Hello Again!

I seem to be neglecting this. Well here is the most recent image of myself with a 2nd harvest of red cabbage.

Next we have some fennel. I like fennel but at this point am annoyed by how much fennel I have had. Anyway, this fennel plant is impressive.

Here's several small cabbage head regrowth. They look like large brussel sprouts.

This turkey is coated with 5 squares of dark chocolate. It's my trial thanksgiving turkey. I believe the chocolate worked about the way I thought it would. It stayed adhered to the bird well and seemed to keep things moist.

Cabbages, butterfly, ladybug and hops

Cabbages fascinate me endlessly. This is a tiny 2nd growth.

This better illustrates what's going one, though these have not filled out like the picture above

I have not seen many butterflies but this one flitted around a lot. It likes verbena, lantanas and coneflower.

here's a late season ladybug. I seem to have manged to keep them in my garden all during the growing season. I swear flowers have been vital for that.

Catching Up Eye-candy

It really is hard to keep up. Here's some non sequential photos that caught my eye.

This was the salad bowl. The beets were in it early on and though they are stunted are still lovely. Enough has survived in it to keep it pretty even though they aren't exactly thriving.

This is a good view of the 2nd crop of cabbages filling out. I get a kick out of this everytime I look at it.

These hops are glorious. It will be worthwhile to harvest them this year. Last year they were far less productive.

This is my 3rd post today! I intend to do one more post. I took too many pretty pictures not to.

Red Cabbage Crop

I am not keeping up with my garden. This curb cabbage was starting to split. I harvested it but probably will not eat it given its proximity to the street.

 

I will however encourage a second crop. Notice the mini-cabbage heads on the side. If it heals they will grow.

 

Just like these guys here.

 

I know that cabbage is a cliche to some as far as ornamental vegetables go but I still get a kick out of them. And this is Pittsburgh, well actually Wilkinsburg and we tend to be 10-20 years behind most trends.

Food Safety

This is a little late but outside of healthcare, food safety is being discussed as legislature, specifically HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act. I do not feel as well informed as I should to discuss this but people have and do die when we neglect regulating food safety. It is a matter of national security. I found a good non-partisan blog devoted to this issue, Marler Blog, well actually he tracks food poisoning around the US. "Bill Marler is an accomplished personal injury and products liability attorney," so begins the description. I feel guilty for not being able to speak better about this. It is this guy's job to know what is going on with food safety, anyway, it just passed in the house. I still do not know exactly what sort of suspect modification and improvements have been made to it. Some parts were threatening to small farmers, and I am not sure what has been left in.

I'll talk about something I know a little about, my garden. Here's my cabbage growing back in. After a cabbage is beheaded, it often sprouts numerous smaller heads to replace it.

My yarrow is starting to grow in. In part because I am concerned about food safety, I do not eat anything grown on my curb. I understand in some areas that they are trying to force farmers to have dead barriers surrounding their fields to prevent disease. Seems to me that this would not work. What drives me nuts about the internet is that I read so many little things and cannot quite recall my source. OK, it is the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, which I found out about via ACTION: Speak Out Against the LGMA!, a post in Lavida Locavore.

Anyway, my scarlet runner beans have reached the top of this tower I made from a bunch of rose of sharon that was towering over much of my back yard. Now these scarlet runner beans will tower and perhaps the hummingbirds will enjoy them.

Cabbages

My cabbages! That's my new exclamation in front of small children.

 

This proud cabbage, what with all the rain is starting to split.

 

It is pretty big, 7 pounds 2 ounces(3 kilos?) to be exact. I think this picture most accurately shows its scale relative to my head.

 

Here's a sister cabbage that I harvested a week or so ago. Already it is growing baby cabbages which should be about as big as softballs. You can't quite see them in this picture but this plant still looks pretty cool.

 

Curb Cabbage

I finally finished cleaning up my curb, and my neighbors rejoiced. Overall, they like what I am doing but yesterday some neighbors that had never spoken to me before did, and they were kind words.

You see, I am one of those people that sees grass as a desert, who thinks that mowing a lawn is a waste of time and fossil fuels, though my mower is hand pushed. I resolved this year to leave it in the basement. I only needed to pull up the rest of the grass and let the good plants take over. But I procrastinated. I have a coffee mug that says

"Procrastinators of the world unite and fight...
tomorrow"

and it suits me perfectly. So there it is, my curb with my fine cabbage in the middle of my labor.

And after.

