garden update | Hole in the Fence

Posts Tagged ‘garden update’

Summer garden: update 3

Posted in organic gardening, tagged cantaloupe, garden update, melons, photos, transplanting, wheelbarrow on June 2, 2009| 3 Comments »

The following post was made possible by my new (used) wheelbarrow. My mom, incredible bargain shopper that she is, bought it for $5 at Goodwill. Normal retail value: about $80. She’s a genius.

It was a canalouplantation weekend. I think I’m going to write a song using that word, which I just totally made up by combining cantaloupe and transplantation. But you already knew that, didn’t you? Because you’re one of our readers: smart, funny, and beautiful.

The melons (I’m assuming cantaloupes, but they’re all volunteers, so they could be pumpkins for all I know) were taking over the mound I had assigned to them. I had to regulate.

Last week I pulled a bunch of the babies and gave them away to a group of organic gardeners who meet at ECOSLO.

This week I had to move several of the bigger to a place where they have room to roam. A place without fences or walls. A place where they could be free.

Otherwise known as the south side of the house.

I made three mounds of the (not nearly as rich) dirt, added some Black Forest compost, and soaked them with Kaia’s help. Which means the mud ended up everywhere instead of just on my hands. My exposed skin is now baby soft.

Then I brought over the errant plants and reassigned them to their new homes, where the Buffalo roam, and the skies are not cloudy all day…

Today, they’re looking a bit…blah. Fingers crossed that they make it. In my opinion, one can never have enough [insert favorite melon here].

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Summer garden: update 1

Posted in organic gardening, tagged garden update, learning, saving money, sustainability on May 11, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Hi all!

It’s been three weeks since we planted, and the garden is officially taking off! Here’s a list of everything we put in the ground:

In the big bed:

Tomatoes
Anaheim chili
Cilantro
Garlic

In the right bed:

Carrots
We were also going to plant leaf lettuce where the spinach is, but the spinach will not die

In the left bed:

Sugar snap peas
Beans
Zucchini
Cucumber

In the mound:

Watermelon
Cantaloupe
Pumpkin

Out of sight:

Potatoes

Since water is the next big issue on the horizon (if it isn’t here already), we’re looking for ways to conserve water. The straw keeps the soil moist and, as a side benefit, it keeps the birds off my shoots until they’re hardy enough to resist—I hope. We already lost a couple of pea sprouts to a perceptive winged assassin before I laid the straw down. But that okay, because I left the packet of pea seeds outside to help identify where the seeds were—and all the seeds in the packet sprouted. Now we have more sprouts than we know what to do with. Anyone want some pea starts?

We also started a small container garden, to see how much someone living in an apartment might expect to produce. Right now we just have a single tomato plant, but we’ll expand this week.

We’re going to be covering the summer planting in detail in episode 5, which I should have done in about a week. Wish me luck.

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Garden Update—Week 10

Posted in organic gardening, tagged garden update, kids, knowledge, photos, recipes, winter gardening on February 5, 2009| Leave a Comment »

The update is here! (I’m saying this like I’ve POSTED other updates to see if I can fool you. How’s it working?)

Right now we’re getting about 16 oz of leaf lettuce and several radishes a week, and we’re growing enough bok choy to open a small Chinese restaurant. I’m looking forward to harvesting the spinach next!

The bulb onions are taking forever, which we expected. So are the carrots, which we didn’t. I WANT BABY CARROTS!

The nasturtiums and marigolds are coming in nicely, though we haven’t had any real bug problems anyway. Something likes the bok choy, but only a little bit, so I’m okay with sharing. Plus, it’s the bok choy. We have PLENTY.

When we were out watering last week, Logan, my ever-vigilant son, pulled up several of the head lettuce shoots thinking they were weeds. Oh well, they went very nicely in the afternoon salad.

My only concern at the moment is the broccoli. It’s looking a bit stringy and anemic. Waiting to see if broccoli start off as gangly youth before they grow into strapping young stalks.