Lazy Man's Way

It isn't readily apparent here, but these lettuces are growing in the shade of an artichoke. None of my lettuces have bolted but it is early. Lettuce is great for growing under plants, especially those that like cool roots. They aren't heavy feeders and with so many varieties, they are quite pretty. I tend to start with seedlings from a nursery for faster gratification then later I start some in a small tray to plant out. Usually I do a mesclen mix for variety.

Lettuce is like a little firecracker that goes off all the time while you wait for the bigger bangs. A lot of greens are like that as well as chervil and cilantro, both pictured somewhere in this picture.

The lazy man's way to keep these going is to just let a few of them go to seed. This leads to chaos but it is my approach to many of my plants. Decades ago, somebody signed my yearbook, "The lazy man finds an easier way to get the job done." I can't say that any better.

This artichoke looks pretty spiny to me. I think it won't be the best eating so I am going to let it bloom. I am sure my neighbors will be impressed. They get pretty confused by a lot of my plants and yet they cannot deny their beauty.

Sometimes I think I should talk more in detail about what I am doing here. After some thought I have decided that for the most part if you want to replicate what I am doing, you really need to read some books.

One book I recently read was the e-book "Double your tomatoes," which is actually one of my advertisers. I do not completely endorse the author's philosophy but I have taken away a few good points. He does not however cover as much as I thought he would. Again I say, read some books. Tomatoes are kinda complicated.

I do not grow tomatoes to be highly productive but I have experienced late blight on some of my tomatoes in the last 2 years. I think "Double your tomatoes," gives some good advice about that which I intend to use. I am experimenting with fertilizing my tomatoes with bokashi. Most of my tomatoes have the contents of one bokashi bucket buried beneath them. There's a few other quirks I threw in that I will not elaborate on until later.

Again, I say read some books. The Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Ed Smith has some very good specific advice that I will always remember.

On the other hand if you do have specific questions for me, please feel free to leaves them in the comments or email me directly. I am perfectly willing to keep your identity confidencial if you are a 'private person.'

What was I saying about being lazy? Here is the perfect image of that. This chamomile grew here all by itself. I have weeded other plants out of the cracks but left these and a few other plants alone. However, I have found it necessary to trim this a bit. If I had done it again I would have trimmed this back earlier though I think that right now this looks rather pretty even though it is also untidy.

Morning

Just a random post here with eyecandy.

My posh saladbowl planter is filling in nicely. I rotate it slightly clockwise everyday to ensure even daylight for all sides.

I am very happy to see these tulips gradually bloom. I got them late last fall and they were marked down considerably. A few of the 40 bulbs were rotten but I planted the rest here in a single spot. A lot of the bulbs have more than one bloom. They are smaller but wow! I'm easily impressed. Another thing about this planting is that it is elevated about 2 and a half feet above the sidewalk next to it. Everyone walking by may look closely at these tulips.

When I looked out my window this morning on the 3rd floor, this is part of what I saw. I am showing what is currently the prettiest part of my yard. You'll recognize the tulips and the swan, but then there's the bonnie artichoke I saved from last year. It grew huge but did not bloom. This year it should bloom if I don't eat all the artichokes. There is above the bed a shepard's hook with a robin hanging out and a hummingbird feeder. I haven't seen any yet, but somebody claims to have seen one around here on April Fool's day. Maybe that was a joke. Below the feeder next to the tulips is a patch of fennel that braved the winter. That should be pretty nice eating soon.

Mizuna is a very nice green. I like to let it get bigger but I enjoy thinning it. The more feathery leaf is a fennel seedling. There's a bunch all over my front yard. I still haven't decided if I want to let any grow up.

