Tag: gardening

So before the renovation, I threw seeds in things and on the ground. So the front yard is whatever survived construction workers throwing stuff on top, stepping on, etc. The backyard is whatever was there before and this thing.
Look at the picture. What the hey is this thing? It is in a pot so there is a 70% chance I put it there. At first I thought it was a cucumber because the plant is kinda small and it is a clingy plant. Well when the fruit got bigger than a golf ball I knew, not a cucumber. Cuke has little thorny bits, this has soft hairs.
So I had Jimbo come over and used his plant superpowers to determine what it was. First guess was watermelon. But the leaves were wrong for watermelon. Second answer, don’t know. Then somehow Jim put on his landscape architecture hat and made all sorts of suggestions of turning into some garden with a water feature.
So I’m taking this to the people. Any guesses of what this is?

Over on the main In Shaw site there is an announcement for an urban gardening class offered by Shaw Eco-village. Thought I’d just mention that.
There is probably a lot one can learn about urban gardening, but currently I’m okay with my general gardening knowledge. Besides, with the upcoming construction and being out of the house* my gardening will be next to nada this Spring. I’m just letting the mint go wild, and seeing what ever I planted do its thing. Maybe some container gardening. I’m not going to be very aggressive about it, not like last year.
There are some things I’d like to know about my urban garden that I wouldn’t learn in the class. Like is there really lead in my soil? When I talk to others and mention my gardening theme of ‘if I can’t eat it, I ain’t growing it,’ someone eventually brings up the worry about stuff in the soil. Considering the soil was a big patch of clay when I got it, and I added a lot to it in the following years. What is on the top should be all the Home Depot purchased top-soil, peat moss, sand, fertilizer and my own compost. I guess the possible lead should have washed out of the soil by now or absorbed by the plants that I pulled out when moving in. But I would like to take the guess to a knowing and have the soil tested, so I know that I’m right.
How’s the garden now? Well a few days ago I wandered out to the back yard and grabbed some Spring onions growing in an Earthbox that I planted in fall. They are looking well and I used three of them to make a nice onion wine sauce for a bit of fried trout. In other pots the alpine strawberry has some green leaves, as does the oregano, and the mint. I’ll probably need to divide the roots and repot them. The laurel bay is dead. From what I can tell it was killed by too many freezing days. I’ll leave it alone, maybe it will spring back. There are some chives that have popped out in the window box that I think I seeded in Fall. Last year’s thyme and sage are chugging along in the window boxes as well. I’ve used the thyme all year, and it’s been okay. However, I look forward to more mint for the mojitos.

*Got housing in a undisclosed TC location. I’ll stay there until one of the owners’ pets decides that I gotsta go. Then it may be followed by crashing in Hyattsville or CH.

Okay. I have mentally accepted that I won’t be in the TC or anywhere in Shaw or even Eckington, and will be spending a lot of time in an undisclosed location in PG County where the buses suck. So if all goes well I won’t be back in my house till June or July, Summer. However, I still want to garden. I want to come back to a garden.
I could just buy tomato and other plants and concentrate on fall plantings and crops when I come back. I could. Rather, I have decided to take my chances with nature. I have some left over seeds that should have been planted last year, and so I took them outside and threw them on the ground and covered them with dirt. If they grow and there is something for me to tend and something that hasn’t been destroyed by workmen, then YAY! If not, so be it. They should get a decent amount of water from rain till Summer hits. They’d be in the ground, so hopefully that will help.
Winter has proven that some plants just don’t need me. The Arugula was holding strong till that nasty highs below freezing weather. Then it died off. Now it is coming back, again, with no help from me. And I put them there by, randomly throwing seed against my house. I’m hoping for the same miracle.
Moving the mulch made from last year’s tomato vines and leaves, I discovered the peppermint has gone wild. And that’s why you keep peppermint in a friggin pot. So has the Sweet Woodruff. Before the Sweet Woodruff was impossible for me to keep alive, but it found shelter under the leaves of the arugula and several tender young leaves greeted me.
The thyme is fine. The oregano seems to be okay. I discovered some sage I’d completely forgotten about. The mint is more than fine and acting true to its nature, like a weed.
In the back, in pots, the Spring Onions are surviving squirrel attacks. As are the few sprigs of cilantro. The pot with the daylilies looks dry and the lilies are doing, something, I don’t know what. The compost is looking good. I shoveled a little out last night. I’m not seeing a lot of worms and I’m worried the frost might have killed some off. I may seed one huge pot for tomato and hope that it holds enough water until I can return.
It will be interesting to see what Nature surprises me with.

The joys of urban gardening. This summer has been very, very good to me with the rains and the not too hot heat. I’ve had a so-so yield of blueberries, decent output of tomatoes and the herbs I never eat are flourishing.
The problem with urban gardening, well gardening for me, is that I have a typical postage stamp yard. It could be worse, it could be smaller. I could have bought a bigger house, but it didn’t have a yard. Not only is the yard small, it doesn’t get a lot of “full sun”. When I had the DC Agricultural Extention person out, yes, they’ll come out, she wasn’t hopeful about my gardening prospects. So I’ve been picky about what grows in the few areas of the tiny yard that gets the good dirt and the full sun.
When I first started digging for the garden you wouldn’t believe the crap I found in the dirt. Besides the ten zillion bits of broken glass, reminants of an ugly red carpet, I have found money. Not silver dollars, (I wish) but dimes, nickels, good stuff.
After all that work, I wanted the plants to give back. No ornamentals for me. No. I want food producing plants. Also it is a cool thing to be cooking and walk outside and grab one of the ingredients. Neat.

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I’m going to take a short break so I’ll have no posts over the weekend.