Who's Gardening?

So far all I've been doing is oohing and ahing over seed catalogs, but once the weather warms up I'll be gardening. I bought this house two years ago, and the front yard is mostly dirt, and the back yard is choked with weeds (and bare spots where even the weeds won't grow). I've set up three small raised beds. Two of them are already planted in garlic.

I haven't had much luck gardening so far. The garlic and the potatoes produce, but I haven't harvested a single zucchini, broccoli, tomato, or melon. But I'll keep trying. Homegrown is sooo much tastier than store bought.

I've also planted quite a few bulbs and a line of small lilac bushes by the fence. Every once in a while I go out there and admonish them to grow so they can form a screen between me and my nosy neighbors five feet on the other side of the fence. When I bought this house, it looked out over endless greenbelt. A week later I walked out into the backyard and there were duplexes as far as the eye could see, built on hills so they can look right over the fence into my backyard.

I also have a large peach tree, and I want to plant blueberries.

It sounds like you have a festival of hard work, education, and good eats in front of you!

The last place we lived was surrounded by fields when we moved in. Within a few years it was developed on three sides. Only the University-owned experimental fields and one family farm persisted in the form of a bubble surrounded by city.

How long have you lived in Colorado? Long enough to learn your local idiosyncracies? I grew up in my town, but moved back after having traveled. So I never learned to garden here. I'm learning that our major challenges include heavy clay soil which always has to be built up with humus, and extreme temperature fluctuations. All of this can be weathered (so to speak) by soil preparation. I imagine there are local strategies in use where you live that don't make it into any of the gardening books. How many really old gardeners do you know? ("I remember the late freeze of '89...")

At least you have garlic. I've never had luck with it, but someday....

The garlic bulbs I harvested were small, but they pretty much all grew. I'm still eating my garlic from last July. And I like garlic. Last fall I ordered 11 different varieties of garlic, plus planted a couple bulbs I already had. I thought they'd send me 1 or 2 bulbs of each variety I ordered. Ah, no, they sent me 3-4 bulbs of each. And each bulb had 8-10 cloves. So most of my garden is planted with garlic.

My soil looks something like beach sand. I've been adding compost, more each year, and I started a compost bin last spring. I should have some of my own compost to use this year. My peach tree didn't produce the first year I was here. I think maybe a late frost killed the blossoms. Last year, though, the tree produced tons of peaches. I had to fight the yellow jackets and the squirrels for them. I also have a cherry tree, but I think it's dying. :-(

I want to try some different kinds of paste tomatoes this year. I don't care for raw tomatoes in sandwiches or salads, but I love pasta sauce.

Ooh, I'm gardening, too! The house we bought 5 years ago has a lot of flower beds, but no room for veggies (herbs, yes, however). And then the maple tree got some wilt disease and I think all the soil is infected. But we have an asphalt slab out back, where a garage used to be, and my hubby built me two raised beds!! No dirt in them as yet (finished in the fall), but we can easily get some. So I'm going to be growing veggies again and I couldn't be happier.

I brought two blueberry bushes with me when we moved, which did really well last year, and I put in thornless blackberries a couple of years ago, which are growing maniacs.

So far for veggie seeds I've bought: broccoli, carrots, French breakfast radishes, romaine lettuce, and bush beans. I envy you the garlic and potatoes! I loooove fresh garlic. Usually in the summers I spend a small fortune at the farmer's market (definitely something I believe in, but it sure isn't cheap!). This year will be different.

yum yum yum yum happy happy happy

Things are actually popping up in my garden already! The crocuses are starting to push their way above the soil surface, and the dianthus is greening up. The peach tree and lilac buds are getting big.

I'm thinking of putting some raspberry bushes at the extreme end of my back yard. I love raspberries, and I actually want something thorny there by the fence. If anyone decides they want to jump the fence into my yard (I have low life neighbors on that side), and they jump into a thorn bush, well...(hee hee hee).

And I've pretty much decided where I'm going to put the blueberry bushes.

I have a whole bunch of daffodils coming up in the sunniest spot, but I think they may just be confused by the weather. A long time ago, I found a 5-year gardening calendar, which was great -- you could write down what you did when, and see it year by year. Alas, they're no longer in print, and office calendars are way too ugly to use! Maybe a five-year diary, if I can find one that's a normal size and doesn't come with a tiny lock.

The irises have been trying to come up for a while, too, which is worrisome. No crocuses or snowdrops yet, although the forsythia is starting to bud!

