Archive for the ‘Gardening’ Category
I’ve already been spending a lot of time on my garden this year. I’ve been transplanting a few hardy herbs out of my vegetable garden and into the flowerbeds to make more room for veggies this summer. I’ve got such a large scheme in mind for the flowerbed that I’m pretty sure I’ve lost my head. But nonetheless, I’m proceeding like this is all going to work.
You can see photos of where I am so far in my 2009 Garden set on Flickr. Mostly, it’s a lot of dirt. But you can see some of the herbs I’m moving around, and my garden plan for the year.
The main things that have happened so far:
- I’ve moved all the remaining herbs from the vegetable garden into a flowerbed.
- My awesome yard guy Phol Huy came out last week and doubled the size of my two backyard flowerbeds.
- He also tilled up the vegetable garden and incorporated compost in the garden and the beds.
- I’ve started some parsley from seed inside. Or at least, I’m trying to. Parsley is notoriously hard to germinate, and it takes forever, so it will be another week before I know if I’ve screwed up somehow.
- I started some larkspur seeds in the flowerbed today.
- I set some sweet pea [flowers, not vegetables] seeds to soak overnight. We’ll plant them tomorrow.
Here are other upcoming events I’ve already planned. I show some plants growing through the summer — like carrots — that will likely bolt. When that starts to happen, I’ll take them off the calendar until cooler weather. But it’s hard to predict in advance how any seed variety will handle the weather.
UPDATE: Darn it, I keep forgetting that I can’t use iframes on WP.com. I guess now I finally have to get WordPress running on http://www.fixinsupper.com so I can install a plugin that will let me show you my calendar. Back with you in a day or so….
Today we made real progress on the garden. By “we,” I really mean Phol, my awesome yard guy. Today Phol arrived and cleared out the garden and doubled the size of my two main flowerbeds. Tomorrow he’s tilling everything up and adding compost.
I did make some small progress. I started some parsley seeds. Parsley is notoriously difficult to start from seed, but you know that just made me more anxious to give it a try. Plus, I have a recipe addiction that absolutely requires flat-leaf parsley.
Later this week, I’ll post the whole gardening calendar I’ve laid out. If I stay on schedule, by the end of the month, I’ll have a number of spring plants under grow lights in the laundry, trellises in the garden, and I’ll be well on my way to salad.
The Tomato Art Fest launches tonight with the Tomato Art Show preview party. Ashby and I will be there! Then, it’s up at a very early hour in the a.m. to mark off the vendor booth spots, and to get ready for the festival!
I’ve spend an inordinate amount of time in the past month inviting, accepting applications from, confirming and rejecting vendors for the festival. We had a huge number of applicants this year, overwhelming! My big plan for next year: Start much, much earlier!
Come on out to 5 Points in East Nashville tomorrow and join the fun. Lots of events, food, fun for the whole family.
Vendor area map [PDF, updated as of 10 min ago!]
P.S. I’ve been growing lots and lots of tomatoes in my garden, as well. Mostly through the time-honed practice of benign neglect. The ones I can stop the dog from eating, we’re really going to enjoy for the next few weeks.
I tried really hard to garden last weekend. Just to pull a few weeds, get things cleaned up. My garden is a mud bog and has been for at least 10 days, so that just didn’t go very well.
Forecast for today: Rain
Forecast for tomorrow: Rain
Gardening prospects for the weekend: Slim to none
Forecast for next Thursday: Rain
Forecast for next Friday: Rain
Gardening prospects for next weekend: Need you ask?
Nonetheless, I’m excited about the Perennial Plant Society‘s sale this Saturday. Now at the fairgrounds after a number of years at Ellington Agricultural Center, this event is the best way I know to get great plants really cheap. I am going to FINALLY remember, after years of attending, that the way to really rack up here it to show up with your own wagon. The more plants you can carry, the more you can purchase.
Now, as to when things will dry out enough to plant? Sigh. Last year we had drought, this year endless rain. Next up, frogs and locusts, I guess.
