BTW, Re: Pots, WTF?

one down, eight to go

Clearly I shouldn't have said anything.

Mediocrity in Somerville

Last weekend The Allston Gardener came over to my house and saw my Somerville garden with her own eyes. Jean was generous with her compliments (did not gouge out her eyes) and reminded me that I hadn't posted any updates. At all.

It's true. Mostly true because my garden is vexing me (reasons include but are not limited to: rot, weeds, earwigs, parching, overgrowth, unexplained death, shiftlessness) and partly true because my kids freak out when I use the computer. Freak out like I am tasing them, but tasing them with neglect. But nevertheless, here are updates!

pots

The pots continue looking good, and I don't know why. I can put flowers and plants in a tub of dirt and let them do their thing all summer. Sure, I'll water them. Sometimes I'll yank the withering blooms off of a dahlia plant and toss them into the pot. Nothing more. They grow and grow; it's the pots. When I yank a withering dahlia off of a plant in the ground, it disintegrates in my hand and I find my arm up to my elbow awash in earwigs. (True story. And yet somehow I survived to tell the tale.) The pots endure the ministrations of my daughter, who has a fondness for jamming sticks into the dirt around the roots and yelling, "Oh, no! Oh! NO!"

Oh, no.

I suppose it's possible that it's some sort of black magic, but if it were I'd imagine she'd have done the same thing with her garden pots. These she dotes on in a style I like to call Extreme Neglect. Some time ago, after I'd decided that I had planted seeds for the last time (Garden 3.0) I gave Olive the box filled with seeds and seed packets, two planters and a trowel. She dumped a few handfuls of whatever in one pot and a single seed potato in the other (coincidence? genius? boredom? rudimentary listening skills?) and then covered them with some handfuls of dirt and sprayed herself with the hose. (Nix genius.) When the seedlings sprouted, and there were a real crowd of them, we were all very eager to find out what they were. Apparently she planted around 40 heads of bibb lettuce, eight carrots, a beanstalk and a single pea shoot. She was not interested in thinning the seedlings, save for the beanstalk which she eventually pulled out and threw into stick pile with a hearty "Oh, NO!" She has watered the pots a few times. She has stood over them and yelled "Look!" and "Happy!" And that stuff is producing. Her lettuces go into sandwiches. Even the poor crowded pea has produced pods for eating.

Olive's Pots, assorted and potato

The Big Garden has peas, too, but inch for inch and sweaty brow for sweaty brow, it's nowhere near as successful. And as much as I doubted Olive's "no thinning" policy, I seem to be standing by while my cucumbers attempt to destroy the world. Before planting I consulted the internet about how many of each plant would thrive in a square foot without burdening its neighbors. I did this in part because I didn't know enough to make an informed decision, but mostly because I hate being wrong. If things go awry, I can take petty solace in the fact that it wasn't my idea. At any rate, the Gardener's Supply planning tool recommended two cucumber plants per square foot. I respectfully suggest that they are wrong. And I am too busy removing cucumber tendrils from the gasping throats of all local flora to enjoy my petty solace. On the other hand, I have been enjoying practicing pickling in anticipation of our gigantic cucumber surplus. (File under: D for delusional. Or depressing.)

angry cukes, too big to fail

I also can't seem to thin the weeds. Or the roses. Or the pernicious morning glories (night stranglers.) It could be that I'm not trying because it's been 45 billion degrees out for the past month. (We've had a couple of pretty warm days.) Or that I'm not trying because I'm super busy hanging out by the kiddie pool. (Am lifeguard.) Or that I'm not trying because all of the wrong things love to grow in my yard, and all of the right things demand gallons of fertilizer (which, tragically, is also a real steroid bath for the previously mentioned "wrong things.")

you know where you are? you're in the jungle, baby.

By the way, it was tremendously difficult to get a picture of this vegetable garden without somehow featuring the World’s Saddest Hot Tub. This hot tub is the ruination of our yard: an eyesore indicative of a lifestyle I do not embrace, it has eaten up loads of valuable real estate since day one. We are marginally hopeful that a man named Harmonica Pete will come and take it away this weekend. Because he has flaked on us before (and because he calls himself Harmonica Pete) I am tempering my excitement.

get thee behind me, hot tub.

This photo magic is also true of the lawn. Just as my husband will artfully avoid getting me in the frame when taking pictures of the kids, when I’m taking pictures of the yard it’s at angles and in snippets in a constant effort to keep from capturing the lawn. It’s not coldhearted. We love our lawn. We need it for fun and to play and to run around on. The lawn is awesome. But if you want a shot that celebrates the lush and verdant glory of your garden, you don’t want it marred by something, well… comparably haggard. Maybe next time I will devote an entire post to photos and tales of our grass.

