Everything's Coming up Lettuce!

Well, not everything is lettuce. The picture to the left is of radishes. But the lettuce, peas, beets, and spinach are also coming up!

It's funny how anxious I feel after I've planted seeds, checking each day until I finally see the seedlings poking their tiny heads through the soil. In many cases, it's difficult to tell whether the slight bit of green I see is the actual plant or weeds growing in the recently tilled soil. Now that the early crops are planted, it's time to turn my attention to some of the other planting that needs to be done.

For instance, it's time to plant the seedling tomatoes--the Sun Sweet and Super Sweet cherry-size tomatoes, the Big Beef, and the Best Boy tomatoes from the local community college's horticulture program.

I also have a lot of other seeds to plant and seedlings to grow; hopefully we'll get some dry weather soon so I can do that!

Meanwhile, I will just have to be content with harvesting the runaway mint that lives in our yard and the volunteer dill that is coming up in the part of the garden I have not yet tilled.

Onion Chopping Block

You might remember an earlier post of mine about chopping onions. I chopped 5 pounds of walla wallas, leaving the entire house smelling of onion. Fumigation with various de-scenters didn't help much.

I think I found the solution for only $20 at a garage sale--a potting table! The hole in the table portion houses a plastic tub for soil, although I'll be using it for chopped onion. I'll be able to go outside and chop to my heart's content (I will probably don goggles this time) without smelling up the house!

It will also come in handy during planting season as I am starting seedlings and repotting.

Zucchini Are Rampant

It begins. You see to the left a picture of the first of many zucchini that have already been born and, within a day or two, will be ripe for eating. I counted a half dozen that I could recognize as zucchini, with many more blossoms heralding future zukes. Prepare your doorsteps, folks; "Leave a Zucchini on Your Neighbor's Doorstep Day" is coming sooner than usual this year! (Note: The official "Leave a Zucchini on Your Neighbor's Doorstep Day is--I think--August 8 each year.)

In addition to the zucchini, my Ireland Creek Annie beans are the first to sport blossoms, so it won't be long now before the soup beans will be coming on. As my loyal readers may recall, I planted several different kinds of soup beans in addition to green beans. I've never harvested soup beans before (Mexican bean beetles and neglect took last year's attempt), so it will be interesting to see how much of a pain it is. And yes, I see the bug in the picture, but I am happy to report it is merely a cricket, the soul of a deceased Chinese emperor come to visit my humble garden.

Tomorrow I will need to transfer my tomato and pepper seedlings into bigger pots. They are a bit too small for the garden yet, but need more room for rooting. Here's a look at the seedlings. The tomatoes are looking a bit spindly on the left. The pepper plants are looking quite healthy in the back, and the oregano seedlings are coming on strong!

Yesterday I planted green onions, okra, and cilantro/coriander, and mammoth sunflower seeds directly into the garden and lightly mulched with grass clippings. It's probably too late in the season to be planting these foods, but what the heck, every one of my gardens is an experiment of some sort. The whole planting season has been late due to the three-month-long April showers. If they don't take, I can always adjust next year.

Tomatoes are Fruiting!

It continues to rain almost daily, although we were supposed to get pop-up showers today and didn't. It was nearly 100 degrees today, and if the humidity wasn't 100 percent, well, it was close enough to call it. Within just 5 seconds of walking outside, my head started to sweat, and a collection of sweat-drinking flying things swarmed me. I was able to get some pictures taken of the garden, however, and plants are loving this wet weather!

The once-neglected Sun Sugar tomato plants are now looking tremendously healthy, and have produced their first fruits/ It was all I could do to keep myself from picking them early and savoring their sweet, summery taste. But I refrained in order to let them ripen. They should be ready in a day or two. The heirloom tomato plants, which were a bit wilty after I planted them a few days ago, are now standing up straight! Depending upon the heat tomorrow, I may try to get out and stake them; if it's too hot and humid (which is predicted for tomorrow), I may wait a day or so. They are small enough and straight enough that I don't need to worry for now.

