The lettuce bed is really looking nice.  The curled parsley is full and fluffy.  The cosmo savoy lettuce (romaine variety, right) towers above the others and is ready for harvesting any day now.  I lost one buttercrunch to a hungry caterpillar.  Unfortunately, I think he ate it off a little too low and it may not grow back.  The hard rain knocked a few leaves loose on the red sail, so I trimmed them off along with several others and made a salad.  I can see why the rain knocked them loose.  The leaves were so soft and tender.  I added just a dash of olive oil and raw apple cider vinegar and it was delightful.  They’ll continue to do well into the cooler parts of fall and through winter.  I’ve got sixteen (er, fifteen) plants above, and another forty or so started elsewhere.  Sometime this week I’ll get another round of seeds going to keep up with a three-week successive planting cycle.  I’m going to continue sowing seeds through March.

Cosmo savoy lettuce, a variety of romaine

 

The first harvest of organic home-grown lettuce. This is the Red Sail variety.

 

This is the damage caused by a green looper

 

Red sail lettuce after a contribution to my salad bowl

This is lettuce bed number 2.

The carrot tops are really growing.  Just a couple of weeks ago, I could make out distinct rows and now the tops have all grown together to create this really feathery feeling canopy.    I just had to get down on the “forest floor” – if you will – to take a couple pics.  I’ve got three rows each of Danvers Half Long and Big Top going …

You know, the spinach is proving to be disappointing.  I’ve read that it is slow to start.  It sure has been.  I read that spinach likes rich soil.  I’ve got that.  Plenty of fresh compost, tea, and small additions of worm castings and fish emulsion should be providing everything they need.  I read that a sulfur deficiency might cause them to be stunted.  So I mixed up some epsom salts and added it to some rainwater a couple of weeks ago.  Since then, I’ve notice an improvement, but nothing significant.   The unused beds on the other side of the house show promise.  I have five going there, and another dozen in the ground waiting to germinate.  Up until now, all the spinach I’ve tried growing has been germinated inside and transplanted.  Perhaps this is the problem.  From my experience with this batch of seeds, I’m betting about a 60 percent germination rate, so I hope to increase this by direct sowing.  Who knows.  I’m still so new to this, every day is an experiment.

This is the first spinach bed. They are struggling...

This is the second spinach bed.

Up close of one of the lil' spinach plants in the second bed.

The broccoli bed is doing good, but I’m afraid they won’t produce.  While the leaves are hardy the flower is not and the flower is what I’m after.  The first frost didn’t really hit us yet, but if it starts flowering I don’t think it will have enough time to form the nice stalk and head that I hoped for.  I knew this was likely to happen.  When I planted the seeds at the end of August, first of September, I thought I was right on schedule.  But, as I read more, I should have had transplants in the ground by that time.   So, I probably cost myself a harvest by thirty days or so.  Live and learn.  I’ll be starting seeds in January for late February transplanting and that should give me enough time for a spring harvest.

Nonetheless, here is the broccoli bed

In the corner of the yard is an experiment in how prolific mint plants are.  These started off as cuttings.  I’ve since buried several sections of peppermint as well as the spearmint.  Some of them have already popped up, but I’ll also add a nice peppermint clone to the lot of them.  I just need to take the time to do that.  Maybe the weather will be more agreeable tomorrow.

The peppermint and spearmint continue to spread

peppermint clone

I’ve got thirty bell pepper growing right now, all at different stages.  This one is almost at the end of the line, ready for us to enjoy in a nice stir-fry.  Meanwhile, I still have only one jalapeno!   For Spring, I’ve ordered some Cali Wonder orange bells and some ring-o-fire cayenne pepper seeds.  If need be, I’ll take my jalapenos inside and continue growing them for a couple of months until spring.  They should be nice, big plants by then – and hopefully a lot more productive.

This bell pepper is almost done. Just a little more green yet on the bottom ...

