Tag: gardening

Maybe I need an intervention. Well, the first step is admitting you have a problem. Ok. I’m Mari and I have bought more seeds than my garden can grow.
Seriously, I can’t grow that many peas, or beans. One hundred or more seeds, and I can maybe support 10 plants of that one variety, tops. But that’s not the biggest problem, because I can just save the seed. I have seeds from years past that, may or may not grow. No, the problem is that I have a catalog and I know I’m going to order more. There are such tantalizing choices, like jeweled toned purple onions, Beetberry, grey shallots, white beets, golden cherry tomatoes, the temptations are far more than what my little yard can bear.
So, anyone want to do a local (I’m talking east of 9th, west of North Cap) seed exchange or seed sharing?
I got a tad too much of the following:
Blue & Yellow Blend Peas (Cooks’s Garden #579)
Romaine Lettuce
Arugula (Roquette)- ’cause the stuff is still growing in the yard
Calendula
& Cherry Belle Radishes

There are some seeds that I could use all the seeds for if I eat them as microsalads, which are divine and tasty. But if anyone wants to try their hand at corn mache, Black Seeded Simpson, Garden Purslane, or Red Emperor beans, I can spare some seed.
What I’d like, at least to keep from returning to the catalogs, are some regular run of the mill peas, snap, shelling or snow, leeks, and pansies.
So do you have any seed to spare or is it too early to ask?

For Christmas I got a big honking stack, seriously, a bigger than what I can carry in one hand stack of wildflower seeds. Unfortunately, the seeds won’t be going into my garden as they don’t fit my “can I eat it?” theme. So I figure I’ll take them to the nearest overgrown lot and set them free there.
Which got me to thinking about vacant lots, to go with the vacant house theme. I know of a lot, and I’m going to leave out the specifics as though I am not sure what was done was legal, it was good. There is a vacant lot that was taken over by a group of neighbors and turned into a mini-micro-park. The vacant lot was your run of the mill weedy patch o’ dirt, then someone decided to do some landscaping and others supported and kept it up.
And now that the RE market has gone into a downturn, and properties aren’t turning over as fast, I wonder if Spring 2008 would be a good time to do some guerrilla gardening? Find a lot, which I can think of two near me, and weed and seed a small patch of it. These two lots rarely, from what I’ve observed get cleaned up until they’ve turned into rat havens. Which make them better candidates than other vacant yards that are mowed more often.

Last night I had a salad from fresh greens still growing in the yard, arugula. I planted it sometime in the summer, and the plants are still going strong. They were covered with snow last week, but now the snow has melted, they are accessible again. They are harder and not as nice as the soft springtime bounty. But it’s cold and I’m not going to the store and I want a salad. I have to chop them up finely. Of course, I could wilt them as well and it would be fine.
Also in the yard, not going as strong is the chard. It’s okay, not looking as perky as it did before the snow.

Squirrels are evil.
I had some little green tomatoes but the furry little bastards keep grabbing them and eating them. I didn’t buy any blood meal to thwart them, so really it’s my fault. Next year, tomatoes in the front. They don’t seem to mess with the front yard produce.
The front yard has a good amount of Swiss Chard, arugula, and purselane going on as well as the herbs. These things dealt with last winter’s cold quite well. However I’ll probably try to get rid (ie eat) the front yard chard before it gets really cold.There are some beet seedlings that I’m not sure will be okay when it starts getting cold. And there is one little bean plant that looks like it may give me a little something.
I discovered the joy of beet greens kinda late in the year. They don’t give the same furry teeth feeling as the chard. I have more beets in the back yard, but I think I’ll make more of an effort next year and maybe try turnips.
And minus the weeds, the front yard is edible and doesn’t require a lot of work (once established). I do enjoy grabbing some herb or greens for dinner, but the same could be said of the container garden in the rear. The good thing about the plants being in ground is that I don’t have to water that much, as I tend to forget to water….

Or tarragon, or basil? I got too much. So y’all Northern Truxton (aka BACA) or North Truxton Circle adjacent in need of some good legal herb, mon, email me ’cause I have too much of the stuff. I need to cut back seriously on the thyme…. and don’t ask me which type of thyme because I mixed the caraway, the English thymes, and there is a winter thyme, but I think I can ID that. I can sort of ID the French, but I’m not 100% sure of where it is in the yard. Also if you want plant with root, I can do that.
I don’t know why I grow tarragon when I rarely use it.
I got one recipe for sage. And more sage than what is called for. Yeah, I know you can dry it and burn it, but why?
Oh and peppermint and spearmint. Got plenty of that too.
So for herbs (before I toss ’em in the compost) email mari at inshaw period-thingy com.

This is how I can describe yesterday. Morning, hot. Lunchtime, hawt! After work, reasonably pleasant. The weather was welcoming enough that I spent some time in the backyard looking at my tomatoes, onions, purslane, spinach, mache, chard, and herbs.
The onions
I planted these bad boys in pots last fall and ignored them. An amazing thing happens when you ignore your onions, and aren’t constantly picking them, they get bulbs. I’ve collected a dozen small white onions and used them in cooking.
Tomatoes
This year the squirrels obviously found another food source and allowed my tomatoes to ripen on the vine. Last year I would find 1/2 eaten green tomatoes littered all over the place because the tree rats lost their mulberry tree and decided to make dinner out of my unripened fruit. I’ve had at least two tomatoes ripen, untouched.
I’m also happy that despite being ignored and only watered to the point of wilting, they have produced. Well, now that I’m watering them more often. During the renovation they were hard if not impossible to water as the water to the house was cut off and ‘somebody’ had raided the water barrel’s water.
Lettuces
I’ve talked about my purslane hunt and well there is nothing really exciting about growing mache and spinach in a pot. Throw in seeds. Watch them grow.

Despite not being able to take advantage of Spring I think I’ve done alright for myself and my little garden.

Addition:
The idea of the edible front yard lives on. I’m wondering if I should put some of the purslane in the front. But that also means, in the ground. Something I should really not do with something considered a weed. Yet, then again, I have peppermint, a weed, growing in the ground. Probably somewhere oregano is a weed. It grows like one, and it too is in the front yard. So maybe I’ll add some purslane, unless someone talks me out of it.

There wasn’t any at this Sunday’s Bloomingdale farmers market, but they had some last week and I love the stuff. I’ve had it twice now. Make a dressing of olive oil, lots of freshly chopped garlic and line juice, delish!
I like it so much so that I looked on line to find out how to grow it myself as I also discovered it has a crappy shelf life. After about 4 days in the fridge it begins to fall apart. Well, I discovered it was a weed. And then that same day I noticed it growing between the bricks in Georgetown.
Later in the week I began to notice it growing in Shaw. Never noticed it before, because it is, you know, a weed. So this Saturday I went on a purslane hunt. Found a mess of them growing on a notorious drug dealing corner. I developed a theory, but that was struck down when I also noticed it growing in front of the houses of various upstanding citizens.
I don’t plan to eat what I grabbed. I just want to get the rootstock, get them growing in pots, cut away the old growth and dine on the new. Until then I await the salad guys to bring in more purslane.

Well I took it off the vine and ate it. It’s a weird looking but regular tasting cucumber.
I thought I planted a cucumber but the darned thing did not look like the cukes I grew last time. The last cukes had spikes on the fruit and well looked like a cucumber and not a green baseball.