More Garden Pics!

I love this salmon rose in the backyard.

One of our scarlet lilies

This was taken earlier this month - we've gotten a lot of rain since, and the veggies are even bigger now!  We have the hugest squash plant I've ever seen!

Bachelor's Buttons get kinda tall...

Arugula gets kind of weedy-looking late in the season, but it has pretty little flowers.

Red Yarrow that started taking over the front beds... I pulled out the biggest clump that was crowding out the Asian Lilies & Coneflowers.

Raindrops!

Early Summer

I remembered today that I was going to post some more garden pictures.  So here's a few newer ones:

The salad greens have taken off!  They really like the conditions on the front porch.  All the rain these past few days has really made them happy too.  (Top level is Iceberg Lettuce, bottom left is Mesclun, and bottom right is Arugula.)  B had some in a salad the other day, with a balsamic vinaigrette.  I might try some tonight with some Thousand Island.

One of the two colors of Iris in the front bed.  I've noticed my garden has a purple-theme this year!

The other Iris.

I've also had to re-plant the corn - apparently what I thought was corn sprouts was actually crabgrass.  :-(  Bummer.  So here's hoping this next attempt takes off!  

I also found the first Nasturtium bloom this weekend in the bed along the fence!  The leaves on them are the size of saucers!

I'm an addict...

I freely admit - I'm an addict. To many things, really, but right now I get my fix from good ol' Helios. That's the sun, people. I was a DARE Role Model, what did you think I was referring to??

So ever since the sun finally showed its face here in NW OH (finally as in about 3 weeks ago, yet we had a frost warning this week), I've been trying my hardest to lower that god-awful statistic about how much time people spend indoors (Ninety percent. Ninety. 9-0. That's wrong on so many levels.). I eat lunch outside - we have a nice patio out the side of our building, although it's right outside one of the plant doors and the guys inside play their music at top volume, which depending on their mood can be a good or bad thing (today, Snoop Dogg following by Hank Williams Jr. Not bad.). When I get home, I change clothes and go out to water the gardens, and we try to eat dinner outside too. Taking advantage of the weather right now swings both ways though... soon it'll be too hot to be outside at all.

All this is just to say, sorry my posting has slacked off!  

The veggie garden is slow to take off so far, since we started from seeds rather than buying plants from the nursery. There are a couple of squash that have come up, and a few corn sprouts too. The beans and peas took right off, and the tomatoes and peppers we bought as plants. If we don't see some action from the rest of the garden soon, we'll hit the nursery after all.

I have Iris blooming in the front beds this year too! Last year they didn't bloom at all, but this year every one of them has multiple buds. The two plants on the south side are already in bloom, one is lavender and the other is two-toned dark and light purple. I'll add some photos soon.

I'll also post a couple of articles in the next week or so - it's time for the monthly 'green' newsletter at work so I can at least muster up the gumption to post those!

Hope everyone is enjoying the sunshine too!

Slow down, you're movin too fast... got to make the moment last

Twenty points if you can name that artist/song!

(Points towards what, I don't know.)

Obviously I've fallen short of my goal of posting at least every other day.  My apologies!  Now that the sun is out, my evenings are spent weeding and watering and scouting for new sprouts in my garden, all while trying not to burn the chicken on the grill.  I love this weather!  

Happy little Vinca!

I'm glad it rained today though.  I hate having to use city water on my gardens.  When we're able to finally buy a house, wherever it may be, I want to install rain barrels.  I've found some great plans for making them on a couple of different sites - you can use 55-gallon drums, old wine casks, or even heavy-duty garbage cans.  HGTV has a good set of plans, and here's a great "Instructable:"

  
Rain Barrels - More DIY How To Projects

If you're not able to make your own, there are lots of great resources to buy them ready to go too - Terracycle has some awesome ones!  (Be sure to check out their worm poop fertilizers too!)  Just install them under your already existing drain pipes and fill your watering cans from the spigot at the bottom, or even hook up a hose or drip irrigation system.  Is it kind of sad that I'm really looking forward to being able to do this?

B has an idea for rain tubes too, disguised as drain pipes.

Diggin in the Dirt

Did you know that people spend somewhere around 90% of their time indoors?  When the sun's out, I try to reduce that percentage... hence the lack in posts recently!  

I've been planting seeds, cleaning up the leftover dead stuff from last year, reorganizing our garden hoses, and getting ready to put in our vegetables in the next week or so.  It seems a little early, but it was 85 this weekend... I think we skipped spring here in NW Ohio and went straight into June!

 

We're expanding our vegetable selection this year, and reorganizing our raised beds.  Last year we had an overabundance of tomatoes and cucumbers but only one lonely squash and no sweet corn... this year we're cutting back to two tomato plants, one bush cucumber and no peppers (since we didn't eat any of them last year).  We're putting the sweet corn all together in one bed in the hopes of better pollination this time, and we're moving the squash into one of the bigger boxes too.  We're adding zucchini, carrots, and radishes out back, and we've already put beans along the fence and peas on the trellis.  And on the front porch we've filled our big tiered pots with arugula, salad greens, and iceberg lettuce. 

 Our raspberries are looking great this year, but I don't know yet if the strawberries are going to bounce back... they froze one too many times over the winter I think, and they're not coming in very well.  I'll give them a little more time with the sun though.  We're sharing a small bed with our neighbor too, putting potatoes, pumpkins and watermelon there.  Not too bad for a tiny little yard!  If we owned this house rather than renting (from the coolest landlords ever, can you tell?), we'd try our hand at fruit trees even.  But I think that (and chickens!) will have to wait until we buy our own homestead!

I planted some new flowers this year too, from seed mostly so I'm crossing my fingers.  I started some Nasturtiums and California Poppies inside, but the poppies got too dry once and that's all it took to kill them.  But the Nasturtiums are now in the side bed outside the fence, and looking happy.  I'm excited to try them on salads this summer!  Just today I bought some more seeds to direct sow, Silver Princess Daisies and Painted Daisies (which I mixed together in my hand before sowing), and some Iceflower to go along the edge of the rock walls out front.  I also got two more packets of California Poppies and put them in the fence bed too, to fill in a bit around the bulbs & Nasturtiums.  Lastly I got some Lupine and Morning Glory to put in the back beds where it's a bit more shady, and very empty!  We have one trellis that's always been empty since we moved here, so I'm going to send the Morning Glory up it.  I had also gotten some more Hosta and Daylily roots that I planted last week that are coming up nicely.

I'll be sure to post more pictures as the season progresses!