My canvas is not blank

I garden like I get dressed everyday. I'm no fashion plate, indeed, I have contemplated doing youtube type videos of things I discuss here but that means I have to do something with my hair! I guess I feel like my garden is half naked right now. I'm a little embarrassed to show it in its entirety just yet.This being its 2nd year, my garden is taking on a number of 'sink or swim' aspects. This budding onion is a leftover from last year. It might be a welsh onion, but I'm not sure. I noticed it budding and have decided to encourage that. Whenever it blooms I should have a better idea of what it actually is.Next my canvas shows what I decided to call 'beau disordre' a reference I recall to some Congolese Afro-pop I read about and encountered years ago. Um, I won't get into what made my brain stray that direction. The largest plant here is an artichoke, then there's a red cabbage. My strategy is to plant fairly low lying plants in front, with lots of little annual flowers at the border including allysum, pansies, lobelia, german chamomile, calendula at the edges. Much of this is selfsown from last year. I will fill in the middle later with more tender taller things like eggplant and tomatoes. Thus you see that I did not start this year with a blank canvas.On the newel post I do have a blank slate. Last year I had a rather anemic planting there. I hope to put something there spectacular but I am torn as to what that should be. There are some logistical problems to growing a globe like this. I should devote an entire post to this when I get around to it. At this moment I am think that perhaps some nastertiums would be nice here, the type that cascade. But alas! It's too early for them here! What to do?

You might notice that hanging from the left side of the sphere is a tiny hummingbird feeder. In the Pittsburgh area hummingbirds typically start showing up in mid April. I intend to make them feel welcome in my yard. More on that later.This final picture shows some of my palette. Lettuce, pansies, allysum, and broccoli. Broccoli is a definite no for the sphere. The rest I could manage.

Anybody out there have any opinions about my sphere? I am trying to decide mainly between edibility and ornamentation. One thing I am pretty sure of is that my whole yard would look better if I covered it all with a fresh thin layer of compost. I probably will do that soon.

White House Vegetable Garden I exclaim!

Wow! They are doing it! It's about the scale I'd hope for really. All right, off the top of my head I do not have much to add to this news except that I hope it will encourage more people to grow their own. With that excuse I will talk about my own garden.


This is the only fennel that seems to have wintered. There were 4 left last fall that seemed to die off one by one with each deep freeze. I hope this produces some nice fennel bulbs.


Here's some red mustard seedlings that are self seeded. I'l have to thin them.


This is something I found in a neighbor's trash. It was just the metal frame. I wove in this brown cord to serve as a skeleton and lined it with felt. I wanna grow salad greens in it and maybe try out a little mushrooms. Now that's a whole new can of worms but in contemplating the synergy of bokashi, I have contemplated how useful fungus can be to a garden's fertility.


Artichokes don't generally survive the cold of Pittsburgh so I wintered this in my coldroom in my basement. This one did not bloom last year. It should this time. In the background are some tulips shooting up. I just couldn't resist getting some deeply discounted bulbs late last season.

There's a Hedge

That straddles a border between my yard and an apartment building. I am working on taming it. It's just a mess! It was a combination of rose of sharon, spirea, and boxwood, with a ton of ivy choking it up and some wild morning glory and clematis (old man's beard) growing wildly. I am eradicating everything but the spirea and thinking about keeping some clematis but keeping it in check. I know also that I can't really kill the ivy but I am greatly reducing its quantity.

I am not taking pictures because it just isn't pretty. Instead I am posting some from last summer. Just looking at them cheers me up, even though I think I sorta look like my grandmother. Maybe that's why I chose that cotton dress. My grandmother had a vegetable garden and walked around barefoot all the time, squashing spiders with her feet sometimes, but that was in South Dakota.
So here's some summery pictures that cheer me up. It's hard to remember how beautiful my garden was. I am happy to see that my chamomile has self-seeded and that there are numerous chamomile plants growing, many where there aren't supposed to but I might just leave them be. Whether it's tea or bloom, chamomile is soothing.
My latest bit of bokashi juice smells like soy sauce. I guess that's decent.

Summer Garden

Sally sits on the stepping stone. She sits and stares as the carrots and radicchio sit before her.











Raindrops drip off the rosa bianca eggplant.













The porchmelon chose to grow on the porch wall. This is a good thing because otherwise I would have had to make some kind of sling.






This is a close up of an artichoke bloom. It's larger than lifesize but not by as much as you'd think.









Here is sungold cherry tomatoes co-mingling with scarlet runner beans.








I rather miss this.