The zucchini plants have filled out nicely, and I expect to see blossoms within a day or two. People, I fear I will be overrun with zucchini! Of course, given how many plants I installed in the garden, that comes as no surprise to me. I will be grating and freezing a lot this summer, I suspect! The onion and shallot shoots continue to grow, as well, so I should have a lot of those come fall.

The cucumbers are now getting their squash-like leaves, and it won't be long before they'll send out their tendrils to grab on to the dirt. My goal is to try to train them up the fence. We'll see how that goes.

The bean plants are gaining strength and will do better as the zucchini grows a bit more and begins to shade them.

I can also see the Mammoth Dill, which isn't so mammoth right now, peeking its shoots above the grass clippings.

In the seedlings department, the Beefsteak tomatoes have risen, as well as a couple of pepper plants and some of the oregano and basil.

Just writing about all this food is making me hungry!

A Tilled Garden is NOT a Putting Green

The forecast indicates we'll be getting more rain tomorrow, so David spent most of the afternoon tilling up the rest of the "putting green," aka "garden." I think he is trying to make a point by getting out his putter and a golf ball. He is practicing chip shots over and around the humps of wet soil he has tilled up--maybe sandtrap practice? Clods of dirt go flying. This is his last opportunity to play (golf) in the dirt before the garden is planted!

While he was tilling, I planted the three raspberry bushes and the blueberry bush I bought at Lowe's. (It seems wrong, somehow, to buy bushes at a hardware store. I don't think I'll ever really like the megastores.) If they don't die, aren't eaten by rabbits or deer, and don't get stepped on or flooded, then we'll have golden raspberries, red raspberries, and black raspberries, as well as blueberries. Of course, they don't usually fruit for up to three years, so it will be interesting to see how they do.

I also bought rhubarb starts, asparagus starts, white and yellow onion sets, and shallot sets, so I'll have to get those in the ground, too. The rhubarb and asparagus won't be viable this year, and maybe not the year after. And I STILL need to start my seedlings! Thursday. I will start them Thursday. No matter what...

It's Spring...No, It's Winter...No, It's Spring...No, It's Winter...

Dear Mother Nature,

I know "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature," but really--who's fooling whom? Haven't you read the The Old Farmer's Almanac, which says that April 17 is the last frost date for the Springfield, Illinois area and April 22 for the Chicago, Illinois area? Please--give our poor little peas and beans and other early spring crops a break!

Early this morning, my Forecastfox widget alerted me with a big, ugly red stop sign that we had a severe weather alert for Decatur, Illinois. According to Accuweather.com, a

...FREEZE WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 1 AM TO 8 AM CDT TUESDAY...

HIGH PRESSURE FROM CANADA WILL MOVE INTO WESTERN ILLINOIS BY TUESDAY MORNING...WHICH WILL PRODUCE A DECREASE IN CLOUD COVER AND WINDS OVER CENTRAL ILLINOIS. THESE CONDITIONS WILL BE FAVORABLE FOR TEMPERATURES AT OR BELOW THE FREEZING MARK AFTER MIDNIGHT TONIGHT. RECORD LOW TEMPERATURES FOR TUESDAY MORNING WILL ALSO BE POSSIBLE.

A FREEZE WARNING MEANS SUB-FREEZING TEMPERATURES ARE IMMINENT OR HIGHLY LIKELY. THESE CONDITIONS COULD KILL SENSITIVE VEGETATION WHICH SHOULD BE COVERED OR BROUGHT INSIDE.

Argh! I have been so good at getting seedlings started, getting plants in the ground, taking care of them, and now this! A gardener's nightmare.

I dug through my old fabric and old sheets and scrounged as many scraps and old linens as possible to cover the beans and peas. I draped them over the fences to try to keep out the worst of the weather, but we're also supposed to have freezing rain, so I'm not sure how effective they'll be. I may have to start all over. I also covered up the few tulips I had sprouting in a nearby mess of branches and leaves.

C'mon, Mother Nature, give a poor eco-friendly girl a break! Bring on Spring!

Springing into Action

At last, spring is here!

