In the garden

I've been meaning to post some pictures from the garden for, oh, several months now. Here are a few pictures from today. Above and below, this is the flower garden I started this spring.

To give you an idea of how far we've come, this is what the space looked like last summer:

I've got three raised beds this year. There have been successes and failures, as is usually the case in gardening.
I've got lots of these squash below. The kids who sold the starts to me at a farmer's market said they were acorn squash, but they look more like patty pans to me. Either way...
An incomplete list of the produce I'm growing this summer: peas, chard, spinach, zucchini, pumpkins, corn, 5 varieties of tomatoes, potatoes, radishes, strawberries, onions, garlic, broccoli, cauliflower, red cabbage, and green beans. Happy harvesting!

Anna Smith Children's Garden

We stumbled upon this lovely Children's Garden a few days ago. What a great place to gain inspiration for our own garden! As you can see, Silas loved the been and sunflower tepee. This is a must for our garden next year:

It's a little washed out, but Silas is about to step on a hopscotch board:
Shots of the garden:

My strawberries are overtaking one of my raised beds, so Drew will build me a strawberry bed like this one (square upon square upon square upon square) for next year:

We've been talking about building some mason bee homes in order to attract them to the garden and increase pollination. We'll probably base ours on the ones we found at this garden:

Bamboo mason bee home:

Unidentified beautiful flowering tree:
And, ending this post with a non-plant picture: Same park, down through the forest to the beach, Silas shows off his hook arm (paper cup + straw), which he would not take off all day. Sometimes it's the simple things in life...

Strawberries and Butterflies

We're right at the peak of strawberry season. Yum! The garden grows bigger each year, and as strawberries are want to do, they have spread out from last year, giving us quite a few more berries this summer. Again, yum!
Earlier this spring, I noticed a chrysalis on one of the shrubs I was planning on transplanting. Not wanting to disturb or destroy it, I clipped off the branch it was on and Silas put it in his nature explorer box, that his Aunt Amy and Uncle Jeff gave to him for his birthday. Then, we waited. And waited. After a few weeks I began to wonder if the thing was ever going to hatch.
But as you can see, it did!
I identified it as a Lorquin's Admiral. Right after the picture below was taken, it flew up and away.
Good-bye pretty butterfly!

Golden

Our twelve foot tall sunflower, and it's slightly shorter neighbors, finally decided to open a week or so ago. The bees are happy about it, and so are we, but they took their merry time. I seriously thought we'd have a hard frost before they bloomed.

And here's my little preschooler, climbing in our lilac tree (or magic beanstalk, as Silas calls it).
So, there's a bit of sunshine for you to start your week off with :)

Garden Prelude

With my slug's pace in posting, it's almost impossible to show you an up-to-the-moment view of the garden. Will you settle for some within-the-last-couple-of-weeks pics? First up, Silas peers out from behind the beans. I just made a been and tomato dish with a few pounds of them yesterday.

Below: Yes, we will have a couple of pumpkins this October!

This is Silas' magic beanstalk. He is pointing up to the clouds in anticipation of how high he expects it to grow.

Broccoli:

This is the as-of-yet unknown flower that cropped up just about everywhere. It looks pretty in this picture, but trust me: it's not that great. The flowers are only open for a few hours in the morning. The rest of the day, it just looks kind of... blah. I think it might have to find it's way out of my garden, though I expect I will never be totally rid of it.
Soon, I will post more pictures of another much different garden that we visited with my parents, who are visiting from Wisconsin. Till then...

Lookin' up

Our sunflowers are already taller than Silas. We can't wait for them to bloom!
Also, the plants all around the sunflowers are an as of yet unidentified perennial that came up in late May. If anyone knows what it is, let me know! Here's a close-up:
If it flowers, it may be easier to identify and I might just fall in love with it. If it doesn't flower, I'll do my best to remove it. It's cropping up everywhere and seems to spread way-too easily.

Here's another one that was a mystery plant until I found a picture of it in a book on perennials, just yesterday:
It's acanthus, or bear's britches. Another interesting but fast spreading plant that will have to be kept in check.