I left a few plants I like there. I chose to divide the yarrow that had been growing quite well before I moved in all over my berm. Yarrow is a native plant that is excellent for xeriscaping. Yarrow also has a very long history of medicinal use all over the world. It was even used in divining the I Ching.

Anyway, this ended up being much more work than I like. I pretty much dug up EVERYTHING, including the cabbage to more effectively remove all plants in my disfavor. I also removed a lot of dirt. I think I took away several cubic feet which I dumped in back. I wanted the soil line to be lower than the curb and sidewalk so that perhaps I will have less plants growing in the street and that perhaps when it rains the water will collect in the soil rather than just washing away. I amended the remaining soil with some gypsum, greensand, and compost in all of it. Most was on top of a hardpan clay but some was on top of decaying concrete. I added a bit of lime to the clay parts. I also buried some bokashi below part of it. Another part has cat turds from bad kitties that keep pooping below some hedges that are not part of the veggie area and part has no additional fertilizer. I wonder how differently each part will grow.

I am sure I will still need to weed it, indeed, it still looks a little sloppy, but it is much better and hopefully will be less work. As you can see I replanted the cabbage. It has received a lot of admiration.

After the Storm

Our basement's water level peaked at about 3 feet(1 meter). Needless to say, everything is very lush.

My prostrate rosemary is filling out again. I poked an italia pepper in its pot. The small mint pot looks less pale, my tarragon is doing all right and perhaps my yuzu citris will do better this year.

 

A few sunflowers fell over during the storm but I righted them and they seem ok. The black and blue salvia are hummingbird magnets and everything else up there is growing all right.

 

My ground tomatoes are growing up well though they look slightly paler than the box tomatoes. I keep trying to equalize that with fertilizer and a bit of lime. Almost all of my tomatoes have small tomatoes growing now. I am denuding the stems somewhat and reducing their tendency to branch out like crazy. There's a whole lot more going on in this picture. There are 2 varieties of beans, some basil, nasturtiums, kale strawberries,and garlic.

 

I have 2 cabbages that are growing monstrously. It sorta amazes me how many people walk by and ask me, "Is that cabbage?" That's one reason why I feel like I should stay in an urban location, just to set an example and to just help people understand what vegetables actually look like, rather than finding 1-5 acres out somewhere. I am somewhat inclined to take over the small yard of the apartment building next door completely, but I must conquer my back yard first. Alas, it doesn't have the light that the front does. I could grow some wonderful tomatoes next door, and cabbage. I have enough to deal with here.

 

Dew, my terrace, tulip bulbs etc...

I'm back to taking some pictures then blogging a few days later. It's amazing how fast things change and given my freestyle gardening, how busy I get. I did a lot in back but I still need to sow more scarlet runner beans and some more beans in front. Todd made me watch some permaculture videos which is what I am leaning towards. Some videos came from the Permaculture Research Institute of Australia. This is pretty cool stuff, makes me wanna pack up and find 5 acres somewhere.

Here's a dewy cabbage with dewy self-sown fennel. Self-sown plants are one aspect of permaculture. The bottom line is getting the most whatever it is you want with the least amount of effort. I did a post, Lazy Man's Way which seems pretty close to the perma culture philosophy. I am glad that this is catching on in some places.

One thing I saw a lot in the permaculture planting were terraces. Terraces can make passive irrigation pretty simple. This small terrace here isn't exactly set up to water itself, but it's true that I could water the top to overflowing and just let it filter down. This terrace has filled out quite a bit since I established it.

This tulip is not an example of permaculture. I decided to do the extra work of lifting my bulbs this year. Usually I leave them which leads to them gradually dying out. I really liked the flowers so I thought I'd try lifting them which give me the option of planting them in a different location. At this point I DO rotate my crops. I follow the simple rule of not planting brassicas, and plants in the tomato family in the same location consecutively. I'm not absolutely strict about that but it does makes me keep some semblance of structure I guess.

This tulip bulb has a smaller bulb that grew on the surface of the soil. Perhaps 6 of my bulbs had this going on. From what I understand tulips are native to a place that gets hot and dry after they bloom. Somewhere in Turkey? I'm too lazy to see if I am remembering that correctly. I guess that in the wild surface bulbs like this would break away from the parent plant and get scattered, hopefully to a nice new bed. Right now the bulbs I dug up are in a paperbag on my porch mixed with some vermiculite to help them dry up a bit. Then I'll store them in the basement til September. I hope this works out well.

I posted this picture because it has a cat in it. The bare spot of soil is where the tulips were. I intend to sow some beans here, maybe more flageolet. I probably should harvest the lettuce.