Photolog 10/15/2009

With this post I come armed with a new camera, a Nikon D-40. The pictures are coming out much better than my hundred-dollar point-and-shoot Olympus POS, and I hope to get back to blogging more often now that the weather is cooperating with my gardening efforts. Look forward to next week's post, as we going climbing this weekend with the new camera (and the dog).

Last week I planted some pretty stressed out broccoli transplants (they were the only ones left at the garden center). I also, in anticipation of rain, planted spinach seeds last Friday. Amazingly, it rained that night and off and on for the next two days! Now I've got little spinach sprouts :).

The fall tomatoes are a disappointment once again, partly because I did not prune them. They are nine feet tall and have basically no fruit. Note to self: next fall do black-eyed peas instead of tomatoes.

The basil is out of this world though, and is enough to supply four families with year-round pesto. (Anyone interested?) I bought it in a container with four separate sprouts and just planted them as they were without spacing - a technique I will have to try again next spring. The bees love it, and I have to keep pulling off the flowers to prevent a permanent basil infestation. I'd bet the honey made from basil flowers is delicious!

Spinach sprouts! Barely bigger than an acorn.

Elephant Garlic

Broccoli transplant.

Fall tomatoes

Bailey by the Basil.

Photolog 5/7/09: The birds and the bees of corn and ladybugs

After a few days of rainy weather the sweet corn has sent out it's male and female flowers (tassels and silk, respectively). The tassels drop pollen down onto the silk, each string of silk fertilizing a single corn kernel. To maximize fertilization one should always plant "blocks" of corn (as opposed to a long, singular row) because one corn plant can fertilize another. This way you will get nicely filled ears.

Bailey by the garden

First red tomato!

This corn stalk will make two ears! Probably a result of high fertility and proper spacing. Look how the peas wrap their way up the stalk. Down below their roots are all entangled and the nitrogen-fixing bacteria grown by the peas are fertilizing the corn.

And the third sister: squash. They are leaning out of the shade in an attempt to get at the light.

Aphids love to gather around corn tassels and suck at the sugary sap (they look like little green fleas that all pile on top of one another). Left unchecked, they can really do some damage because they reproduce exponentially (I'm talking billions of descendants). Good thing for me, ladybugs eat aphids (plus they are a sign of good luck!). At first we only had a few ladybugs, but now there's probably thirty or so red-bodied aphid-eating machines out there. They mate and lay their eggs near their prey so their babies have something to eat when they hatch. Oh mother nature, I guess there's always a bigger bug...

Now try to imagine if I had sprayed nasty chemicals at the first sight of those aphids. The few lady bugs would have been killed too and the aphids (which reproduce way faster) would have come back with no natural predators to keep them in check.

Aphids vs Ladybugs on a corn tassel.

Photolog 4/28/2009: 3 Sisters Update

The last post was quite lengthy, and I imagine that most people (myself included) simply scrolled down the blog while looking at the pictures. If you read the whole thing (God bless you) then you have too much free time. So here is what we all want to see, mostly pictures! Abbey and I have been doing lot's of landscaping in the backyard, so things may look a little different...

With all the rain everything is very green and growing like crazy! My Three Sisters garden is booming. This companion-planting technique was used by the Native Americans to grow all kinds of plants (mostly corn, beans, and squash). To plant a Three Sisters garden you need to plant a "square" of corn. When the corn is about 8 inches tall, plant pole-beans between each corn stalk. When the first of the pole-beans sprout plant squash around the outside or wherever there's a sunny spot. The corn will continue to grow and will support the pole-beans, the pole beans will grow nitrogen-trapping bacteria along their roots, which is like a living fertilizer, and the squash will creep around low looking for light and will crowd out any weeds. It works! You can also bury some fish real deep in the garden before planting if you want to really feel like a Native American (this acts as a source of fertilizer).

The Three Sisters Corn, Beans (the triangular-flat leaves) and Squash (lower middle-right)

Carrots (left) and Onions (right)

Tomatoes

Eggplant

Cucumbers with a squash in between

Garlic sacpes. These will taste great when I sauté them in butter!

Bailey by the Three Sisters garden. She has also been growing exponentially! Can you tell which end of the garden I buried the fish at? I didn't think it would make that big a difference...