I've been itching to till my garden, but in order to do so, I have to rake off the poisonous leaves and add the compost and organic soil to build up the garden. In order to till, the soil has to be dry enough that it won't compact when we till, but it seems that after every nice day or two, we have a significant rain.

So yesterday I decided it was time to set up the compost bin I bought on clearance at Lowe's for a ridiculous $62. Yes, I know, I could have just heaped the compost, but my goodness, this bin is black (and thus will absorb heat to help cook the compost), has slots that allow air to flow through, has another level I can add to it, and even has a hinged lid! Pretty exciting, let me tell you! It does everything but dance! After setting up the bin, which was pretty simple, I threw in shredded paper, cardboard, dead non-poisonous leaves, food scraps we've been saving, coffee grounds I begged from Panera, and some tiny twigs. I watered it all down to get it moving in the right direction.

Today was the second nice day in a row, and a quick look at my Amish Snap Peas, which were spindly and droopy, told me they needed some serious planting. So I picked a nice sunny spot in the yard (not in the garden), raked off the few black walnut leaves that covered the ground, and used The Claw (my favorite garden tool, purchased several years ago) to loosen up the ground. I then added some organic soil. I'm not certain they look much better tied to the tongue depressors swiped from a friendly doctor's office. I think I will have to find taller stakes.

My biggest worry is that we may have some hungry neighborhood rabbits who fancy feasting on my tender pea shoots. So I fenced the peas in with four $1 gates garnered from The Dollar Tree. Before you ask, yes, I do realize that rabbits can hop and conceivably could overleap the fence and eat the pea plants despite my efforts. But I'm not sure how else to keep them out, and I'm hoping the fence will deter them. I thought about getting a pellet gun and eating the rabbits I pop, but I'm not all that fond of the idea of dismantling and cleaning a rabbit for cooking.

Beans will be following the peas very soon. I planted a couple of varieties of green beans and several varieties of soup beans on April 9, and a few days ago, they were just pushing through the dirt. On Saturday, I walked out to the porch and--Bam!--they were a few inches high! Last night I raised my grow lamp up one notch, and it looks like I'll have to either raise it another notch or swap the tray for the tomato tray, where the seedlings are still small.

There is something very exciting about growing plants. Let's hope I can keep them alive...and uneaten!

Apparently "No-Till" Doesn't Mean "No-Rake"

Yesterday, I started several seedlings--tomatoes, peas, eggplant, green beans, peppers, kohlrabi, spinach, and strawberry spinach. You can see my setup at left--I'm using the Jiffy pellets and trays. I also have a grow light I bought on clearance at Blaine's Farm & Fleet on the left, and a seedlings warming mat underneath the tray on the right (also courtesy of Farm & Fleet clearance). The little green Post-It tags tell me what variety I planted, and each row is a variety. On the right, I have two rows of some varieties; hence the separated tags. I trade off the seedlings trays so each day one of them gets "sun." And yes, I planted 48 tomato plants (6 of each variety). I'm a bit of a tomato nut. I just cannot eat the plastic tomatoes from the store.

So today, when I got home from work, I was feeling antsy to look at the garden mess left over from last year. Oh. my. God. I forgot that I hadn't even taken the tomato cages down! We also have a million thousand too frackin' many trees in our yard, so we get inundated with leaves. Since I'm going to begin my composting endeavor this year (no sense in not trying to learn how to do everything at once, of course), you might think that the sea of leaves in our yard would be a good thing.

You would be wrong.

Apparently, black walnut leaves are poison to plants, horses, and...um...humans, at least according to the article "Black Walnut Toxicity to Plants, Humans and Horses." The article does suggest that black walnut leaves may be composted separately and tested for safety by trying to grow some tomato plants in it, but I'm not too keen about eating tomatoes grown in poison. If YOU want to try it, go right ahead--I'll be glad to supply you with leaves, but you have to come get them. And rake them up. And bag them.

[Pictured: last year's garden plot, which runs from the chair at left to where the grass weeds show on the right. The garden extends about a yard short of the fence, which is barely visible in the back. The trees mark the fence line. Notice how the leaves seem to cling only to the garden and not the lawn.]