Dare I type it out loud, but we may have had our last frost here in Nashville. Last year, of course, we had 2-3 nights of temps in the teens in mid-April, damaging lots of trees, shrubs and emerging crops. I still have one bush that’s limping along from that episode [not the one I wanted to die, of course].
In Nashville, our last frost is typically in early April. But the 10-day forecast looks like late spring weather for the next couple weeks, pushing us well past our typical last frost. Surely we won’t get burned two years in a row??
All this just points to what I have not done yet:
- Cleaned up the garden
- Weeded my flowerbeds
- Built paths in the garden
- Bought a compost bin
- Planted early spring crops like lettuce and peas
I can tell ya now, we’re leaving 3 and 5 by the wayside for the time being. 1 will have to happen of course. 2 and 4 shouldn’t be too hard, and I therefore need to get on the stick. Meanwhile, it’s 9 p.m. and pitch black, so I can leave off worrying about all this til tomorrow.
The Perennial Plant Society’s sale is next weekend…I just have to be ready by then!
This beautiful flower is blooming on the shrubs at the 2yo’s day care. I know it’s a bit out of season, but what is the flower? The shrubs don’t really look like forsythia, nor does the bloom to me, nor like jasmine.
Ideas?
Between seeing these flowers every day for a week now and our spring-like weather, I’m ready to get started on my garden again. Alas, our temperatures will be in the balmy 40s [ugh] the next few days.
So this afternoon I got back from being out of town overnight to find my redbud tree waiting in the driveway!
Each year, members of the Metro Council receive some discretionary funds. Now, say what you will about the idea of a discretionary fund — and on the whole, I think it’s ridiculous —but don’t take my word for it. Read S-town Mike’s blog for ongoing coverage — but in East Nashville, we’ve been the beneficiaries of some community-minded council members. For instance, council discretionary funds helped build the neighborhood/school playground at Lockeland Design Center on 17th St. four years ago. And this year, they funded the East Nashville Tree Project.
Councilman Mike Jameson notified ReDiscover East, an umbrella neighborhood organization, that he’d have discretionary funds this year, and asked for suggestions from the neighborhood groups within RE on spending those funds. The redbud project was the winning suggestion, among many I heard about.
Particularly appropriate in a formerly shady neighborhood that lost hundreds of mature shade trees during the April 1998 tornado, this effort has put 250 redbud trees into the yards of East Nashvillians. [Incidentally, there have been 2-3 other large scale tree planting events that I know of in the years since 1998. There are a lot of really healthy, rapidly growing 7- and 8-year-old trees in this neighborhood.
My new redbud tree joins a much-older redbud and a very old dogwood in my front yard. The older redbud in particular was badly damaged by last spring’s late freeze and this summer’s extensive drought, but this fall I discovered even some of the worst branches were budding again. Here’s to spring!
I don’t really have any other comment…I just think it’s worth sharing.
In case you’re wondering how many tomatoes fit inside a shirt, the answer is 22.
It seems to help if you have a bunch of plum tomatoes [the yellow ones on the bottom] ripe when you are ready to fill up the shirt.
Sorry I can’t say more. I have to go put up more tomatoes now.
So I should be out bushwhacking my garden, which is threatening to bust out of the back yard and make a run for Eastland Avenue. Or even just cleaning up a bit.
But I find that since returning from vacation, I landed in the Bermuda Triangle of summer: the doldrums. I have a list of chores a mile long, but I can’t bring myself to start tackling them. I mean, if I get the garden trimmed up today, it’ll just be back by Tuesday. So why bother? And surely as soon as I weed that last flowerbed, the rest of them will roar back. I can already tell you from experience earlier this week that even the kitchen is unable to stay clean on its own. And it’s not growing anything.
So I’ve been seriously considering throwing in the towel. If it weren’t for the fact that the killer okra would then eat me and the children alive, I’d do it.
UPDATE: 10 p.m. Apparently confession is good for the work ethic. I cleaned up outside, and cut back the basil. A good start on the garden, anyway. And then I made pesto!
Flickr Photos
Fixin' Supper 