had to clean all that straw out of my car.