You’ll have to excuse my absence last week. I was experiencing some major technical difficulties importing photos to my computer, an inconvenience that frustrated me to the point that I nearly thought of throwing my inadequate computer machine. Please appreciate that I stood up and walked away from the problem rather than ensuing further damage.
Patience restored a week later, and a compromise reached between my technology and I, I have two weeks worth of updates to share!
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Let me start off with a confession. I have been dishonest by omission regarding some gardening topics.
Remember when the SPMC group came for the weekend and helped restore the hoop house the wind had destroyed? Well, having seen our attempt to stand up to that forceful bully, the wind came back with a vengeance. Ahem… hence, Broken Hoop House, Round 2:
What makes this time so bad is that some joints actually broke, and the obvious fact that the wind is just too brutal (which was surprising to learn) for this type of home-made structure at this point in the season.
I wish I could say I am more resilient than to let some invisible wind take me out of the game. But, you know what it’s like to have your hair whipped around your face, or have had your napkins and table cloths at a barbecue get blown up, down, and around, and its really quite annoying! With antagonists like the wind sometimes, you have to choose to continue to fight or to find a more sound solution. I’m sure the wind doesn’t appreciate being cursed, either.
What is the solution we came up with for this problem, you ask? Oh, it’s so exciting!
These big strong men delivered a beautiful, quaint structure to my garden one day! Oh my gardening heart leapt with joy when mine eyes first glimpsed it!
Donald has continued to work on it, piecing together old windows found on our very own gem of a property, making good use of what’s been left behind.
To say I am pleased is an understatement. I have already put my cherry tomato plants in there to shield from the wind and chilly nights. It has half a roof at this point and a few open window panes, but you can see how brilliant this is already. No more making my room in to a greenhouse to get a reasonable start on seedlings. This should make it easier for the next gardeners.
Speaking of starts, our basil plants are trucking right along. They’ve been in my window, but the sun is high enough in the sky now that it doesn’t shine just right in my room, so I placed them outside my window to feel the warmth of the hot sun. They seem to really like that.
I transplanted one of the basil plants in a bigger container, because there is only benefit in having a bigger basil plant! It is hiding in the shade of the fence for a few days so its roots can set. Transplanting a plant and leaving it in the sun can really stress it out, seeing as it hasn’t established its root system in its new home yet.
The nights aren’t a biting cold anymore, so I allow the babies to stay out at night now. Oh, they grow up so fast…
Just like Joni’s toilet nasturtiums! Actually, I thought they took foreeeeverrrr. These are my first flowers to grow in the garden, and the buds did take a while to open their beautiful faces.
I very much enjoy this splash of color to all the garden green. The sunflowers are also getting quite tall, and I presume should be forming brilliant big flowers soon!
Oh… I was going to call this next plant the most exciting at the moment, but really I am overly thrilled by everything that is taking form in the garden right now. It’s hard not to get so worked up over every little, new success. But check this out!
Broccoli! It’s broccoli!
They’re little broccoli trees! I read that broccoli is difficult to grow, and I’ve been nursing these troopers from seed since December! I was actually surprised when I first saw the heads forming. It’ll be interesting to see how much I can get from a single plant.
Louie’s beans are also sprouting with impressive vigor. He plays like he isn’t that impressed by this sort of thing, but I heard a hint of genuine interest when I suggested he check out his sprouts. Spreading the love!
These are onions I planted back in 2015. They had been cut up and thrown in the compost pile, where they sprouted. They have come along quite nicely. There are also red onions and celery of the same nature in the background of this picture.
I’ll leave you with some more uses of compost.
When a batch of compost is completed, there are lots of decent-sized chunks in the new dirt. They may be rocks that made their way in, undecomposed sticks, hard clumps of dirt, eggshell remnants, rusty nails from the ground, etc etc. All this doesn’t make for the finest compost. To get to that status, I have begun to sift the finished product before putting it in the garden.
With the exception of a few of the things I mentioned above, like rusty nails, this leftover product can make a great mulch! (I saw this on a youtube video). So I gathered up the sifted remnants and circled it around the base of a tree in the garden, whose fruit we still aren’t positive of.
Voila! I also put some redwood chips on top of this mulch, and wow, is it beautiful! Fertilizer and aesthetics in one.
What are you doing in YOUR garden this week?
Follow Up:
Some of you wondered last post about the compostable cups we ordered and threw in the compost. Here is a poster following the extraction of Ingeo and its creation into materials, from our Coast suppliers:
http://www.natureworksllc.com/~/media/The_Ingeo_Journey/EcoProfile_LCA/HowItsMade/NatureWorks_Ingeo_Plants-to-Plastics-poster_print_pdf.pdf?la=en
