Category Archives: Garden

The dill is winning right now, with a straight flush of all the black swallowtail instars on a single plant.

The milkweed is catching up, though. Yesterday I found its ace: a huge monarch caterpillar. And then today, a much smaller one. The milkweed is infested by a giant colony of aphids that I’ve been dabbing with rubbing alcohol, but seems to be thriving anyway.

In not-my-garden news, my neighbor cut down his giant honeysuckle bushes, which makes me happy since I’ve been going to the park work days once a month and cutting down honeysuckle. This variety is invasive, and the less of it in my neighborhood, the better.

My plants are big enough to remind me what I planted where! Why no, I didn’t use markers or make notes. That takes the surprise out of it.

From west to east:
* Peas, plus a not-insignificant amount of volunteer lettuce, plus the one lettuce plant that inexplicably survived the winter and should be honored by never being eaten
* Chard (probably)
* A big hole courtesy of a squirrel, or possibly a Vroon
* The remnants of the radishes
* Spinach (probably)
* Lettuce (the actual lettuce patch, not the volunteers)
* Plus more peas and probably chard on the north side of the bed

Also including innumerable violets and tiny coneflowers.

My garden is going well. I’ve picked a ton of veggies lately. The lettuce is almost done, the carrots are growing, the tomatoes are getting ripe–at least the yellow cherry ones are–I’ve pulled most of the beets.

The green beans have been much more productive than expected. I have bush beans, so the plants are pretty small, but heavily loaded. I tried beans once before and the plants hardly grew at all. I’m not sure what’s different this time.

The zucchini have been getting blossom end rot, so I’ve been picking them small.

However, some of them are clearly doing just fine. Someday I should set up a regular watering schedule for my garden instead of “whenever I remember because the plants look sad.”

Also in the plan for next year: planting the zucchini next to the lettuce and beets, not by the chard, beans, chives, and parsley. Those little plants are getting shaded.

The raspberries ripened and disappeared as fast as they did. Next year, the plant will be much bigger, and we should get berries on some of the very tall canes. Maybe we’ll have better luck getting some berries for ourselves.

My purple coneflower is blooming. Saturday I spent an hour or so in the yard sketching my garden.

The lines on the flowers are too thick (I need more practice with my brush pens), but I like the way the zucchini leaves turned out. And yes, I planted my coneflower in my vegetable garden. It’s sunny there.

Speaking of sun, a few months ago the city took out a tree in strip of our yard between the driveway and the neighbor’s yard. The ground underneath it used to be mulch, daffodils, and a few small weeds that were easy to keep under control. Now, with the extra fun, the weeds are going nuts, to the point where we have to mow them.

I’m waiting for the city to plant a new tree before I do anything, but I’ve been thinking about my options. Other than planting grass. When it was shady I’d been thinking of more hydrangeas and Japanese painted ferns. Now I’m considering forsythia and some shrub that will turn bright red in fall. A native wildflower garden is also tempting.

My garden has been very droopy when I come home from work this week. Something about heat and lack of rain, and being planted in pots. So today I went out to water and discovered…baby radishes! Also, baby chard and beets! I planted new seeds…last weekend, I guess, after I pulled up the last five radishes and had space left in a pot.

So here’s my garden:

That front pot has two chards (the third didn’t grow) and the baby radishes. Behind it is the Giant Pot Of Beets (and three chards). Behind that are two more pots, each with a cherry tomato plant, each with several green tomatoes. (Already!)

You can see half the lettuce pot on the left (formerly the lettuce and radish pot), and behind that is my eggplant. I’m crossing my fingers on the eggplant. Not shown, because it’s to the left of the front pot in this photo, is the second beet/chard pot.

The in-ground garden, with the Extremely Happy Lettuces. Which are interspersed with a few volunteer dill that aren’t really visible. The giant green leaves belong to some native prairie plant that I got a few years ago. I don’t remember what it is. It gets one more leaf every year but so far hasn’t flowered.

The big bushy green plant is a purple coneflower. What looks like bare dirt is where I planted beets and chard; I have four beets and two or three chards growing, plus a few baby ones from what I planted last week. The pot at the end of the garden is more chard, and you can just barely see my flowering chives to the left of the chard.

And my new hydrangea is starting to flower. I’m happy to see that it’s blue, not pink. I hope it stays that way.

We are swimming in giant radishes. Next year maybe I’ll remember to plant them in waves 1-2 weeks apart. Good thing we like radishes, and I eat a salad for lunch every day anyway. BTW, sautéed radish greens are good with a bit of soy sauce.

I’ve stated picking some of the lettuce, too. Otherwise we just have whatever beets need to be thinned out. They’re growing well. So is the chard. And the four or so volunteer dill plants. I hear some people in warmer parts of the country have things like zucchini and corn already. I’ll have to content myself with my tiny lettuces.

Saturday I went to the nursery and then spent two hours doing yardwork. We now have two cherry tomato plants–one red, one yellow–a basil, and an eggplant (because I refuse to give up).

Also, a new hydrangea and two more Japanese painted ferns. Not for eating. This is part of my long-term plan to make the yard look nicer.

I’m also making plans for digging a new vegetable bed later this year. I’ll leave space for a path between the new bed and the current one. Then I want to build higher frames than what I have now so dirt won’t fall out, and put paths down the sides and across one end, and add a fence to keep the rabbits out with a gate so I can get in. I’m not sure that will all get done this year, or at least not all at once, but it would be good to have something that looks neater and is easier to reach for weeding. Right now I have to stretch over the rabbit fence, which means bending it so it’s shorter and less effective.

(And then I have grand plans for surrounding the vegetable garden with more perennial flower beds and putting hanging baskets on the fence, and that will definitely not be happening this year.)