I love my Mint Pot!

I use some mint everyday. I drink my own blend of herbal tea which almost always includes a sprig of mint. This picture shows the cheddarhead being bribed with canned cat food is exchange for some domesticity. He is an average sized cat that shows the scale of this pot. It is large enough to grow tomatoes and engineered to be self-watering. Mint is pretty hard to kill but I have found that given how rapidly it grows that it is very thirsty.

 

Lacinato Kale etc... and Twitter

I am glad I have given this lacinato kale its own large pot. It is a very graceful vegetable. I should however being eating more of it. Lately it's been mostly beet greens. I should freeze some.

I've decided to not do posts with 4 different photos that don't relate directly to each other. I am influenced by twitter. Twitter seems more useful to me as the people I follow often share information with others via links to all sorts of things and I may pick and choose as I skim through the various tweets and click on those that catch my interest. I was initially wary of posting more than once a day but so many people tweet 20 times or more and I still get useful information from them.

I am slightly saddened when I remember growing up with a paper delivered to my front door every morning by a local teenager. I used to read the whole newspaper and absorbed all sorts of information without all the distractions that exist in the way that we get information today. It was in a way more limited in that as I read, if I had a question about something I could not just google it on the spot like I do everyday. Anyway I am on twitter mostly tweeting my blog posts and I am looking for more people to follow.

May Garden

This box planter I found on the street turns out to have come from a friend. He did use it to store glass because that is his business. When he saw how I was using this box, and the boxes in back(I swear I will post about them soon) he was very pleased. Everything looks pretty good right now.

Here's the ubiquitous saladball. It's hard for me not to photograph it. I am trying to make it transition to summer smoothly. I just pulled out the large mizuna that bolted. I think other things will fill out and I tucked some more basil in it.

You can also see some other things growing here. I started one of those hanging grow bags with less than spectacular results, thus I have not photographed it much. There is also the ichiban in the background as well as the saladbowl, both looking very nice. The lettuce is starting to get a little bitter but it hasn't bolted yet. I might need to make some transitions with that planter too.

I love lemongrass. This is a stalk I rooted from Lotus, a local Asian grocery store. It finally is growing a 2nd stalk! Lemongrass grows really fast.

Here is the driveway side of the main bed. Visible is chamomile, sorrel, chives,broccoli and some birdseed plants which I just figured out are safflowers.

Bored Cats

Sally was a very bad girl this morning. She took a dump in my flowerbed that borders the sidewalk. For a second I thought, "Hmm, one of the dogs walking by will take care of that." I ended up digging a deep hole, in a dark corner, far away from anything growing because she unfortunately has done this before. No, I don't compost their kitty litter though I suppose I could. That gets disposed of another way.

I don't think that there's much I can do to make her stop except to stick bamboo skewers in the ground. If she does this to this highly visible bed, I might resort to that.

Here's another bored looking cat, the feral boy I sometimes call "Cheedarhead". I actually brushed him while he ate this morning. I always make him eat at my feet so I can pet him. He pretends to hate being petted but I think he likes it. I think he liked the brush. Cat hair, actually, any hair, and nail clippings, are an excellent fertilizers. I've been burying it just below many things I have planted.

Abe is nipping at the catnip which is finally growing beyond its dome. I am very, very pleased with my birdseed sunflowers. I have no idea how big they'll get but I haven't seen any bigger than mine, at least in my neighborhood.

Beau Désordre

I was in Africa once. I saw what was called the "Zairoise miricle" that people could live and breed without any real government. I enjoyed the local music I heard there. Years later I bought a bunch of records at a flea market, 5 for a dollar or something. They were from the 70's I think. I had scant knowledge of what it was but I believe I found some Soukous. It was different than most of the African music I heard on the radio, and to my ear better. Zaiko Langa Langa was one artist and this was described as being "beau désordre", beautiful chaos. I think that that could describe my garden.

These pots are looking very nice. I got my lacinato kale, very stately, next to the salad bowl.

I just let the chamomile take over the swan. It looks a bit weedy perhaps, but I don't care.

My strawberries are getting luscious.

Last Year's Garden - mostly herbs

There was a frost threat last night that led to me putting flower pots on a bunch of things but that does not make for pretty pitures and it was a bit cold so I have decided today to look at some photos from last year. I posted pictures of things that are great in container gardens, even if they aren't in my pictures.