Probably not, though.

Inman Square, Somerville: Like a Heat Wave

Early harvest.

I recently got back from almost a week down in Chatham on Cape Cod. It was hotter than blazes even on the Cape, which worried me, since Boston is always roughly 10 degrees warmer, if not more. It was weird to be worried about the garden. We had someone coming by, but I was really afraid I'd come back to a dustbowl. Our little patch of grass definitely went poof, but I'm happy to report that the garden was looking damn good. See?

Things are exploding -- almost impossible to snap shots of any one plant.

Although lately, actually seeing the garden is pretty tough, thanks to the daylilies below. I have a love/hate relationship with them. On the one hand, they are so pretty, but on the other they are huge and things get real messy when we have to pull the car in on street-sweeping nights.

The real torture is that I'd love to cut them and bring them inside to enjoy, but there's nothing our cats, Beep and Ghostface, love more than eating flowers. Nothing. They are connoisseurs of all houseplants, really, but flowers really get them pumped. It's sad -- every spring I get all French market in my thinking and bring home armfuls of tulips, but it always ends in pastel-colored massacre, or with the flowers sitting in the fridge, and really, who the heck wants that? No one. Anyhow. Lilies are poisonous to cats, as far as I know, and so here they sit -- getting in my damn way:

I know it's tough to see past the weeds, but my greens are starting to come up. I weeded after this photo, I swear. The lettuce and the turnip greens are looking very good, despite the temperatures we've had. I'm shocked. They aren't supposed to tolerate heat, but so far, so good. The only thing that isn't making much of an appearance is the spinach in back. I think I'm seeing two cotyledons in among the weeds, but that's really not anywhere near what I should be seeing. Also, I may have stepped on those two today, while weeding. Okay, I definitely did. Hopefully they're tougher than they look.

The Black Cherry heirlooms have a real lust for life. With their color, it's sort of hard for me to tell when they're ready, but Justin and I made the executive decision to harvest some today.

These Celebrity tomatoes are completely going for broke, too, but so far they're not even close to pickable. I love the ghostly green/white color they are now. It's how I imagined the White Beauty tomatoes looking, but so far that plant, while looking totally robust, has yet to produce even one green tomato. Pemberton Farms, I want my money back.

Here is a terribly unflattering photo of me in the garden!

Whatever, it's Sunday and I don't really need to look good while covered in dirt. The Brussels sprouts appear to be in a state of suspended animation, as pointed out by my husband Justin. They just aren't really getting much bigger, but I have hope:

Speaking of Justin, check out this beautiful flower of a man. Ha! He pretended he didn't like having that flower tucked behind his ear, but I think he did:

I moved some of the radishes up to the pot that was supposed to be growing marigolds. Not sure what happened with the seeds I got from the community gardening class I took at MIT a while back, but they appear to have been blanks, because nothing happened. I was nurturing a couple of weeds before I got smart and realized I'd been had. So, now it's a radish home.

I've never grown radishes before, so I don't really have any sense of when they're ready, since all the action happens underground. So I was sort of psyched to pull a few out and see what was going on. They are nowhere near ready. I should just read the seed packet for the growth cycle, but I'd rather feel around in the dark, I guess. But the roots are filling out a bit and looking distinctly radishy, so that was exciting.

Check out this weird ghost pepper. It is literally growing upside down, which is totally weird to me. I think this plant is a carnival mix, supposedly meaning there will be all sorts of colors going on, but for now it's just this one pepper. The pepper is almost as big as the plant itself, so I fail to understand how more peppers will eventually find purchase on the plant, but I'm hoping they do.

I honestly can't recall what kind of pepper this is, but it's looking good:

Aaaaand, cucumbers. So excited that the plant is climbing the trellis this year. I tried so hard to get it to do that last year, but it just wouldn't give in. This one's got ambition:

Inman Square, Somerville: Late Seeding Experiments

So, I'm a bit behind, I guess. These pictures were taken on June 26th, but I never got around to writing a post. Anyhow, here's what you missed:

I started some late seeding on the 26th, after having done a little poking around for which plants had a short seed-to-harvest time. Unfortunately, a lot of the vegetables that fit the bill are cold-weather plants, and as anyone in Massachusetts knows, it's been hot as balls for at least the past week. But, considering this, things are going okay. More on that in the next post.

Here is the bucket of Brussels sprouts. Happy to be Mad, you were right on in spotting that tiny sprout at 3 o'clock that I didn't catch last time!