Every year since I began gardening, I've started a new document in Word that I call Planting Calendar (Year). Every time I do something or notice something growing, I note it in the calendar. It's not anything fancy, but it does the trick. After several years, I'll have a decent idea of when things start to come up or ripen in my area. Also, it might serve to note what difference global warming is making. I remember when I got married in 1976, I chose May 9 because that's when the lilacs are in full bloom. Last year I noticed lilacs blooming in the middle of April. Now I got married in Illinois, and I now live in Colorado, so that might be why the difference. But several years of garden journaling might show what kind of effects may be due to warming trends.

Hi, Janet; Hi, Zookeeper! I was offline due to Comcast error for awhile, but I think we're all straightened out now!

Three cheers for berries! Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

The house we moved into has grape vines which produced copiously even though we ignored them. I made tons of grape jelly which didn't set, so we use it as ice cream syrup. (I'm very bad at jelly, but I'm still learning.) We also have raspberries which got eaten by Japanese Beetles.

Last fall I I re-dug and re-mulched the planted bed in front of our house and put in a small strip of new bed on the other side of the yard. I pulled a million Irises out, which I relocated, and replanted all the old crocuses, daffodils, hyacinths, etc. plus lots of new tulips. My mom grew up in Holland Michigan and tulips are still among my favorite flowers. I enjoy them best to excess.

Usually, with our extreme temperature fluctuations around the equinoxes, the bulbs start to come up early. I think the extra mulch has protected them, because I haven't seen that happening yet.

Either that or I killed them!!! I'm so paranoid in February.

If you start to dig new beds too early around here, you become a potter instead of a gardener. I'm very eager to start digging but older, wiser heads have warned me. I'm craftily planning to stick the lettuce and cilantro seeds ON TOP OF THE BULBS in the beds I made last year, cover them against the late freezes, and eat them all up before the bulbs flower.

Then, when it's finally warm enough to put new beds in, I'm going to move out a bunch of day lily bulbs in the only sunny spot in the back yard. If we have nothing else we'll have tomatoes.

Janet, is there a remedy for infected soil? It's too bad that since the tree is doomed (is it?) you can't use the space and sunlight for new growing areas.

Zookeeper, what kind of varieties are you putting in for paste? Does anybody like cherry tomatoes? I don't, because they grow like weeds once they get established. But last year I had a volunteer that grew Sunshine Cherry Tomatoes and they tasted like candy. I may have those again, if I dare.

BTW, if it wasn't already clear, I'm learning to preserve food. I've had good luck with pickles and sauces, but I'm scared to go the whole way and get a pressure canner and do beans. Once my jelly sets maybe I'll have more faith in my ability to follow instructions.

21 more says til St. Patrick's Day, the traditional date to plant potatoes in our area!

Oh, also...
Re: planting calendars. The woman who ran the local organic plots a few years back (where I gardened before I had space), showed me her notes once.

Across the top of the page were listed up-and-down columns labeled "Sowed indoors, sowed outdoors, germinated, began hardening, planted outdoors, thinned, etc." Basically every event in the life of the plant, finishing up with harvest dates and yields in pounds or ounces.

Then on the side of the page she listed the number and varieties of plants she started, in chronological order. Since she staggered her crops, she might have a new entry for peas, say, every week for several weeks.

So by reading DOWN you found the specific instance of a crop of a specific variety, and then by reading across you could read when everything happened to it. By writing extremely tiny notes she got her entire garden recorded across two notebook pages (full page spread), and by turning pages she could compare one year to another.

Uh, I TRIED to do this. Either I took the notes out TO the garden so I could make notes on site (muddy, wet, indecipherable) OR I would make field notes and then recopy them into the tidy notebook when I got home (Information incomplete, time consuming).

One thing I added: I noted the approximate Walmart price of the amounts I harvested! It added up to several hundred dollars over the course of one summer and fall. I learned that baby lettuces and mesclun, and fresh herbs, were the most expensive of the retail items I was able to raise cheaply. It made me feel rich, I can tell you! But as far as a resource I could use from year to year for planting advice, it was a wash.

Someday I WILL make good notes, I WILL make good jelly, I WILL reach that elusive goal weight, and I WILL publish a novel!

Just not all in one day. Sigh.

I really tried to process the batches of peaches I got last year, but I don't think I did a very good job. Most of them rotted before I could process them, those that didn't fall and go splat on the ground before I got home, or that were ruined by squirrels or yellow jackets.