The beans are another one that I’ve struggled with.  I think this is because I didn’t opt to inoculate the seeds – something recommended for legumes, especially if growing them in a section of soil for the first time.  The transplants I added later did much better.  I grew them from seed in Jiffy Mix, which seems to have aided their growth – along with the compost tea.  The picture below is of one of the bean transplants, which is going to produce a couple of handfuls of beans from the looks of it.  I harvested another handful of beans, which I blanched, cooled quickly and stuck in the freezer.  I have enough for a couple of servings right now, but I’d like to harvest more and save them for later use.

more beans, almost ready to harvest

The last thing I’d like to note is the progress in the wildflower bed.  I’ve since edged it with rock to keep the grass from spreading into the bed and to keep the lawnmower out.  I can see a handful of different varieties at this stage, but I can’t really tell you what is what yet.

Each of these photos can be viewed large-size.

The color of this flower is striking and all the more beautiful with morning dew

I don't know what these are called, but I love the soft, fuzzy leaves

Looking down at one of the newest bean transplants

this tropical hasn't received the memo that it's November. i'm happy about that.

this catches the life and death of Lobelia

the green pepper plant has over twenty good-sized peppers

this broccoli plant is loving the cooler mornings

the alyssum is blooming incredibly - here you see an emerging flower

I love the close-up texture of the beans

no, this is not a candy mushroom, although it looks dipped in sugar!

It has been thirty days since I scattered the wildflower seeds along the fence line.  I have an incredible amount of sprouts in the bed now, but it is still very early to tell exactly what is growing.  Maybe I just have a bunch of weeds. 

Wildflowers can take up to a month to sprout, so we should have just about all the germination we’re going to get.   I really hope I have at least a few of each of them.

This is what is planted in the bed:  bluebonnets, Indian blankets, purple coneflower, phlox, cornflower, cosmos, corn poppy, California poppy, daisy, scarlet flax, primrose, Mexican hat and Indian paintbrush.

Wildflowers have sprouted and are developing strong roots for a good Spring show! - hopefully!

a detail of the bed reveals lots of sprouts

Of course, I have a couple wildflowers I can enjoy in the meantime.  The back yard is blanketed in wild asters, while morning glory can be found along the fence line.

a cluster of wild asters among a sea of white and yellow in my back yard

morning glories are another wild flower growing all over the fences

There’s still a lot blooming with the summer and fall plants – aster, lobelia, cuphea, alyssum, lantana, bougainvillea and a few more hibiscus bulbs are ready to open up!

The corner of the yard is slowly filling up with spearmint and peppermint plants.   At the end of September, I took a bunch of stem and root cuttings from the mother plants as well as a few established clones and stuck them in the ground in the southeast corner of the yard.  The spot is pretty shaded from the Texas Lilac tree growing in the corner of the neighbor’s yard, but the mints don’t seem to notice.  They’ve sent out runners in all directions now, and I see the tips of many more cuttings poking through the dirt (click on images below to see larger pics).  Both varieties should be hardy in this zone through the winter, and I should have a very well-established and FULL bed of mint by next Spring.  I’m sure I’ll have plenty to offer for cuttings if anyone is interested.

The mint bed, 11/8/09. These plants were either established clones (3 largest) or buried cuttings and root sections.

the mint bed, 10/17/09 (three weeks after planting)

The lettuce bed is growing nicely.  The sixteen transplants I put in a few weeks ago, although really tiny, have really taken off over the past week or two – was it the compost tea?   These shots were taken yesterday before all of the rain.  I was up at seven tending to a few things in the yard, and I gave everything a short little drink of a mixture of fish emulsion and compost tea.

First lettuce bed, 11/8/09

Red Sail lettuce

Cosmo Savoy lettuce

Buttercrunch lettuce

The parsley is well-established now.  I put them in a few days prior to the lettuce.  We harvested a good clump yesterday.   Michelle mixed it and some fresh chives in with some cream cheese and sour cream to make a Green Goddess dip for our coqu au vin chicken and vegetables.  It was delectable!

Curled-leaf parsley

And, for comparison sake, here is the same bed three weeks prior.

parsley/lettuce bed 10/16/09

I also had twenty or so lettuce starts coming up that I needed to do something with, so I took advantage of the overcast day and planted them in the bed that I originally prepared for the yellow crookneck squash that perished due to aphids.  The area is more shaded now than it was in the summer when I put the beds together.   I think it will be perfect for growing the lettuce and spinach, which both love cooler weather and dappled light.

