Flowers & Herbs

Last Saturday I woke up early and went down to the St. Paul Farmers Market for the the first time this season. It was bustling with people and flowers and herbs. And of course rhubarb and asparagus and other early season veggies here in the great north. It was quite a site. The flowers were remarkable. Everywhere you looked people were taking photos of the grandeur of it all. I picked up two beautiful baskets of hanging petunias for either side of our back door. They add lots of cheer to the back yard and I loooove them!

In addition the to the two baskets, I also bought herbs to fill the herb garden between the strawberry patch and our massive rhubarb plant. 3 basil plants, rosemary, cilantro, thyme, sage and lavender.

All of these I also grew last year, with the exception of the lavender. I am determined to get lavender in our yard, and since it didn't work to start from seed I just picked a little guy at the market.

I didn't worry to much about how they were going to be placed in the garden. I just set them down and made sure there was good spacing between them to give them room to grow. Then I rearranged a bit. I put the basil plants closest to the door, because, lets be honest, those are the ones I'm going to be going at the most. Henec the fact that I put in THREE plants.

And I gave the lavender a big spacious spot in the back.

The remaining herbs (sage, cilantro, thyme and rosemary) were put in between the basil plants and the lavender. The only consideration I made here was to put the sage by the rosemary because I thought the silver of the sage would look nice next to the purple of the lavender. 

Here is the herb garden in all of it's newly planted glory. You will notice (with the help of some text) that I have also trans-planted a little hasta that was barely surviving at our fence line. And our chives from last year came up on their own this year. Back at the fence line I am going to grow two types of beans. It might not look like there is room in this picture but...

If you look from here, you can see that this is the PERFECT place to cram a few more veggies in. If you ask me, fresh garden beans are second only to tomatoes. So the more the merrier.

                           

Have a lovely memorial day weekend! I hope to be back again, sooner than later, but no promises. 

Fencing (Out) The Critters

Let the preparation continue! This weekend I gave Chris the mission of fencing off our garden area to keep the critters at bay. So on Saturday morning while I was out for breakfast at Wise Acre in Minneapolis, Chris took measurements of the area and then picked up poultry netting and stakes from the hardware store. Supplies in hand, he set out to complete his wife-appointed mission. (Yes, I am a very lucky lady.)

We haven't had critters problems yet this year, but I've seen more than a few rabbits trolling the neighborhood in my tenure here so we know they are around. Last year we fenced off the garden area with wooden stakes and meshing (as seen below). This worked well enough, but it was no easy task to assemble and it got pretty shabby by the end of the year, so it came down before winter set in.

We are hoping this new fence will have a little more durability. Ideally we won't need to take the fence down for the winter and will be able to consider this task done for a few years. Husband measured out from the beds and staked the four corners. We gave several feet between the beds and the fence, I recommend at least two feet, so you can properly squat in there even where the plants are real big later on the in the summer.

Once the corners were staked it appeared to be a pretty quick process to add additional stakes every four to five feet for support. 

The stakes have little slits in them which are made to hook the poultry netting. Once all the stakes were in around he went with the netting, locking it into place. I don't want to discredit his hard work on this task, but I think even Chris was a little surprised at how quick it went. Arial view anyone?

Perhaps a not so grainy on the ground view would be preferable? Props to the husband for knocking this one out of the park!

However, the story does not end here. Remember how I said we hadn't seen any rabbits yet this year? Turns out, if you build a fence, they will come! Last night I was sitting in the back porch reading when I noticed Luna start to twitch...lo and behold....

Okay, I realize that rabbit is hard to see in the photo. But trust me, it was there, sitting right at the fence line, trying to figure out how to get in. And get in, it did! Yes,  my mesclun greens were attacked last night.

How you ask? Well, last year we put tent stakes into the meshing to hold it tight to the ground so the rabbits couldn't wiggle their way in underneath the fencing. We have every intention of doing it again this year, but we were in no rush to get 'er done as there isn't much going on yet. But with this mornings discovery it looks like we will be doing some staking tonight.

Another strategy for keeping out rabbits is sprinkling human hair at the fence line. We did this last year and it seemed to help, so, if anyone reading this is planning on getting a hair cut soon could you do me a favor and bring over your trimmings? I would really appreciate it. That's not too weird is it?

Moving Outdoors!

Guess who slept outside last night??

Our seedlings! That's right. I have begun the process of hardening off our transplants. Monday they spent the day on the front porch and then went back to their room for the night (at which point I ever so cruelly took their heat mat away). Last night I decided to bite the bullet and put them out on the back porch to be left out OVER NIGHT! I confess, I was nervous like a parent sending their kids off to their first day of school. But come morning, they were still there and looked pretty damn content to boot.

