Anne and Connie's Garden

Images from the garden before the heat wave

2010-08-07T18:17:00.000-07:00

Things were coming along best before the heat of early July, and then all the specialty bugs, worms, caterpillars and who knows what else. You know--plant asparagus, get asparagus beetles, plant squash, get squash borers. ETC. Anyway, these are pretty pictures.

Garlic!

2010-08-07T18:13:00.001-07:00

Softneck and hardneck.

August: the garden is at its peak

2010-08-07T14:09:00.000-07:00

We have a ton of stuff from the garden, even though we lost our zucchini to squash borers and most of our cukes. These pictures tell the story-that's a huge head of cabbage, from which we hand picked a ton of cabbage worms and drowned in soapy water (and we probably ate some, too).

We're still getting strawberries (you can see them in front on the cutting board but some critter got most of them-not sure which critter).
We've harvested Black Krim heirloom tomatoes - those are the ones with the little bit of a crack in them. They were fabulous. Note the two types of potato-red and yukon gold.

And the real surprise? Banana peppers, all from one plant. Anne has become convinced that Mel Bartholomew might really know what he's talking about: Square Foot Gardening here we come!

Our garden doesn't look like his-yet. We've got the raised beds, all we need now is the plan.

July photos

2010-08-07T13:53:00.000-07:00

No pictures of the garden, just of the bounty of the garden: potatoes! What a surprise this was (even though we planted them, neither one of us expected that they would really grow!). Look at how happy Anne is with our 2 1/2 pounds of red potatoes. They were delicious and very, very special.

We also got beans, both green and purple. These have been fabulous, and I've really enjoyed making a green bean and potato salad with a mango yogurt dressing (last night with a cumin yogurt dressing!) from Moosewood Low Fat Favorites Recipes, one of our favorite cookbooks. Here's a link to the Moosewood Restaurant site, if you're interested.

This has been the best garden year yet!

Where has the summer gone?

2010-08-07T13:40:00.000-07:00

So here are some pictures of the garden-it's now August and I somehow didn't even post one picture all of June and July, so I'll just post highlights (but not the squash borers or the asparagus beetles-more pleasant highlights).
So here are a few June shots-on the left is the cucumber obelisk (with a Gerber daisy on top-thanks to Betty Torrance, thanks Betty!) before it was overrun with too many cucumbers.
And before bugs got most of them.
The tomatoes are a much happier story, so here's a shot of them from early June (above) with a whole mess of (I think) Johnny Jump Ups in front of them.
One last June shot, the one in the center above-look at how neat everything looks!

Spring, or should I say, summer?

2010-06-01T06:05:00.000-07:00

One of the nice things (perhaps the only nice thing) about the storms of the winter is that we now have "partial sun" in our vegetable garden, which is a huge improvement over the "partial shade" that I believe that we had last year.
I only know this because we bought a Sun Calc light meter that tells us this. And the garden is looking great. This is an early picture-note the fencing at the very top.
This is a new addition to keep woodchucks out of the garden. Bill Alexander in this excerpt from The $64 Tomato tells the story of the woodchuck in his garden who waited for the pulsing on the electric fence to stop and slipped through the two electric wires. Bill Alexander called him "Super Chuck."
Made me glad I didn't bother with the electric fence this year. Anne wasn't too keen on it since it only takes one time for the batteries to go, or for the grounding to come undone, and the woodchuck has salad.
Everything is very lush-look at this, taken over the Memorial Day weekend-those are the snap peas on the pea fence from Gardener's Supply (our favorite place for garden stuff). And the raised beds are last year's model from Square Foot Gardening. My nephew Michael got this year's model-tool-less! When these fall apart, and they will, I'm going for the "tool-less" kind. We used Mel Bartholomew's book, Square Foot Gardening, New Edition as a guide. I especially like the revised "Mel's Mix."
Let me tell you about the strawberries-Anne harvested this pint on Saturday. They are amazingly sweet, and amazingly soft-if you make a fist with them in your hand you'll have squished berries.
So far, so good. Let's hope it stays this way!