Here are the newest lettuce starts before transplanting

And here they are in the new lettuce bed (what used to be yellow squash)

I had a few spinach sprouts going in toilet paper tubes – three of twelve that germinated (that sucks!).  The others that I transplanted a week or two ago have not really done much at all.  I read that spinach is very slow to start and then grows like crazy.  I hope this is what is happening here.  I thought I’d transplant these three new plants earlier than I did with the others and see if that helps them.  The dirt in the new bed has some new compost mixed into the top six inches of soil.  I’ve watered it with compost tea and let it sit a couple of weeks.  I can tell that it is working because there are strands of fungi across the top of the soil, and as I was digging, I found a few earthworms.  The soil appears to be pretty healthy.  Nonetheless, I dug a hole for the transplants, added a handful of fresh compost, watered the hole with a mixture of fish emulsion and compost tea, dropped the transplant in and filled in the hole with compost and watered again with the compost tea mixture.  I also did something different with these transplants: I completely removed the paper lining to allow them to easily grow into the rich soil around them.

a spinach sprout, one of three, before transplanting

spinach transplanted in their new bed (used to be cucumbers)

I’ve still got 2/3’s of the new spinach bed empty, waiting for more spinach.  I’ve got three more seeds planted now, and as of this morning, two of them have sprouted.  I’ll be able to add them to the bed in a week or two.   I’ve also got another round of lettuce sprouts already coming up – it only takes a few days given the cool weather we’ve enjoyed lately.

tender new mint leaves from a buried cutting

 

hover fly rests on sweet alyssum

 

 

morning webs on the lavender

 

among the carrots

 

buttercrunch lettuce

 

Macro Mondays at Lisas Chaos.com

It’s been a couple weeks since the last garden update, so I need to document some of the changes.  In the past two weeks, I’ve started brewing and using my own compost/worm casting tea.  I started with an anerobic brew because I didn’t have an air pump, but I’ve since purchased one and now have been successful brewing several batches of aerobic tea.  While I started brewing the tea using strictly worm poop, I’ve since added a good shovel full of fresh compost as well.  Every two days I have a new sweet-smelling batch of tea that I’ve been applying both as a foliar spray and by watering into the ground.  I think it’s still pretty early to say how well the tea is working, but I’ve seen some significant growth over the past week especially.   What I have noticed – in the herb garden especially, is an increase in earthworm activity.  Every small section I turn over I find a small worm loving life.  I know this is good for the plants and shows the soil is healthy.  Compost/worm tea is reputed for building beneficial protozoa and bacteria which aerate the soil, providing nutrients, and growing fungi like mycorrhizae which attach to the root system of the plant, allowing it to pull more nutrients out of the soil and protect it from diseases.  All of this wonderful activity underground is mirrored in the phyllosphere above, creating a healthy environment at the base and up the entire plant that draws in more beneficial insects and keeps harmful ones at bay.

Compost/worm castings tea after 18 hours

I officially lost the squash, zucchini and cucumbers, may they rest in peace.  I’m still bummed about that.  My last report on them showed how destructive aphids can be.   I really think that this is because the soil was simply not ready.   This stressed out the plants, creating an environment for the aphids to come in, multiply and take over.  I’ve pulled them all up now, reworked the soil, added fresh compost and watered with the compost brew.  I hope to create healthy soil before I put the next round of plants in, giving it time to build the right balance of fungi, nematodes and bacteria.  Right now, I’m not really sure what I’m going to put there.  It appears that, as the year progresses, the rotation/tilt is now causing a bit more shade in that area.  Perhaps I can find some partial shade veggies that I can put in.  Who knows, maybe I can start putting lettuce and spinach over there.  They seem to be doing alright.

I planted the spinach starts that I had going – twelve plants in all.  They’re really tiny yet, but I’m hoping they’ll be fine.   They seemed to have slowed down the past week, so my thinking is that they need more room.  I’ve got them nestled into a bed of fresh compost and mulched them with even more on top.     The lettuce I did the same way, and it is really growing.   I’ve got sixteen plants going right now of three different varieties, as well as another fifteen or so started in toilet paper tubes.  The broccoli has struggled a bit establishing themselves, but I have a handful of strong plants that should be just fine.  I have another four that I’m watching – and another transplant ready to put in if need be.   Also in the same bed, the carrots are developing nicely.  I’ve got about 110 of them going.  Libby, our little brat dog (just kidding, she’s the most loved/spoiled dog in the world), decided that she’d eat the tops off about ten of them.  Surprisingly, a few decided to keep on growing.  I also lost a couple to some crazy hard rain.