I really, really like chervil. It is lacy, pretty fancy and hard to get in groceries. It is one of the Frenchie fine herbs. I have also found it to be tougher than many say it is. I have seen seedlings survive uh... incredibly cold weather, now I can't say what the bottom was, 5 or 10 degrees fahrenheit? I dunno, but I recall that the chervil in this picture came from a bunch that survived that. These guys are in a pot and this year I have them in my salad bowl.

I think it is best to start them from seed rather that seedlings but if it is late and there are only plants available, go with them. Chances are, especially if they end up in a hot spot that they will flower and go to seed sooner than you'd like. Let them. The flowers are cute. Use some as garnishes but let a few go to seed and you'll be set with more chervil by fall.

I love chamomile. I started last year with one pot. In most pots there is not just one, but many chamomile plants. I broke them up into many small bunches and planted them all over my garden. The result has been, even though I was fairly vigilant about harvesting is that I have chamomile everywhere.

This is not a bad thing. If I don't want it somewhere, when I remove it, it complies and does not come back. I hear that chamomile is one of the most agreeable plants that there is and that plants growing close to it actually grow better. I don't know if this is true, but outside of having less space, I haven't noticed any of my plants suffering in chamomile's company. The flowers also attract many beneficial insects.

So if you have limited space, try some German chamomile. It's relaxing just to look at it.

Mint is something that I only grow in pots. I love the stuff. It's great for tea and certain popular mixed drinks. I also like to spruce up any cold drink with a sprig.

I keep it in pots because if you plant it in the ground it will once established take over everything. If I had a small bed surrounded by concrete I might let it take ove, but I don't, so in a pot it stays. My pot is however large enough to grow a tomato so you might understand that I love mint. I suppose peppermint is my favorite but I also like corsican, a tiny leafed variety, in the upper left of this picture, that could be risked in a bed. Another noninvasive variety is pineapple with it kinda pretty too.

I used to have a gumby but somebody stole it. My front yard gets lots of foot traffic and the scale is such that small toys like gumby are good lawn ornaments. A giant gnome would look stupid. Todd gave me some weird soldiers to ornament my yard. I guess I oughta plant them.

Gumpy is admiring an Alaskan nasturtium. These are better sown as seeds because they are fussy about being transplanted but if you are careful, they'll be alright. I transplant all sorts of things that they say shouldn't be. You just need to be gentle and vigilant. I guess I tend to check up on my babies as often as I can til they settle in.

This is one reason why having one of those mister pump things is a good thing. There's no better way to spot water a fragile transplant. They also are good for chasing cats away and giving yourself a cooling off on hot days.

Nasturtiums are completely edible. They taste like cress, very peppery. The flowers add some color to salads, or are nice as a garnish while the leaves with their werid shape are pretty cool too. I am partial to alsaka's variegated look.

On a different topic... It seems dumb, but since I started forwarding this blog to twitter I got 2 more subscribers, er followers, and this is after maybe a week. I don't have an iphone, though I play with Todd's every morning before he brings me my coffee in bed, yes I am spoiled, but anyway I'll just keep twitting.

More Stuff!

As promised, I am doing another post. It's May you know? There is just so much beauty I could cry, but I won't.

Here's the cheddarhead eating by my saladbowl, which is filling out nicely though this isn't its best side. Behind it is lacinato kale and an eggplant. Yup, I haven't caught up with everything here.

This planter has a matching one, sorta, on the other side of the steps. It started last year with lipstick salvia which i wintered with partial success. The salvia was kinda ragged so i filled it in with mizuna which already needs to be harvested, allysum and of all things hops! The hops are an unknown ungendered quanity. A friend gave me seedlings this spring and just for kicks I am keeping a few to see what's up. Who knows, I might end up having a new variety.

This porch still life is my fancy swedish ivy, mona lavender, with vases of chamomile and acapulco anise hyssop. I trimmed back the feral chamomile a touch but wanted to see if the buds would bloom in a vase. They have.

Chives are so easy and pretty, especially when they bloom. In the background is one of my bokashi buckets.

Well, I think that's it for today. I have a lot that I haven't covered.

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.