And, that's your garden update for the day :)

Yield

One of the first things we did after moving to this house at the very end of March was build a raised bed so that I could get my veggies going. My humble little garden was not helped along by our cold, dreary, and seemingly endless spring weather. I made novice mistakes, putting out plants when it was still too cold. A pepper plant was lost as a result.

But summer really is hear now, and things have begun to perk up. One of my favorite things about veggie gardening is that when we want a salad, I simply go outside and pick an assortment of greens. Silas, as always, is my little helper.

He is very keen on picking peas and will eat them with gusto, pod and all.
We aren't the only ones who like to hang out in our garden:
Expect more garden-related postings as the veggie yield continues...

Let the gardening begin!

Despite the fact that we just bought a house and moved in just a month ago, I really wanted to jump on the veggie-gardening train and not miss out on it this year. So, Drew was kind enough to build me my first raised bed, which has now been completely planted (well, most likely, over planted). Since we are building over grass, I just put down cardboard (we have no shortage of that, for some reason :) and threw the top soil over it. The cardboard will biodegrade and kill the grass at the same time. Perfect!

I needed a bit more room than what one 4x6 bed could fit, however, and I got an idea from Mother Earth News to get some bags of topsoil, punch holes in them and sow seeds. It's working brilliantly so far. The only downside is that it involves plastic, which does not biodegrade. Not a fan. But, it will kill the grass, and next year, the 4 top soil bags will become raised bed #2 (and there will be a #3 and #4 eventually).

I'll post more about the garden as spring progresses. So far, there are lots of sprouts!

May '10 Book of the Month

Introducing the Planet Silas May '10 Book of the Month:

The Curious Garden By Peter Brown.

A little boy named Liam discovers a hidden garden and with careful tending spreads color throughout the gray city.

What a wonderful book to read in order to celebrate spring. I'm truly in love with this book and knew it had to be a BOTM (thanks for this gift, LeClairs!). The illustrations are wonderful, as is the story. Whenever we read this story, I point out to Silas that one little child is capable of producing such remarkable change. Liam begins this story in a city with no trees, plants, or flowers. But when he discovers a few sorry plants languishing on an abandoned railroad track, he makes a choice: to nurture them rather than let them die.

With just a bit of care, the garden takes over, exploring the railroad track throughout the city. Eventually, the garden grows beyond the track, onto rooftops, between buildings...anywhere it can. But what's more remarkable than the garden itself is that Liam's one small act is contagious. As the garden grows, so do other people's desires to help it spread and flourish. Before you know it, every available space is bursting with life, and the people, no longer prisoners in their gray city, are transformed along with their city. All because of one little boy.

When Silas helps me plant seeds and work the soil, I think of this book and hope that Liam's choice to to good in the world will be his choice as well.

I hope your gardens are beginning to burst forth with life. Happy Spring!

Farm Boy

Silas helped me dig up the rest of the potatoes today. We also picked some beans. Both the beans and the potatoes went right into the potato and kale soup Drew cooked up for dinner. As you can see, Silas likes to help in the garden, loves to wear his gardening gloves (he has several pairs, in fact), and is not afraid to get covered in dirt. In fact, he spent a long time laying flat on the ground, patting the soil and exclaiming "I'm a mason!" (that would be the bricklaying-type of masons, not the Freemasons, with whom, as far as he's told us, he has no affiliation).

He is also very fixated on the fact that the quinces are now ripe. I'm not sure why, because it's not the sort of fruit you pick and eat right off of the tree. They are something you bake with or make jam with, but eating a raw quince is like eating chalk. Still, he wants to keep picking them. Perhaps the mere fact that so many of them are at "Silas-height" is enough to tempt him. Or perhaps he's hoping I'll make another Asian pear (yep, those are ripe now too) and quince crisp :)

Pole beans, pumpkins, and so on

I didn't know how big pole beans could grow. Silas helped me pick some that had to be about 10 inches long.


I made several bean and carrot pies with them (the S is for Silas, of course :)

Over the weekend, Silas helped me dig up potatoes:
He's quite fond of the cinderella pumpkins, one of which we'll have fun carving come October:

An eggplant blossom...don't know if we'll get an eggplant or not. Fingers crossed!

The zucchinis keep coming:

Well, enough of the garden. I'll have posts unrelated to gardening in the weeks ahead, I promise!