Proven Winners Plants Postulations
10 years ago
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Garden Tour: Week One.
Looking at vegetable garden advice is getting me so excited, and wistful. I wish I had planted even more in my garden: carrots, lettuce, beets, broccoli, potatoes, kale, spinach, chard, peppers, zucchini, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cucumber, more green beans, bigger tomato plants, fava beans, and rhubarb. I think I can still add some of these, for a fall/early winter harvest. But next year I'm going to be prepared by spring, seriously.
Anyway, I promised more photos of my garden. I'm going to try to be be annoyingly diligent about keeping track in my blog of how it's growing, so be prepared. Complete identification of the plants to follow in an edit tomorrow.
WEEK ONE.
Here we are, after a week of planting. From what I remember now, I bought the plants two weeks ago tomorrow, on June 15, and started planting on Saturday the 21st, starting with the herbs and perennials. I moved onto the beans, eggplants, and tomatoes early this past week, and finished up planting the rest of the vegetables today.
Above: The herb garden, clearly delineated to protect it from idiotic landscapers who weedwack everything that's green. From the back, going in concentric clockwise circles from the outside, there's chocolate mint, sweet basil (ocimum basilcum), French tarragon, thyme, oregano, sage, dill, mother of thyme/creeping thyme (thymus serpyllum), rosemary, horehound (marrubium vulgare), pineapple sage (salvia elegans/s. rutilans), basil (variety unknown; Thai, maybe?), more sweet basil, more tarragon, Russian sage "Taiga" (Perovskia afriplicifolia), salvia, lavender "Munstead" (Lavandula angustifolia), Sonata carmine cosmos, rosemary, variegated sage 'tricolor' (salvia officinalis), lavender, English lavender, and German chamomile (Matricaria recutita). I also sowed in seeds for phlox and zinnia, along the borders, that obviously aren't visible yet, though I thought I saw a little sprouting already today.
Above: The path leading to my cottage, along which I've planted mint borders. You can see a little patch of it there beside the light on the right side, and smaller plants on the far side, beside that black PVC piping they seem to think makes for neat borders beside lawns here in Michigan. To my aesthetic, it's just ugly.
Above: Another patch of mint of a different variety from most of the other stuff, at the very beginning of the path on the left side. I think it is Moroccan mint, but I can't remember: I bought and planted it in the garden plot last year.
Above: To one side of my door, here, I've got the eggplants, and in front of that, a new little bed with mint and purslane.
Above: Close-up of the eggplants, week 1. They're the Japanese variety.
Above: Close-up of the mint, which I transplanted from the far side of the garden. I'm pretty sure it's standard spearmint.
Above: The other side of my door, where I've got another bed of purslane and a little more mint.
Above: Close-up of the purslane. I've been digging it up from ALL over the garden and transplanting it into these beds to cultivate consciously since Scrumptious kindly pointed out to me that it is rich in nutritional content. Since then I've also been reading rather obsessively all about it.
Above: The tomato plants, which I fit in on the other side of the door, behind that other bed of purslane and mint.
Above: Being out in the garden inspired me to cut the dead growth off the butterfly bush (to the left). Now it looks so pretty next to the hydrangea (to the right).
Above: Some of the perennials I planted. From left to right, they're Maltese Cross 'Molten Lava' (Lychnis x haageana), summer sun (heliopsis), Columbine 'Music pink and white' (Aquilegia), Beard tongue (penstemon dwarf hybrids), and Blue Queen salvia. I also planted flower seeds -- a kind of daisy, California poppies, zinnia, and phlox.
Above: In that same bed, there's Italian parsley and cilantro on the far end to the right.
Above: My raised beds on my garden plot across the way. They aren't tidy or pretty, but I hope they'll do the trick.
Above: From back to front, on the left: Something I lost track of the label for and can't identify, but I think may be okra, garlic, butternut squash, and acorn squash. On the right, Blue Lake beans, sugar snap peas, cantaloupe, and a sweet potato.
Above: Some close-ups of the veggies.
Above: Sunset dappling the herb garden with light. You can see the lake in the background. So very peaceful here.
After snapping all these photos, I went for my first swim in the lake this year. It was simply glorious, alternately warm and cool, so refreshing, so fresh against my skin. I breathed deeply and looked up at the sky and felt somehow more human than I have in quite a while.
Anyway, I promised more photos of my garden. I'm going to try to be be annoyingly diligent about keeping track in my blog of how it's growing, so be prepared. Complete identification of the plants to follow in an edit tomorrow.
WEEK ONE.