Wintering my Artichokes

I hope to enjoy these plants for a while. The snow and freeze did not kill my plants but it's only December. It generally gets down 5-10 degrees Fahrenheit and even lower some winters. I think last winter was -5, but I'm trying to block that memory. Most artichokes might die below 15 so today I dug up 3 of my plants and put them in my cold room.

The remaining 4th, I covered with a large pot. The festive artichoke leaves surrounding the pot I trimmed from the plants. You'll notice that despite the several days of 20 degree weather that they are still looking alive. Today has been a balmy cloudy 50 degreeish day, typical of Pittsburgh. I am hoping that as these leaves look dead that they will mulch the air gaps that this pot did not seal. My understanding is that in challenging climates, heavy mulching keeps many artichokes alive in winters worse than here. This is my guinea pig plant.

If it survives it will probably be happier than the others because I haven't really disturbed its soil.

Summer Artichoke

I'm kinda obsessed with artichokes. Here it is almost winter and after looking at what's outside I decided I oughta look back at this past year because I took lots of pictures. So here's an artichoke that I think was eaten. You might noticed 2 smaller ones in the background.

I ordered 3 bareroot 'amethyst artichoke' plants. I would have preferred to wait until spring for that but I haven't seen many available. The pictures I have seen online of purple artichokes are so beautiful. I guess I tend to be drawn to cooler colors in general.

At any rate, when I get my plants, I'll have no choice but to store them for planting in the spring. I guess that there isn't much of an artichoke market in the north, at least not yet.

Snowy Garden, sorta

First I've got a fine artichoke plant. This sprung back a little after the snow melted but eventually should die back more. I really think artichokes are beautiful plants. I will encourage people to grow these more around here.

One thing about artichokes is that there aren't many varieties available in the US. When I was trying to figure out what I could grow here I found that if I googled carciofo, which is the Italian word for artichoke that I found a lot of varieties. In the US there pretty much is just one grown and the seeds and plants were either the globe or a variety close to that. I'd love to find some of the longer, smaller and violets varieties. I bet that in the next few years this will change.

Another beauty, in my eyes is the leek. My god, look at that! I get so excited. I guess I'm weird but I love it.

This leek could end up in my turkey stuffing. I tend to use all of the leek. Some people just use the stem saying that the green leaves are bitter, but i haven't found this to be true.

Finally I show some roman chamomile after the snow melted. This is not the kind you use for tea, rather it is used for chamomile oil. I planted it as a ground cover thinking it would slowly cover the bare spots but it's been a monster expanding at a weedlike rate.

I've been intrigued by an Elizabethan custom of growing it on turf benches. Turf benches are made, I believe by layering sod. Roman chamomile was planted on top so that when you sat upon, it sweetened your bottom. Maybe next year I'll try this. It certainly grows fast enough.

Artichoke Blooms

These photos are not admittedly not current. They are from late summer. I think that they are 2 different blooms photographed the same day. The 1st flower is just starting to open, the 2nd is in full flower.

I did eat a couple artichokes but I wanted to see them flower and they are really big and pretty. Butterflies love them. I watched monarchs dip their proboscis into one repeatedly, quite deeply, kinda sexy actually. We all know about the birds and the bees right?

Speaking of bees, I managed to get this picture of a bumblebee in a similar state of ecstasy. Really, these pollinators just look overjoyed when they find some sweet flowers.

You don't see artichokes growing around Pittsburgh very much. They don't usually winter here so I will most likely have to dig them up in a little bit before it gets too cold. I have 4 plants in my front yard right now and only 2 have actually bloomed. I got them from Mountain Valley Growers. They were most likely offsets from a mother plant because artichokes usually do not bloom their 1st year. The other 2 plants came from home depot where they were mislabeled asparagus. I m assuming that those were from seed. If I save them they should bloom next year.

I think they are well worth it and I'd love to see more of these around. Aren't they beautiful?

The plant itself gets huge and takes up 4 feet of space. I overplanted these guys like everything else but I don't think they suffered for it. I think next year I'll give them more room. I'll probably mail one or 2 of these plants to my sister down south who actually has the space and the warmth to grow these properly.