I planted some rows of greens in the spot formerly occupied by my ill-fated red cabbages. I love how cute the little rows look, especially with the jury-rigged little dowel and string dividers:

I planted Simpson lettuce, turnip greens (whatever those are), and spinach:

The clematis was looking awesome at this point, and it's still alive, but since these pictures were taken, it suffered a lot from the heat wave we had and my time away on the Cape. Our friend Sean came by and watered the garden (and the cats), but not having anticipated the intense, awful heat, we only asked him to come once during the four days no one would be around and it definitely hurt certain plants in the yard.

Is this the real life, is this just fantasy? So, in truth, the large mushrooms below are just some cute little fakies I bought on clearance at Target, because I couldn't handle their unbearable adorableness. However, not to be outdone, a tragically charming pair of REAL mushrooms sprouted up in front of their fake brethren, which almost killed me. Can you stand the cuteness?! I myself cannot:

Click to enlarge, but beware: Life-threatening cuteness to follow.

Inman Square: Additional photos from 06/22/10

Weeds!

Brussels sprouts: Not as ambitious as radishes. C'mon, little buddies -- work it out!

The bougainvillea flowers are looking very happy, which is more than I can say for those leaves. Trying to heal this little guy, but so far "withered" is this season's hot look.

Did you know potato vines flower? Yeah, me neither.

It's hard to see here, but my cucumbers appear to be attempting to climb -- hallelujah. I'm really hoping I can prevent them from swallowing my whole garden, as they did last year.

I think it's time to give up the ghost on the red cabbage. I keep watching and watching, waiting for it to look head-like, but I think it got too hot out and our pal here skipped that stage altogether and went straight to the awkward teenage years. Look how ugly and munched-on. Gots to go.

This White Beauty heirloom plant is doing a whole lot of nothing. I don't understand it -- its relatives are really taking off, but not even one little, green tomato here.

Inman Square, Somerville: Home of the Rose Killer

First off, I'm having a conceptual issue with the fact that starting a post with "Somerville:" could initially imply that I am either that hilarious Amy or the considerably more sedate me (Raquel). So, until I think of something better, I'm "Inman Square." How's that work for you?

Regarding roses

When I think of "finicky" plants, I think of orchids. And roses. And souffles, but that's only because my brain doesn't work properly. I'm used to buying spectacular orchids, coaxed to health and beauty by someone in a lovely greenhouse, and then tending to their withered, half-dead convalescence for years. These experiments always end up on the inside of a Glad bag. Like people who can keep orchids blooming, rose gardeners seem to know a lot more than I do. In their case, about coffee grounds, and banana peels, and pruning. That last one appears to be where I went wrong.

A few weeks ago, I had a pretty handsome rose bush in my back yard. But it was getting a little big for its britches and I had terrible daymares of it engulfing the whole yard and Justin and I being found years from now in some prickly, Grey Gardens thicket, surrounded by ten-foot mountains of cat food cans. So I pruned that poor thing, and I pruned it hard. And now it looks like this:

It used to look like this:

Until I did this:

So the current question is whether the bush has just run its course for the season, or whether I actively killed it.

Regarding radishes

Check em out! I only planted these last Saturday, and here's how they looked on Tuesday:

Kind of amazing, right? Now I just need HMS Killick to get on here and tell me what to do with them.

The tomatoes are doing well:

Black Cherry Heirlooms

Celebrity heirlooms

Regardin' gardens

This is what my husband, Justin, thinks we should have named this blog. And he will not SHUT UP about it.

Amy’s Somerville “Garden.”

What I have here is not so much helpful advice or inspiring photos, but rather a cautionary tale or two with some illustrated stop-gaps and lucky strikes thrown in for color. Let my garden be the garden that says, “Of course you can do better than this.”

Things in pots usually turn out nicely here. I can't black-thumb them.

This is my third summer with this garden. It is also my first non-pregnant summer with this garden. I don’t think I need to explain how awesome that is.

It’s pretty awesome.

A lot of our yard is shaded during the day, so we have hostas and foxglove and some ground-cover. They spread a little and every year I forget where they’re going to be, but they live, which I like. In the sunnier bits of the yard irises, peonies and roses do well. I often have better intentions than follow-through, so happily the yard is mostly planted with perennials.