Truthfully, they didn't really sleep out doors. They slept in the back porch. Where the wind and the critters couldn't get to them. The nice thing about our back porch is that it pretty well serves all the needs of seedling that are being hardened to the inclement weather of Minnesota. It's warmer than being all the way outside, but cooler than the house. There is no danger of frost. And I also don't have to worry about them being directly exposed to the sun for long periods of time because they still have a roof over their heads. You see, they are in a state of transition, too much of the new environment at any one time can make them commit seedling suicide. We don't want that.

Over the next several days I will put the seedling out in the yard for a few hours at a time to get them used to the Sun and the air but they will come back in the porch at night. That is, unless the weather takes an extreme dip in the cold direction, in which case I can still bring them inside. I haven't lost all control...yet!

All of this means, I need to start thinking about how I am going to lay out the garden. Because, folks, it's getting on planting time. How that is too look exactly, I can't say just yet. Check back next week and I just might have a peak for you.

Oh, and get this...our strawberry patch is starting to flower...you know what the means!!!
Answer: STRAWBERRIES!!

Building Your Stake

One of our projects for this spring has been to build a third garden bed. Our 2, 4x6 beds, gave us a nice amount of food last year, that is, it gave us enough to eat, but not really much for saving so we decided to expand a bit.  I wanted to grow a few additional items, in hopes of being able to save some food for freezing and canning. So until the weekend before last this is what our "garden" looked like.

But then my handy man husband went out and picked up 4 10 ft 2x8's and got to work cutting the lumber to make a third bed that would run perpendicular to the other two and would be 11 feet long and 2 feet wide. Why these weird proportions you ask? There is a reason! This part of our yard is the only area that isn't covered by the tree's shade for a large portion of the day. If we made it any wider than 2 feet it probably wouldn't get any sun.  Basically, we are utilizing the last of the good vegetable gardening real estate we have.

After cutting the pieces to size Chris anchored them together with 2 L brackets in each corner.

And then he reinforced that by putting a few screws on the outside of the corners. I stood by and shouted words of encouragement like, "nice biceps!" 

Ta-da! That was probably the easier part. And the total cost, $26! Not bad, not bad at all!!

Next up, the soil needed to be removed and then the box needed to be filled with a happy and  healthy compost and soil mixture.

As fun as that part was (for Chris), I failed to take any photos, so now we are now going to move on to the next task. Which is to stake out the beds in preparation for sowing seeds. I have two options for you. We will call them year one option and year two option. Either way it helps to draw little ticks marks along the edges of your bed at 1 foot intervals so you can stake away later without having to measure as you go.

Year one option is to break up scraps of wood and tie strings around them, like so...

The nice thing about year one option is that when you are ready to take them out of the beds you can wrap them up and store them away to reuse next year. This made for fairly quick work this year since they were all already made, but it was not so quick last year. The one thing I don't like is that these guys can be kinda hard to get to stay in place as there really is nothing holding them down. But they do the job, no question there.

Year two option is my new favorite option because it was quick and easy work. I tied a loose loop with my string and laid the not knotted part over my tick mark, like so...

Then I used my handy little staple gun and told that string who was boss by stapling it into place.  

Sinch the knot around the staple...

Then pull the string taught to the opposite side of the bed and staple it down. If you get the staple fully into the wood it is surprisingly secure and you won't have to worry about it going anywhere.

The end result is three beds all staked and ready to be sown with seeds and plants. Year two option, which I used on the new bed, actually hovers above the dirt instead of sitting on it. I don't think this is better or worse, but one or the other might cater to an individuals preference. Also, it just looks a lot cleaner. 

This past Sunday I even sowed some seeds, from left to right we have two square feet each of Kale, Spinach,  Lettuce & Mesclun Greens. The Mesclun greens are new this year and replaced the Swiss Chard from last year. Turns out, I wasn't as into Swiss Chard as I thought I would be. No loss though!

Oh, and out in the front yard, we have the first sign of life sprouting up near our bean pole. I planted some seeds out there weeks ago but with the cold snap nothing ever happened. I guess they were just waiting till now to do their thing. (Disclaimer - this photo is from last summer - perhaps you already realized that since there are no day lilies planted at the curb side).

So, have you planted anything out doors yet? Is anything starting to pop up? Or did you do that weeks ago and already begun to harvest your first bits of food??

Walk This Way

I present to you another post in which we take advantage of something free to give our little plot of earth some much needed character all while adding functionality. Last May, as our neighbors were cleaning out their house in an effort to sell it, we acquired A LOT of miscellaneous items, like the little shelf I told you about a few weeks ago. Sitting in their garage, intended from some project that never happened, was a pile of red paver stones with a floral pattern cut into them. I like the way they looked and they were free, so we took them and let them sit in our garage for a while before we figured out where we wanted them to permanently reside.

As you can see from the photo above, the garden hose resides on the side of our house. And since most of the stuff that needs to be watered is in the back yard, we do a lot of walking back and forth in that area where I drew "X"'s. See where I am going here?? It really was a no-brainer.