Salad Ball

1st I must give some credit to Organic Gardening for giving me this idea, though I put mine together a little bit differently. I haven't filled it out completely, but you get the idea.One problem with planters that have things coming out of the sides is that watering can be very tricky. It tends to seep inside and not get evenly distributed. I can't remember where I saw an idea similar to mine, but mine is unique.What you see here are 2 toilet paper rolls and a small piece of landscaping cloth. I use the rolls to make a temporary brace for this tube.
The tube is stood up in the center of the planter. I guess the ideal length is to a little bit past the center, though mine is a bit longer.

I put the top basket up there to make sure it's not too short or too long. Notice I have it a little short of the top. as I filled this in I moved it up a little.Once it is in place you need to fill it up. I used hydroton, I think pebble would be fine. The idea it to use some inorganic stuff that will let water flow through easily.
Then you plant the stuff in. It's easiest to plant it up, layering dirt on top. The coco liner I used for the bottom is aquasav which made this harder than plain coco, which you can just push stuff through, this required me to CUT into it, though in theory this will need less watering.

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.

Starting from Scratch

If you wanna start a garden where there was none, there's more than one way to do it. A lot of people think that you need a rototiller and to double dig before you plant anything. That is not my approach. I had an art teacher in high school who said, think of any art that you make as being complete as you are creating it. This definitely applies to a garden. Indeed, a good garden is good art. Art is often beyond your control. A garden is definitely that. A garden is really a partnership with nature.

You 1st need to ask yourself some questions. The 1st one should be how am I going to do this and have FUN with it? One thing that makes a garden fun is not doing too much work. You might have an overall goal but it's best to do it in manageable steps. When you take a step by step approach you also get to reassess your garden. Maybe that spot that you thought would be great for lettuce because it looks to be shady gets more sun than you thought. Watching a garden go through a year will help you make better decisions later on.

You've decided what area you want to use. What should you do to make things grow better? I start by clearing it of weeds. Ideally, one should get in there and not only pull them from the top, but dig down to the roots. Maybe your yard is a god awful mess. A large part of my garden was awful. Rather than weed the whole thing, I concentrated on the front. In back I covered my weedy mess with cardboard. On top of that was some landscaping cloth and on top of that I put compost. I made raised beds about 6 inches deep. you can't grow everything in that, but you can grow a lot. Square foot gardening is all about this.

The 1st picture shows an intensely improved bed. I dug in compost over most of it to a depth of 8-12 inches deep, some largely due to the fact that I had to dig up a weed tree then topped it all with 3 inches of compost. This bed was very productive but if I had committed myself to doing the same for ALL of my garden I would have become really tired. Personally I tend not to be so single minded. It's so much more fun to fill a silly swan planter with flowers! This year I will shape up more beds.

One bed all I really did is top it with compost. I'd dig some dirt in as I planted things, but I didn't go crazy with it. In some ways this is less disruptive to all the beings that lived in the soil before I arrived. My veggies did all right with that.

Another thing I did because a lot of my space was challenged is to grow things in containers. I like containers anyway because you can get very creative with them. Rose Marie Nichols Magee, and Maggie Stuckey's Bountiful Container: Create Container Gardens of Vegetables, Herbs, Fruits, and Edible Flowers is a great book even if your plans are not all about containers. These ladies really make it fun with very specific instructions to make your plants grow.

Another thing I believe is important are flowers. Flowers are not only pretty and smell nice, they attract many beneficial insects like bees and good predators. Whenever there has been a lapse of flowers, the bad insects have dominated.

Salad Bowl

Remember my found homemade planter? I said I'd turn it into a salad bowl. So here it is all barren.


I've been trying to sprout my own lettuce but it's been slow going so I couldn't resist these romaine babies that are ready to go. I just cut slits in the felt and stuffed the seedlings in. I'd prefer more variety but it's early yet. These grow fast enough that I can eat them and replace them with something else later, plus I should be able to plant a lot more in here.

On top I thought I'd pop in some onion sets. This mixing spoon makes a fine dibble.

In goes the onion.

To make it more tidy I dibbled the rest before planting.

And that's it for now. Lettuce is very satisfying because it grows fast. I can't wait! Onions take longer I guess but I could just eat the greens. This is fun because you get to change it up whenever.