But a lot of them I sliced and froze, and I thought I did it successfully until I tried to thaw them out.

What I did was wash them in Fit, blanche them in boiling water, let them sit in an ice water bath, peel them, slice them, soak them in a solution of lemon juice, honey, and water to keep them from turning brown, and then put the slices into freezer bags and then into the freezer.

But this winter I tried thawing some for peach crisp, and they began to turn brown before they were even thoroughly thawed. I cooked them into the crisp, anyway, but they weren't as sweet as I expected them to be. And a decent peach is supposed to be so juicy and sweet that you can feel it down to your toes.

I did something wrong, though I'm not sure what. This year I guess I'll try something different.

I think St. Paddy's is too early here to plant potatoes. Our frost date is around May 18, and I thought potatoes went in only a couple weeks before the frost date.

But I've begun cleaning out my plant room so I can get my Brussels sprouts and broccoli started.

I've never tried potatoes myself, but I know St. pat's is the traditional local start date. Everything else is mother's day, which is still way too early. One year we had a killing frost on memorial day! There are two strategies for dealing with our bizarre fluctuations: hilling and covering everything, and overplanting. If half of it is going to die anyway you might as well plant too close and save the strongest specimens for seed. It's brutal, and I hate it. I'd rather just keep everything covered up in a nice, soft, raised bed.

Oh, the third strategy is replanting everyhting in June. I hate that one too, but I did it one year after bunnies ate me down to bare dirt because it was my first year and I didn't fence. Silly me.

The peach strategy SOUNDS good. Were the peaches sweet before they went in the freezer? Maybe they absorbed the flavor of the bag?

Re: peaches, I think I would just blanch and peel them. (Oh, who am I kidding, I'd just chuck them into the freezer.) We freeze strawberries successfully, but then we only use them in frozen drinks. But -- hey! -- just did a quick Google and found someone who freezes them whole and says it works great. http://www.countryroads.net/countrycook/story.cfm?STORY_id=405 Who knows?

Cobbler, mmm. I don't like baking, but I fell in love with cobbler last year. Nectaries (bought) and my own blackberries. OMG, so good. And my husband doesn't like cooked fruit, so all for me!!

That's what I've been doing -- replanting. I'll plant stuff at the appropriate time. Two weeks later I plant again because the flea beetles have eaten it down to dust. Two weeks after that I'll plant again because the squirrels dug it up and either tore it apart or made off with it. I was just in my garden a couple minutes ago, and the squirrels have dug up at least half a dozen garlic cloves. Last year I tried three times to plant zucchini. I finally got it in in the middle of July, and right about the time that it started to develop little zukes, the frost killed it. This year I'm going to plant it, spray it with Pyola, then put a garden cloche over it (and a brick on top of the garden cloche). I'm determined to get zucchini boats.

The weeds have all survived the winter. They're popping up green and trying to choke out the few spring flowers that are trying to grow.

Ah! Squirrels! Hate them, with their long tails and their stupid, twitchy noses!

They eat everything. They were eating the onions and garlic in the back yard--fortunately, next door had an old wire mesh hamster run that makes a very good squirrelproof cage. So we caged up all the bulbs--too late for some of the flowers, unfortunately--and they started eating the new shoots on the raspberry bushes. Off to the allotment (so far happily squirrel-free) and into the ground with the garlic and onions--my back didn't thank me for that--and the raspberries go under the cage.

So far they've not tried to eat the gooseberries. Perhaps they are a bit too spiky.

Janet, your description of your cobbler is interfering with my weight loss goals! ;-) Jim, the squirrels in your neighborhood must have very bad breath.

It's a cliche that it wouldn't be so bad if the squirrels would just take ALL of SOME of the harvest instead of SOME of ALL of the harvest.

We've had yet another winter storm in the central midwestern U.S., but I can't complain because points north got it so much worse. NEVERTHELESS, on Sunday we will get a thaw and then it will be LETTUCE DAY.

Good point. Perhaps a better long-term solution would be to leave out even more garlic for them, so all the male squirrels are plagued with horrible halitosis and none of the lady squirrels will breed with them.

"Let me guess. He always cries at weddings, right?"
"Och, nay, na at all. 'E always cries at good plot exposition."
- Order of the Stick

Squirrels eat raspberry plants, too? I was hoping that something in a nice, thorny bush would make them think twice.

Squirrels are not cute. Not at all. Last year they dug up one of my prize irises. Two days later, I found the rhizome. It had been chewed on, killed, and then the squirrel took the trouble to bring it back and dump the dead iris back in its hole. That's evil.