We laid the stones out and walked back and forth on them to make sure there were positioned at a comfortable stride. Then Chris put on his work gloves and started digging. He used the screwdriver method -- trace around the object in question with a screw driver -- so that he would dig only the area where the stone would eventually reside. 

If you look real close in the photo above you can see the outline in the ground where Chris traced around the stone. Trace. Dig. Repeat. x9.

In case you are curious we did not put weed block paper underneath. Additionally, we have yet to fill in the stones with anything. I debated if we should put pebbles in as to keep the maintenance level down, or if we wanted to fill them in with dirt. This internal debate has since turned into procrastination. And the stones have filled up with all sorts of random yard debris, such a leaves. It's not so pretty. So that will need to be addressed in the near future. My thought now is that we will fill them with dirt and in time if grass happens to grow in them we can just weed whip them to keep it clean. And it will created a little bit of a secret garden feel to it like the photo below which happens to be from the DIY Network's tutorial on building a stone walkway...if you are interested in such information.

The cost on this project was just a little bit of sweat and we are very happy with the end result. The stones add so much character and functionality.

Friday Walkabout

Since I have gardening on the mind, I thought I would take you for a walkabout through our yard and show you some of the improvements we did last year and of course point out the things I would like to do this year.

Let's start out front. You saw the house the other day from this angle. What you don't see in this picture is that where the grass ends in the photo, the yard suddenly slopes downward. We plan to put in a retaining wall there, hopefully sometime this summer. (I happen to know that it is number one on This Earths to do list, so that is pretty promising.)

If you are standing on the other side of the front of the house, and its not such a gray day, it looks like this. The other HUGE project I would love to do, this year, is paint the outside of the house, the stucco part of the house. I am thinking yellow, because it would contrast nice with the brown shingles on the top of the house a give it a nice pop. Just about anything would be better than patchy-tan stucco.

Along the side of the house and wrapping around the front is one long garden bed. It might be more appropriate to call this a "mulched area". When we moved there were two Goldflame Spirea shrubs (see above) in front of the house and along the side was an uncontrolled area of lily of the valley, some ferns that volunteered from the neighbors yard and a ton of milkweed (see below). We cleaned this all up last spring and planted orange and yellow lilies, purple iris, coral bell, a peony bushy, some ground cover I don't know of the name of, a few succulents and at least one other flowering plant that I am blanking on now. All of this came from my mother's yard before she sold her house.  Thanks mom!!

Before:

After:

                                

And if we keep on walking on to the back yard, through the side gate, we have another bed that was cleaned up last year. It too was over run with lily of the valley (my arch-nemesis). We planted a lot of the same stuff here that we planted out front plus some hosta's, fountain grasses and a rasberry bush from the neighbors yard.

Before:

 And after

Let's pull back a little though and give you the long shot. Which includes the two 4x6 garden beds we built last spring.

In the above photo you see the sidewalk of to the left, that's where we are headed next. This bed was already here when we moved in. Yay! The side in the lower part of the photo is our strawberry patch. The other side is a herb garden that I planted last year and plan to do again this year. Over in the corner is our Rhubarb. Oh, and see that gutter hanging out in the middle of the sidewalk. I HATE that thing. I am hoping to put a rain barrel there and remove that so no one trips over it and dies.

If we pull back from here, you can see the whole of the back yard near the house that we have been talking about. I can't wait for an after picture with the house painted.

The perimeter and the far side and the back of yard are also lined with a garden bed/mulched area, it's about 2 feet deep. (That little line in the image below is meant to help you understand what I am taking about because I don't have any close ups for you). This where our two peony bushes are. And some Purple Clematis which is growing on that white trellis-y thing. The Clematis did not survive the fence building project  of 2011 but is already starting to come back this year. Fingers crossed. We put in lilies, coral bell, ground cover and a few other items last spring. I also planted tulips along this perimeter in the fall. They are coming up now but no actual flowers have bloomed as of today.

And so our walkabout comes to an end with a final photo of the last garden bed in the back corner of the yard. There are lots of hosta's back there and some other green stuff. It's a dark little corner so the colorful plants aren't so happy back yonder, but it's nice still. And how about that tree?? Two of me can not wrap my arms around it. We think she is older than our house. She provides lots of shade, especially in the back part of our yard which we love.

Now, if you are still reading, it's time for a little game. In the back corner garden is a little bird bath. You can hardly make it out in this picture, but it's there, I promise. And it's in a few other places through out this post too. Can you guess how many spots we put that bird bath in before it ended up there? I'll tell you this, it was in more places that you find in this here walkabout.

You can expect a lot more posts about the yard in the coming months, here is a little list of projects I hope to get done this year:

• -Add a two tiered retaining wall to the front yard to correct slope
• -Plant lots of flowers in the new bed of the retaining wall
• -Paint the exterior of the house - yellow??
• -Fix gutter to flow into rain barrel
• -Add trellis over the back gate
• -Add third garden bed
• -Plant more flowers