Photolog: 3/24/2009

Think of this post as a "Photolog" of sorts...

Tomatoes are in the side garden this time, and are already off to a great start. I planted 2 heat-tolerant varieties - Valley Girl and Surefire. I wonder which will set fruit the longest? There are also 2 cherry tomatoes (Abbey's favorite!)

Here we have onions and carrots... I put them in this garden because they are both root veggies and this plot has the softest soil.

And, the big guys - Corn. I will plant beans all over this plot as soon as the corn is 6 or 7 inches tall.

Photolog 11/24/2008

Gideon helped me make rounds in the garden today!

Well, you can tell the cold nights have been hitting my tomatoes and okra - they look all brown and crunchy. I am waiting for the last of the tomatoes to turn red and I am letting one of the okra pods go to seed for the spring batch. Just from a single pod there will be way more okra seeds than I could plant in one season, so if anyone is interested...

Broccoli is putting out some heads!

Cilantro likes cooler weather, and it's really hard not to pick and eat at it. I'll give it another week!

Photolog 10/31/2008: Halloween

Well, the weather has been pretty close to perfect for my fall garden. The days have been warm but not too warm, and the nights have been cold but not too cold. In this turbulent political season my veggies are growing great, my garden quietly existing in peace as Joe The Plumber talks about the impending annihilation of Israel. I am sooo happy to not have a TV, but somehow I still hear about this crap!

More importantly, it was Shady's birthday on Friday and we had all kinds of fun carving out a pumpkin and playing with her new toy.

Happy Birthday Shady!

Shady's new toy is a Dora the Explorer fishing pole, and let's just say that Gideon thinks it's his birthday too.

Here's a pic of Gideon chasing a lure in the backyard.

Photolog 10/24/2008: Snakes

Sorry about the huge pictures this week, blogger is having technical difficulties. You can see them better by clicking on them.

Not much going on in the garden this week, most things are growing and the nights are getting cooler. I am really happy with how big the Broccoli and Cauliflower are getting. The plants are looking really green after the dose of fish emulsion and epsom salt I sprayed this week. My spinach sprouts are just stuck at an inch tall for some reason, and I think what they want is a good rain. I am going to get up early tomorrow and give everything a good soaking. 

My secret weapon for the birds has been a bunch of strategically placed rubber snakes. It's kinda like a little haunted house for birds out there, and it seems to be working. I have to go move them around every few days or the birds get smart, and I don't want to risk any of my nice tomatoes being beaked to death. I am thinking about trying to put out a bird feeder on the other side of the yard to give them something else to eat, and I hope that doesn't just make the problem worse by attracting more birds than there were before. We will see what happens...

On a side note...

I took an NCLEX-RN predictor test this week at school to see my probability of passing the real test the first time through. I scored a 95% probability! Besides the boost in confidence this test also tells me what I need to review to do even better next time. This is pretty much what my next 8 weeks will look like... test, review, test again. Gotta love standardized testing! 

No nurse left behind...

Little Mesclun Lettuce sprouts

Snake guarding my tomatoes

Photolog 10/17.2008

Photolog 10/17/2008

The broccoli and cauliflower have really been growing, and I feel like my part time job is to pluck all the tiny caterpillars off of their leaves before they can do much damage. My first snap peas started to set a couple of days ago, and the Juliet tomatoes have been turning red despite the fact they are slowly being de-foliated by the Fusarium wilt. Stay tuned to find out how I am keeping the mocking birds from eating them!

New in the garden this week:

+ Snap peas set

+ Cilantro sprouted

+Topped the tomatoes to encourage bigger fruit

Juliet Tomatoes

I feel like I haven't been able to spend time doing much of anything besides school lately. All my studying has paid off though... I took my Advanced Concepts cumulative final exam this past wednesday and aced it missing only 2 out of 50 questions! This has been the most challenging semester, and it's good to know that I have taken the toughest tests and it's all easy coasting from here. For the next 8 weeks (my last before graduation) my clinicals will be at Baptist Medical Center downtown in the cardiovascular unit, and in class we will mostly be preparing for the NCLEX-RN exam. 

You know you have been spending long days at the hospital and long nights at the library when even the cats miss you...

Photolog 10/10/2008, Grand National

Photolog 10/10

Night-time temps are finally dropping! This means leafy-greens!