they're teeny-tiny, but they're there!

newly transplanted bloomsdale spinach

lettuce and parsley

red sail lettuce

buttercrunch lettuce

cosmo savoy lettuce

the latest lettuce starts

carrots - i don't remember which variety these are anymore!

big top or danver's half-long carrot rows

eaten back - still insisting to grwo

calabrese broccoli bed

broccoli

The pepper plant is weighted down with a ton of peppers right now.  It’s been a bit wet for it lately and it’s lost some leaves because of it, but the peppers are growing strong.  Compared to the summer crop, these are larger and have a thicker skin and I’m quite pleased.  I’ve even got my first jalapeno – it’s only about an inch long right now, but I can taste it already!

bell pepper

one happy jalapeno

Meanwhile, the beans are starting to produce their first pods.  I didn’t realize how cute little bean pods are!  I really didn’t expect them to do anything because I thought I’d lost them, but they’ve held on.  I pulled up a couple of them and transplanted three more.  Those transplants are four weeks younger than the others.  I’ve been watering them with compost/worm tea for the past two weeks and they are taller than the others and look like they will start flowering this week.  If that’s the case, maybe I’ll be able to pull off a decent harvest on the beans.  I don’t expect them to be done before Thanksgiving, but we aren’t scheduled to get our first frost until the first or second week of December.    I’ll keep applying the tea and wait.

blue lake beans (bush)

a green beaner!

The rosemary cuttings have really grown in the past week – I think due to the tea.  I’ve got at least an inch of new growth.  I took some more cuttings off the main plant and now have another seven plants going.  This time I dipped them in rooting hormone to speed up the process, and started them off with the tea.  I should be able to make another round of cuttings before I pull up the old plant, which I killed by watering too much this summer.  I’m going to go by the local nursery and pick up an established rosemary bush and plant it in its place.  This time, I’m going to use a lot of sand in the hole to help keep it drained and happy.

the light green top is all new in the last week

more new growth - is it the tea?

latest rosemary cuttings

The mints have taken off in the corner of the yard.  At first, the long hours of shade made me think they might not do too well.  Alas!  They are mints!  They’ve sent runners out about a foot now and all kinds of new growth is popping up from the roots I buried.  The mother plants almost died (I relocated them and they received more sun and neglect.  They’re not happy with me.).   Now that they are back in their original place, I expect they’ll be back to normal in a number of weeks.

the mint bed

this is one of several mint cuttings i planted

another ...

and another ...

a mint runner - its serious about spreading!

Also, I’ve got a ton of sprouts along the fence where I cast the wildflower seeds.  I’ve gone through and pulled out the grass, but I can’t tell what is a weed and what is a wildflower.  I’m going to let them go awhile and see if I can distinguish them better before pulling them up.

The hibiscus is up to my chin now and it’s still growing.  It also has a bunch of buds ready to open up – so it isn’t done yet.  Perhaps I can continue to enjoy the tropical blooms a bit longer.

the hibiscus bush

still more tropical blooms to come?

 

"To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wildflower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand, and eternity in an hour." - William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

Gardeners of Belief

The intricacies of life never cease to amaze me.  Working in the garden, I am constantly reminded how interconnected, precious, delicate and persistent all levels of life are.  There in my backyard, in my little corner of the world, Mother Nature shows me how alike we truly are, and how even the smallest, seemingly insignificant living things reflect the greater world.

I like to stare at plants and trees, and they communicate with me.  They have an energy of calmness and vitality.   They don’t rush around trying to do a thousand things, keeping appointments, paying the bills, and raising kids.  They steadily draw their lifesource from their location, content to grab a piece of earth forever and stretch to the warm light above.  They aren’t worried, anxious, fatigued or afraid.   Therefore, when the plants “communicate” with me, I immediately feel calm and content.  What would it be like to be a tree, I ask myself.   Without fail, there is an immediate feeling of peace and serenity that comes over me.  After all, if my worries consist of drawing life from the ground, growing and swaying in the breeze, then tranquility seems to happen naturally.   Humans, I think, make life all too difficult.

