Author: Silvercat

(If you listen to The Hidden Almanac, you should have done that in Rev. Mord’s voice…)

This is my second year of having a garden. It’s still in progress (we have a gazebo that’s being moved which should provide a lot more shade), but I’m going to ramble about it anyway.

I’m mostly using Square Foot Gardening, although I think the prescribed ratios for the soil are too heavy on vermiculite (you’re supposed to use 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite, and 1/3 compost) so I used less this time. I’d like to use coco coir instead of peat moss, but it’s still too expensive and I can’t get it around here.

In the fake barrel is a 100s Sweet cherry tomato from last year. Two of the grow bags are peppers I saved as well, but I don’t know if they’re going to grow. They aren’t doing much. And the last big thing in a grow bag is an eggplant which has been flowering and has an eggplant going.

I’m not sure which variety it is – I saved too, but had to throw out one because of spider mites. F–ing spider mites. I’ve planted garlic (just from the grocery store) around stuff this year because it’s supposed to keep them away. It seem to be working.

I won the tomato behind the eggplant! It’s a Black Krim and I won it in a raffle at a garden show.

I get my seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds and Kitazawa Seed. Kitazawa specializes in Asian vegetables and I get my burdock, cucumbers, and most of my eggplant from them. I really recommend the cucumbers – they’re Soarer, Hybrid and are citrusy and delicious.

Some of my plants, like the tomato in the barrel and the peppers, I’ve gotten from Lowes and Home Depot. (I also recommend that variety – very good tomatos and super productive).

I’ve already killed two sets of seeds, so this time I’m letting the plants get as big as they can in the pots (using a coco coir mix in the pots) before I transplant them. Most things have sprouted, but there are a few things that I think the seeds from last year are no good. I store them in the closet and, while in the winter it’s cold in there, in the summer it gets really hot. (At some point I’ll throw those seeds out).

Some of these seeds are more flowers to go in the bed next to the lemon tree.

I’ve also got a compost tumbler, which is mostly made up of coffee grounds and a small cabinet for my tools and pots.

The blue pots in the back bed are for the burdock. The variety I have has one foot long edible roots and by using the pots I don’t have to dig down very far to get it all. … The burdock is some I’ve killed twice.

The cucumbers are also in that bed, with a temporary shade, plus a tomato, peppers, and turnips. There’s supposed to be shiso and mitsuba parsley as well but… it died.

My most productive bed, so far has more turnips (the leafy corner), petunias, zinnias, sunflowers (the big row), two tomatoes (opposite corners – one isn’t doing well), and a struggling basil (in the far shadowed corner – I may need to move it).

And my shadiest? bed. I’m trying tomatillos this year and that’s in the green tomato cage in the back. There’s turnips on either side, although the one side isn’t doing well. I don’t remember if the other cage is a tomato or a pepper.

The eggshells have since been spread about to discourage pests. The pots beside it are tagetes lucida, aka Mexican Marigold or Mexican mint. It’s a marigold.

Besides the vegetable beds, I’ve also got a few pots on the side of the house across from my window. The big yellow pot is my roommates, along with the top row (she does succulents). The two succulents on the bottom are there temporarily until she can get the beds prepped (the yard is very much a work in progress) and she’s got a plumeria sprouting.

I’m probably going to end up moving the plant in the pale olive green pot in the foreground and putting in another Million Bells flower in a different color. It’s not doing great and I think it needs more room so it’ll go in a bed or something.

The petunia here is a new variety called Night Sky or something like that. In ideal conditions, the flowers are a deep purple with white spots so it looks like a galaxy. In less ideal conditions they turn white, but they turn back.

In the pots are more tagetes lucida, all of them saved from last year, and in the other grow bag is mint. Never put mint in the ground. I’ll be watching this to make sure it doesn’t escape. I have it for mojitos.

Recently, I hung the birdfeeder from my window to provide Cat TV. We have a film on all of our windows to keep heat out and you can’t see through them from the outside. Now, Heidi wakes me up before sunrise every morning to open the blinds so she can watch. …She hasn’t figured out that the birds aren’t going to show up that early.

And Spooky now sleeps on my bed all the time on “her” blanket (it’s my blanket and it’s super soft, but I can share. Also I spread it out for them because it keeps the cat hair off my bed).

We’ve only had a few types of birds show up – mostly house finches, chipping sparrows, and house sparrows. I love the variety of pink or orange on the house finches and I think house sparrows are very handsome.

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