Here is what's been happening this week:

+ Planted Mesclun Lettuce

+ Planted Cilantro

+ Planted Spinach (again)

+ Composted Black-eyed peas from the side garden

Broccoli and Cauliflower

Tomatoes!

And a side-note on the Grand National:

I have been listening to Grand National, which is a band I found on Pandora, and they are pretty sweet. You can find a link to them on the right in the Headphones section. They are a British band with a sound reminiscent of Sting and The Police, although much more modern. It deserves a good listen if you are getting bored with whatever you got spinning on your iPod. I think it's shaping up to be my fall soundtrack, and if you know me that says a lot.

What does it all mean? Photolog 10/3/2008

Photolog 10/3

This past week I have experienced a lot, and my garden has gone through some changes. I experienced some fantastic festival performances while in Austin last weekend, I have been officially offered a job working in the ER, and I have given a certain option a good "look-see" (but more on that later). So while I have been busy fighting the crowds and dust at Zilker park, while I have been diligently learning the pathophysiology and treatment algorithms for Diabetic Ketoacidosis (DKA), I have been utterly out of control of some happenings in the garden.

First of all, my first vine-ripe tomato of the fall season was burgled by some ungrateful mocking bird. The nerve! I pulled the buggered and pecked-to death tomato off the vine and threw it over the fence I was so mad. Obviously the red ornament thing is a myth, and it has been officially busted. What's worse is that my Juliet tomatoes are susceptible to Fusarium wilt, and they both have it. The leaves are turning brown and dying off from the bottom of the plant up, and soon I will just have some dead stringy-looking tomato vines. The only good thing is that my Better Boy's and Cherry tomatoes are resistant, but is seems that they have some kind of wilt too. I don't know whether to pull up the Juliets now or let them live as long as possible. 

Soon to be completely leafless and dead Juliet Tomatoes

The peas are just about done, and that is a good thing considering what some of them look like. I did some research and think it's a virus that the peas have had since they were little seeds. It started out as one plant, and then it spread all over the side garden. It's a confounding viral conflagration. 

Soon to be dead peas

Some good things have been happening at the same time. The Okra is my big producer right now. From seven plants I harvest about two pods a day, and it's fairly delicious. One weird thing I have discovered in case you are ever on some obscure game-show: fresh picked okra smells kinda like dog (this smell goes away once you wash and cook it).

Okra plate

For those of you who have actually read this far:

Something special has happened in my backyard. In the grass beside the garden grows a single corn stalk. I noticed him the other day, and I am really wondering how he got there. The fact that he is disease and bug free makes no sense. What does he represent in all of this? Is he an outcast or a pioneer? Surely there is some scientific answer to his existence, I just don't know what to think of him. I'd like to think that he is deserving of the most fertile place in the garden, and that he deserves all my attention (though that hasn't appeared to help the rest of the plants). I think for now I will watch and see what happens with this special corn sprout, though I am pretty sure he will end up in the compost bin.

Photolog: September

Every last Friday of the month will be a retrospective Photolog, this will be a time to lay out the consecutive pictures and compare the growth that has happened all month. It's also an easy blog for me and it satisfies some of my reader's curiosity. Gardening takes an immense amount of patience. This last month the only thing I harvested was the first few okra. Next month, I might find myself giving away tomatoes there are so many. All I know is that this has been one heck of a drawn out and dry summer, and I am ready for the leaves to change. The sun will now be shining more so on the southern hemisphere for the next six months, and I say let them have it. I will celebrate the first cold front by planting leafy greens!

This weekend I will be taking a break from my studies to go and enjoy Austin City Limits. I will tell you all about it on Monday!

9/5/2008

9/12/2008

9/19/2008

9/26/2008

Photolog 9/19/2008

Man I love photolog Fridays! It really helps to see the growth from week to week! Tomorrow morning I am going to attend Bob Webster's fall vegetable gardening seminar at his Shades of Green nursery. I am betting that I will be the youngest person there.

New this week:

+ Composted buggered corn

+ Planted broccoli

+ Planted cauliflower

+ Harvested first okra

Waiting for those black-eyed pea pods to turn brown... maybe this week!

Snap peas are beginning to grab hold of the trellis (as well as each other)