Today I went out and sprinkled fox urine granules over my garlic patch. Thought that was worth a shot.

I wouldn't mind if the squirrels ate an occasional peach. The thing that tears me apart is that they have to dig a claw or take a bite out of one, drop it on the ground, move on to the next and take a bite out of that, then drop that one on the ground, and so on and so on until they've killed 20 peaches. And sometimes they'll pick unripe peaches and toss them on the ground without even bothering to take a bite. They just ruin them.

Looks like no blueberries or raspberries this year. I can't afford them. I've maxed out my credit cards. I only have a month or two of expenses left. And I simply cannot find a job. They're just not out there. In four months, I haven't had a single interview. I don't want to join the escalating foreclosures in Colorado, but I'm running out of time, money, and luck. I just don't know what I'm going to do, and it's hard not to wake up every day massively depressed. :-(

Wow, I had no idea that squirrels would eat garlic cloves. You must have some mighty hungry squirrels round your parts! I am not a fan of the squirrels, myself, but so far -- knock loudly on wood! -- they've left my flowers and bulbs alone. Perhaps because there are lots of gardens here, so lots to choose from.

I had a community garden in Boston, and it was overrun with rats. Growing tomatoes was the most depressing thing -- the rats would chew on them on the plant itself. Nothing like seeing a pretty, red tomato only to turn it around and be confronted with rat bite marks. Ugh. At a different community garden, someone used to grow corn, and the rats would scurry up the stalks and chow down.

How's that for a diet plan? : )

Zookeeper, can you temp for an agency or something? Or work in a garden center? Anything is better than nothing, and some money coming in is at least a start. Good luck!

Temping wouldn't pay nearly as much as I need to pay my bills and my mortgage. They really don't pay much over minimum wage here. I figured my time would be better spent staying home writing and looking for a real job.

I found out that a friend from my dojo is a technical recruiter this week, so I sent him my resume and he's now looking for a position for me.

And my crocuses are blooming! I found a couple yellow crocuses blooming in front by my gate. Yay! Spring is here!

I put in a row of mesclun right on top of the bulbs, and I saw their little snouts poking up from under the mulch! I can move those seedlings into new beds, when it's warm enough to make some. Shouldn't bother the bulbs at all. I also put some cilantro in an empty, sunny spot. It's awful early, but the bed is raised and covered so we'll see.

Has anyone else heard this vermin-themed bit of garden folklore?

"One for the blackbird, one for the mouse,
One for the rabbit, and one for the house."

Except they left out the squirrel, and the deer, and the raccoon, and the muskrat...

Zookeeper, that's great news that you have a contact! I think I remember you mentioning it on Nonny's thread. We are all pulling for you!

I forgot to mention: RATS! EWWWW!!!! That is something I've never had to contend with, that i know of. What a fun-killer! What did you do to stop them? Did mesh work? I can't think of anything that would keep our a rat, except maybe an armored car.

The rhyme I remember started out, "one for the blackbird, one for the crow...." I can't remember the rest of it.

I have bunnies. I see their tracks in the snow. I also lose peaches to the yellow jackets. I am not going to go head to head with a crazed stinging insect and several hundred of his closest friends. And I found a tiny, dead mouse over in my raised bed area. I don't know if it was a tiny species or a baby mouse.

I am so glad I don't have rats, though. Some of those things get as big as a housecat. I've handled lab rats and mice before, but that's different from the wild variety. At least I don't have deer this close in to the city. A lot of people near the foothills have deer getting into their gardens and helping themselves. They can jump six foot fences, I think.

I've found that Liquid Fence and Hot Pepper Wax help best against the squirrels. I tried sprinkling some fox urine crystals on my garlic beds, but that seemed to encourage the squirrels. The next day I went out and there were about a dozen holes dug in my garlic patch.

Btw, I have a Brussels sprout seedling poking up. I'm planting them in soil plugs and putting them under the lights in my spare room. One's popping up. So I planted another seed. I'm staggering them. This year I really want to get Brussels sprouts bigger than peas.

I also ordered a seed sprouting kit. Now I just have to get some seeds. Broccoli sprouts are supposed to be even better for you than broccoli itself. Some sprouts, a little mesclin, some spinach...yum.

Oh, and btw, spring WAS here, then it left again. Saturday it got up to 74 degrees and broke a heat record. Sunday we had several inches of snow and it didn't get above 34. From summer to winter within a day.