Lots of Rain, Little Sun

2009-06-26T14:44:00.001-07:00

Aerial View of Garden, June 25 '09

2009-06-26T14:42:00.001-07:00

Flora in Ptown!

2009-06-09T06:17:00.001-07:00

Ladyslippers all over the Provincelands...

And scotch broom (with Connie)

Clematis on a fence.

Golden Chain tree as trellis.

Looking down toward the bay.

Other areas, late May

2009-05-27T20:00:00.001-07:00

How does your garden grow--late May '09

2009-05-27T19:55:00.000-07:00

Other Areas in Early May

2009-05-04T07:40:00.001-07:00

Close-up of white bleeding heart and Jacob's ladder by back door.
Violets under trellis.
White violets by back door.
Wild columbie
Bleeding heart and Jacob's ladder.

This is the area we call "Astilbe Hill."
Flame andromeda.
Phlox doing great this year with more sunlight.
Pink tulips to match the magnolia--except we only got one magnolia flower. Can't figure out what that tree needs.
Two late daffs are growing through the bleeding heart by the front door.

Asparagus Oblivious

2009-05-04T07:37:00.000-07:00

We are getting some asparagus shoots. Guess they do not have traumatic stress disorder from how they were planted.

Further Progress on the Raised Beds

2009-04-29T05:41:00.001-07:00

Bean Pole.

Asparagus replanted.

Connie with her new toy--a really powerful cordless drill.

The roots sticking up are the upside down asparagus crowns. Any child could see that the roots were in the air. Unfortunately, we had no child around and I did not get it. Did replant correctly however.
Here I am planting strawberries. Seascape, Jewel and Earlyglow. We have a net to put over them so the birds and chipmunks do not get the berries. We have more systems in place than Homeland Security. In fact, Janet Napolitano is scheduled to visit next week...
Putting together a 2x8 bed. The inside piece was tricky.

Amazing Daffs This Year

2009-04-29T05:32:00.001-07:00

Constructing the Raised Beds

2009-04-18T17:38:00.000-07:00

The packages arrived today from Square Foot Gardening--wooden pieces to construct 7 raised beds. It was a warm sunny day and AFTER going to the farmer's market, working out at the gym, and going to the library, we came home to find that FedEx had delivered the beds. Spent all afternoon in the hot sun working on them. Of course the 12 foot one had to be taken apart and done twice, since there were no instructions and it was not clear how to connect the pieces. I guess the tree work really worked--there was not one bit of shade!

Mid-April

2009-04-18T17:33:00.000-07:00

More daffs.

Forsythia almost in full bloom.

Early April

2009-04-18T17:22:00.001-07:00

First daffodil in the bed.

The first haze of yellow on the forsythia.

The white flower is bloodroot, a native wildflower which I dug up from a hill down the road. Sanguinaria has a root that is red and was used as a dye. The leaf is first wrapped around the flower stem. Deer resistant and shade loving!

Purple Haze

2009-04-04T14:42:00.000-07:00

This has been a fabulous Spring for purple flowers. The crocuses are gorgeous, and here they are on the path up the hill. The glories of the snow that Anne posted the other day have spread so much from last year that they give the entire front yard a "purple haze" - Jimi Hendrix would be proud!

The Property in Spring

2009-04-02T18:24:00.000-07:00

Crocuses, Chinodoxia, snow drops and the first daffs.

The Garden Being Built

2009-04-02T18:10:00.001-07:00

Here are pictures of the new garden process. It is not complete. The posts still need caps and the raised beds have not arrived yet. What you see inside the garden at the very end will be taken apart and the new raised beds installed. Stay tuned!

Taking Down Trees

2009-03-17T07:38:00.000-07:00

This is the garden area before we redid it and took down the trees. It is a rainy day, so it looks even darker than it is!

Here is a Sav-A-Tree guy getting ready to take down one of the three trees that we took down to get sun in our garden.