Here we are, after a week of planting. From what I remember now, I bought the plants two weeks ago tomorrow, on June 15, and started planting on Saturday the 21st, starting with the herbs and perennials. I moved onto the beans, eggplants, and tomatoes early this past week, and finished up planting the rest of the vegetables today.
Above: The herb garden, clearly delineated to protect it from idiotic landscapers who weedwack everything that's green. From the back, going in concentric clockwise circles from the outside, there's chocolate mint, sweet basil (ocimum basilcum), French tarragon, thyme, oregano, sage, dill, mother of thyme/creeping thyme (thymus serpyllum), rosemary, horehound (marrubium vulgare), pineapple sage (salvia elegans/s. rutilans), basil (variety unknown; Thai, maybe?), more sweet basil, more tarragon, Russian sage "Taiga" (Perovskia afriplicifolia), salvia, lavender "Munstead" (Lavandula angustifolia), Sonata carmine cosmos, rosemary, variegated sage 'tricolor' (salvia officinalis), lavender, English lavender, and German chamomile (Matricaria recutita). I also sowed in seeds for phlox and zinnia, along the borders, that obviously aren't visible yet, though I thought I saw a little sprouting already today.
Above: The path leading to my cottage, along which I've planted mint borders. You can see a little patch of it there beside the light on the right side, and smaller plants on the far side, beside that black PVC piping they seem to think makes for neat borders beside lawns here in Michigan. To my aesthetic, it's just ugly.
Above: Another patch of mint of a different variety from most of the other stuff, at the very beginning of the path on the left side. I think it is Moroccan mint, but I can't remember: I bought and planted it in the garden plot last year.
Above: To one side of my door, here, I've got the eggplants, and in front of that, a new little bed with mint and purslane.
Above: Close-up of the eggplants, week 1. They're the Japanese variety.
Above: Close-up of the mint, which I transplanted from the far side of the garden. I'm pretty sure it's standard spearmint.
Above: The other side of my door, where I've got another bed of purslane and a little more mint.
Above: Close-up of the purslane. I've been digging it up from ALL over the garden and transplanting it into these beds to cultivate consciously since Scrumptious kindly pointed out to me that it is rich in nutritional content. Since then I've also been reading rather obsessively all about it.
Above: The tomato plants, which I fit in on the other side of the door, behind that other bed of purslane and mint.
Above: Being out in the garden inspired me to cut the dead growth off the butterfly bush (to the left). Now it looks so pretty next to the hydrangea (to the right).
Above: Some of the perennials I planted. From left to right, they're Maltese Cross 'Molten Lava' (Lychnis x haageana), summer sun (heliopsis), Columbine 'Music pink and white' (Aquilegia), Beard tongue (penstemon dwarf hybrids), and Blue Queen salvia. I also planted flower seeds -- a kind of daisy, California poppies, zinnia, and phlox.
Above: In that same bed, there's Italian parsley and cilantro on the far end to the right.
Above: My raised beds on my garden plot across the way. They aren't tidy or pretty, but I hope they'll do the trick.
Above: From back to front, on the left: Something I lost track of the label for and can't identify, but I think may be okra, garlic, butternut squash, and acorn squash. On the right, Blue Lake beans, sugar snap peas, cantaloupe, and a sweet potato.
Above: Some close-ups of the veggies.
Above: Sunset dappling the herb garden with light. You can see the lake in the background. So very peaceful here.After snapping all these photos, I went for my first swim in the lake this year. It was simply glorious, alternately warm and cool, so refreshing, so fresh against my skin. I breathed deeply and looked up at the sky and felt somehow more human than I have in quite a while.
Grad student life in Michigan -- the highs, the lows.
There's a new yoga studio in the area. I was excited to see that, because up until then the only one I knew of around Livingston County was Yoga Center for Healthy Living in Brighton, which is a bit on the pricey side. Unfortunately, this new one in Pinckney doesn't offer that many classes, and no morning yoga. Boo.
Why isn't there full cooperation from the rest of the world for my dream life of weekend days of sun, yoga class and farmer's market in the morning followed by a smoothie and coffee while catching up on the news, whole grain baking and organic gardening, a little reading and writing, a little country bike ride, and a swim at sunset?