I've given up on vegetables. We have 2 acres of wilderness on a flood plain in the middle of the city, and the wildlife is--representative, shall we say? Squirrels, raccoons, skunks, groundhogs, hares, chipmunks, mice, voles, deer, bats... Last week I even saw a fox stroll past my window. And that's only the mammalian population. And they all like my cooking. So my gardening is mainly done using pruners. Still, our blackberry harvest is pretty reliable. If we wanted to eat game every day, we could probably manage that. I expect the RSPCA might object, though.

Zookeeper, that's exactly our situation here. Yesterday was a record high, today is rain turning to sleet, tomorrow is four to eight inches of snow. But it won't be long!

Tessa, which city is this, do you mind if I ask? I know what you mean about gardens being a (ahem) "protein source." A few snares and a cold heart would solve the pest problem AND the meat-budget problem in one fell swoop, wouldn't it? And if we knew a furrier, we might have a nice little side business selling raw material for collars and linings.

Still praying for that job contact to come through, Zookeeper.

Cheryl

It's in the 40s here, and I saw my first snowdrop of the season! I have terrible luck with them, but at least these have come up. In some sunnier, more sheltered areas, I've seen a few crocuses out, but mine are still hibernating.

There's nowt to be done about rats. Luckily, I don't have them here. We have skunks, and as my father-in-law says, "Where you have skunks, you don't have rats." I just make it a habit to not wander around the garden at dusk . . . But in my old garden, the rat-riddled one, there was just nothing to be done. They weren't even afraid of people. It was horrible.

I haven't started any seeds yet, planning to just do them all outside. St. Patty's Day is pea-planting time, isn't it? Maybe next year.

I like that rhyme, and I've heard something similar, but can't remember what anymore!

Pray harder, Cheryl! ;-)

I've heard that squirrel stew can be pretty good, and I AM running low on supplies....

But honestly, I don't want to go through the cleaning and skinning and all that, and I'm sure those little rodents are covered in fleas, ticks, lice, mites, etc., a veritable jungle of pests on top of the pest!

I've seen bunny tracks but almost never see the bunnies themselves. Hmm. Nocturnal bunnies?

I've started planting seeds indoors. I have one Brussels sprout seed sprouting.

I also sent away for seed for sprouts. Brocco sprouts are supposed to be even better for you than broccoli itself.

Still nothing on the job front.

Very silly of me, but I bought some seeds yesterday.

We're surrounded by acres of woods, and well populated with deer. Deer who like to confound all the rules about they supposedly do not eat. Sigh.

Still, every year, I keep buying and trying. I did have some success last season with a garlic,egg, and water spray to try to keep the deer off some plants. I've just run out and sprayed again, but all the rain we got probably washed much of it off.

I have a very pretty geranium that I brought in from my deck in the fall, and it's doing great. Doesn't even appear to have any bugs on it. Actually, it looks a lot better than it did last year on the deck. It led a hard life there.

And that's it for gardening. My maroon tiny iris bloomed yesterday, and I have several batches of snowdrops and snow crocuses (the small early ones) open. Some tete-a-tete daffodils will probably bloom next week.

My first crocus bloomed yesterday! That definitely means spring is on the way, even though it's supposed to be icy and cold this weekend. I laugh at the ice and cold! Hah!

You could put the squirrels in the freezer to kill the parasites. That's what my father-in-law does with the pheasants. (don't ask) Funny, I was just reading about squirrel stew a couple of weeks ago -- it was called something else, though, but I instantly knew what it was. I don't remember now! You could try looking up "squirrel" on epicurious.com and seeing if anything comes up.

Okay, okay, I'll stop now. I'm just so darn excited about the spring!

I am a sucker for a seed catalog. I'm going to try some new tomato seeds this year, and next month I'll get my potato minitubers. Every year I clear more area or put up more raised beds. I still have one raised bed still in its box. That goes up this year. After that, though, I go DIY. The price on the raised beds I order went up $10. Time to get some boards, angle brackets, and a screwdriver.

And a couple of the places I ordered from sent some free seeds, too.

Pretty much all of my crocuses, tulips, daffodils, and irises are showing signs of life. Even my lilacs have leafed out below the fall leaves I heaped over the roots. Much warmer there, I guess.

After a record high on Saturday, it's been cold all week, so I haven't been out in the garden much. I've been hunkered down in front of a heater reading seed catalogs (and other stuff, like books).