When I stare at the plants I see that, physiologically, plants are a lot like humans and other animals, from their roots to their stem or trunk to the branches, leaves and fruit.   I am reminded of diagrams I’ve seen of a human body’s nervous system – the nerves branching out like roots in all directions, the spinal cord like a plant’s taproot and main stem, the brain’s neural pathways like the branches and limbs of a tree.   Humans tend to believe that we are the highest life form, telling mythological stories about how the world was created for us to take dominion over and how we are the end product of evolution – the masters of the planet.  How ignorant humans are – and blind.  The natural world is like the greatest story never written down – a dynamic adventure of endless excitement, wonder and exploration.   We are not masters of the world, but its’ co-creators and co-inhabitants.  We are not the end product of evolution, we are life becoming.

As such, no life is more sacred than the next and all levels of reality reflect life’s infinite creative force.   Culturally speaking,  however, humans do not believe this to be true and the state of the world and our private lives reflect this.   Men seek to dominate and control reality, which has reduced mankind to slavery on many levels.   More and more, we are becoming cut off from our Source and further and further away from the natural world from whence we came.   Instead of green grass and blue sky we have concrete and ceiling tiles.  We make up a whole host of things to fill our time and attention, while many of us feel less and less content with a growing feeling of “there must be something else.”

Last night, Michelle, Erin and I were talking metaphorically about gardens.  In a garden, one prepares the soil, plants seeds or small plants, nourishes them and protects them from weeds, so that they will grow strong to produce flowers and/or fruit.  As our nervous system is similar to the structure of plants and trees, so are our thoughts and beliefs, which form mental structures in our minds that eventually grow , metaphorically speaking, into flower- and fruit-producing plants or noxious weeds.   The core beliefs we hold are fundamental to our experience of reality, grounding us to that reality like a taproot stretching into the ground.  Those core beliefs that we accept give support and life to thoughts that enter our mind at any given moment of the day.  Over time, the thoughts we accept and act upon create stronger support for the belief structure in our minds, which branches out with additional beliefs and thoughts that seek to reinforce the original belief.

We are all gardeners of our minds, whether we are conscious of it or not, and whether or not we’re attentive, conscientious gardeners.  Every one of us has a garden bed full of beliefs.  Sometimes those beliefs create a beautiful landscape and produce a lot of beautiful flowers and fruit.   Sometimes weeds of conflicting beliefs pop up in those gardens and threaten to choke out the more attractive plants if not challenged and pulled up from the roots.  And still, sometimes, one’s garden is completely overtaken by weeds and noxious plants and choked by brambles and thorns which blot out the sun and steal nutrients from the ground to leave it barren and infertile.   And, just as the microcosm of my little garden reflects the macrocosm of the greater world, so does the private garden in my mind reflect and condition my experience and perception of the world around me.   This is true for everyone.  We just haven’t really been taught how creative, alive and important our thoughts and beliefs truly are and how to be better gardeners.   Nor have we been taught how to be mindful, to watch our thoughts move through our minds like sticks upon a flowing river.  Those sticks lead back to something – a belief that we hold.  If we do not challenge harmful, negative, self-limiting thoughts, then those thoughts become strengthened, root themselves in the soil of our minds and grow to produce thoughts, beliefs and experiences to reflect them.   In this way, the world is our mirror.

We are learning to create responsibly with our minds.  The world is a reflection of that process – the medium in which we experience, evaluate and learn this important lesson.   Personally, I am learning to cultivate love, kindness, patience and insight while I pull weeds, water my plants and sit quietly in my garden.  The garden is a place of meditation and learning.  I wanted a place to grow food, but I found a lot more than that.

I found myself, reflected in the dance of a honeybee, the growth of a young seedling, and the intrusion of persistent weeds.

Yeah, that’s how I roll. A day late and a dollar short. At any rate, here are a few macro shots I took of mother nature this past Sunday. The honeybees were really loving the cuphea, with three or four bees feeding at any given time. I managed to catch a few pics of a butterfly as it landed to lap up the sweet alyssum nectar, too.

a winged friend visits the sweet alyssum

There's nothing like the smell of fresh herbs!

I harvested sage, basil, Greek and Mexican oregano, marjoram and thyme this weekend.  For those of you growing herbs for the first time, check out my three latest blogs about how to harvest these wonderful culinary delights!