I did pretty well in realizing my vision today, though -- I biked in the snippet of sun after our downpour this morning, came home and made a blueberry/strawberry/nonfat milk/Vanilla protein smoothie and some coffee & milk, took care of a little personal business, and made another new version of quick rye bread, this time including buckwheat and quinoa flour, sesame and sunflower seeds, to complement the rye & molasses. I'll let you know how it turns out . . . it sure smells good in the oven, though. :)
The mosquitoes are really bumming me out -- I'd like to go back to the garden and do some more work, and I think I'll brave them anyway. But even covered from head to toe and hovering close to two citronella candles, I get divebombed without a mosquito net covering my face. And I don't have a mosquito net, unfortunately. I'm resisting DEET products, though I did order some Avon Skin-so-soft bug spray to see if that does the trick. Gwen's suggestion of vanilla was clever, but it didn't work for me, nor did citronella essential oil. I've been so itchy the past few days, I can hardly fathom exposing myself to more bites right now. . . never mind the diseases they can carry . . .
I'm thinking now about the rest of my day. Some house cleaning, I think, a closet reorganization operation, a bit of gardening, some work on an archaeology paper, and maybe a house party and some visiting with friends this evening. That is, if I get paid on Monday. I need to drive to Detroit first thing in the morning for a job interview, and my gas tank is (as usual, lately) running low, along with my bank account. If I can't buy gas on Monday morning, I actually can't afford to go anywhere at all between now and then. Oh, if only I could afford to buy a more fuel-efficient car. If only housing were more affordable in Ann Arbor. If only gas prices weren't so damned high.
I have several jobs potentially in the works, a few hours here, a few hours there. Three tutoring gigs, a research assistantship, and a research analyst position. (I've applied for others, but some didn't come through, and I gave up on the baking job when I heard that fifteen people had interviewed for that one full-time minimum wage position starting work at 5 am.) It's so confusing I've created a spreadsheet to keep track of it all. But if I get one or both of the ones I'm really hoping for, I'll be doing fine for the rest of the summer. Otherwise, I'm just going to have to turn to prostitution to fill in the gaps between tutoring gigs so I can make rent for August and September, until I start my next GSI position at U of M, and get my first paycheck at the very end of September. Just kidding. Mostly.
Oh! My bread is ready, and I'm already devouring it with ripe avocado. MMMMMmmmm.
Baking details HERE in the Kitchen Empress.
Why isn't there full cooperation from the rest of the world for my dream life of weekend days of sun, yoga class and farmer's market in the morning followed by a smoothie and coffee while catching up on the news, whole grain baking and organic gardening, a little reading and writing, a little country bike ride, and a swim at sunset?
I did pretty well in realizing my vision today, though -- I biked in the snippet of sun after our downpour this morning, came home and made a blueberry/strawberry/nonfat milk/Vanilla protein smoothie and some coffee & milk, took care of a little personal business, and made another new version of quick rye bread, this time including buckwheat and quinoa flour, sesame and sunflower seeds, to complement the rye & molasses. I'll let you know how it turns out . . . it sure smells good in the oven, though. :)
The mosquitoes are really bumming me out -- I'd like to go back to the garden and do some more work, and I think I'll brave them anyway. But even covered from head to toe and hovering close to two citronella candles, I get divebombed without a mosquito net covering my face. And I don't have a mosquito net, unfortunately. I'm resisting DEET products, though I did order some Avon Skin-so-soft bug spray to see if that does the trick. Gwen's suggestion of vanilla was clever, but it didn't work for me, nor did citronella essential oil. I've been so itchy the past few days, I can hardly fathom exposing myself to more bites right now. . . never mind the diseases they can carry . . .
I'm thinking now about the rest of my day. Some house cleaning, I think, a closet reorganization operation, a bit of gardening, some work on an archaeology paper, and maybe a house party and some visiting with friends this evening. That is, if I get paid on Monday. I need to drive to Detroit first thing in the morning for a job interview, and my gas tank is (as usual, lately) running low, along with my bank account. If I can't buy gas on Monday morning, I actually can't afford to go anywhere at all between now and then. Oh, if only I could afford to buy a more fuel-efficient car. If only housing were more affordable in Ann Arbor. If only gas prices weren't so damned high.
I have several jobs potentially in the works, a few hours here, a few hours there. Three tutoring gigs, a research assistantship, and a research analyst position. (I've applied for others, but some didn't come through, and I gave up on the baking job when I heard that fifteen people had interviewed for that one full-time minimum wage position starting work at 5 am.) It's so confusing I've created a spreadsheet to keep track of it all. But if I get one or both of the ones I'm really hoping for, I'll be doing fine for the rest of the summer. Otherwise, I'm just going to have to turn to prostitution to fill in the gaps between tutoring gigs so I can make rent for August and September, until I start my next GSI position at U of M, and get my first paycheck at the very end of September. Just kidding. Mostly.
Oh! My bread is ready, and I'm already devouring it with ripe avocado. MMMMMmmmm.
Baking details HERE in the Kitchen Empress.
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