We have rose bushes. Roses are more trouble than they’re worth, unless you love roses. What they have going for them is that they love to produce flowers, bring the bees, and don’t require too much tending. They grow like mad, regardless of how little you do for them, and come back year after year. The downside, of course, is that they grow like mad and come back year after year. If you don’t hack them off at the base every couple of seasons they will try to kill you and everyone/thing else in your garden. They climb, which can be quite pretty if you’re good at training plants (I am not), but they also encroach. They tangle. And their thorns are a horrible nightmare. Every cowboy sings a sad, sad song.

buzzzzzz

We have a raised bed for foodstuffs this summer, which is new and exciting. It has been planted three times. Thrice. Scavengers and marauders (skunks, squirrels, rabbits, daughter) have uprooted everything up until this point. My husband D rigged a pretty awesome retractable dome, which kept Raised Bed 2.0 safe until the tomato plants started growing through the roof. The first night without the dome resulted in disaster. A rabbit tore the place apart and left its otherwise adorable tracks all over. Solution: kebab skewers.

line of defense

poor beleaguered beans and peas

Incidentally, there’s a real Me Generation of squirrels this season that feel entitled to everything in the yard. They dug up a bunch of my bulbs (my calling card, as a lazy gardener) and potatoes and even ate the begonias. Seriously. Begonias. Enough already.

The potatoes grow on, though. Check it out:

Raquel, my advice for you is potatoes in planters. They aren't hideous to look at, they grow ultra fast, and then a month or so later... what's up, potatoes?

This potato plant was started by Olive. Maybe I will let her dig into the pot later. Maybe she will just do it without me asking and eat a handful of raw potatoes.

Somerville: Fast-growing plants?

Although I have a couple of spots I could fill in my garden bed (RIP, cabbages), I'm almost maxed out for space, at this point. Even so, I'm not really feeling done with adding more (more, MORE!) plants. So, the current plan is to add some containers to the garden area, specifically here on this plant stand:

That pot on top will eventually (and hopefully) be a bucket of marigolds.

I'm thinking the containers would be best used for plants with a quick seed-to-harvest time. Maybe I can even get a couple of rounds out of some of them. So, I'm looking for ideas about what would work best here. Got any?

I've poked around online and it's looking like lettuces/greens, radishes, spinach, and scallions are some of the fastest growing vegetable plants. I'm focusing on them because it seems pretty late in the game to be planting anything else (unless I go shopping for seedlings again). But I'm wondering if I could be missing out on other fun options by focusing in on just the zippy growers. What do you, the two people reading this, think?

Somerville: Raquel's Little City Garden

Hi, y'all. Raquel here. I live in Somerville, MA, in a rowhouse in Inman Square with my husband, Justin. When we moved in, almost three years ago, there was already a lovely vegetable garden going in the little backyard -- the previous occupants had built a raised bed alongside what is sometimes our patio and other times our driveway. It's not large, so for the past three years I've struggled with what to plant and how to manage the limited space.

That first year I had more time to stay on top of the garden, but failed at a few of my vegetable choices -- anyone who's seen lettuce allowed to grow past it's harvest date knows it gets pretty much prehistoric looking. And inedible.

Last summer I planted again, but between final planning for our July wedding and our honeymoon in Spain, I lost control: the weeds pretty much took over, vegetables weren't picked at the right moment, and we didn't really get much of a harvest. It's sort of unsettling what happens to cucumbers that grow past their prime and I can tell you, you definitely don't want to eat them.

So here we are. I've got a free, open summer ahead of me, having decided to take the summer off from my graphic design program at MassArt, and it's time to try and get this right. I never expect everything to go perfectly. I see gardening as a lifelong learning experience, so I don't really expect to be good until I'm 45 or so, which really helps with forgiving myself for any gardening failures. It works for me.

Here is my garden in early May:

This was after I lost two red cabbage plants, on either side of that little guy that's left. I'm pretty sure it was the (disgusting) japanese beetle grubs I kept finding when I was first planting my seedlings. Incidentally, I'm not growing from seed this year, though I'll be giving it another go next year. My past attempts at growing from seed ended up in containers on the deck of an old apartment in Cambridge. I never got much yield and my plants were rangy and weak, so I decided to backtrack and get better at keeping purchased seedlings healthy and happy, at least for now.

So far this year I'm growing heirloom tomatoes (black cherry, white beauty, and celebrity, I think), Italian and Thai basil, red cabbage, cucumbers, and jalapeno, sweet red, and carnival bell peppers.

Here are some shots of the garden as it looks now, as well as some other parts of the yard -- I'll keep you updated on my progress.

Red cabbage and cucumbers.

Baby Black Cherry heirlooms.

Lilies lining the raised vegetable bed.

Honestly, not 100% sure what this.

Might be the clematis, might be something else. Time will tell.

More lilies, and our classy outdoor dartboard.

Bougainvillea. Check out that crazy fence.

This is where my enormous jade plant summers.

If it were a person, it'd be old enough to drink in a bar.