2020 Garden Update: June 20

June has been a busy month even though we're still staying at home due to the pandemic. With the hot weather settled in to stay until the fall, watering and harvesting have become daily tasks, but the plus side is that we're getting to eat plenty of fresh produce grown in our own backyard!

The garden this year hasn't taken off the way it did last year, as my photos from June 2019 remind me. Last year we had more squash than we could eat and a lot more tomatoes coming in by now, too, but the spring weather had been very warm and wet last year. Everything grew like crazy! This year I'm contending with new beds, new soil, and a number of new types of plants. The problem with a new house is that our "dirt" on the property is basically solid clay with a lot of rocks/concrete bits mixed into it, so only the most determined plants thrive in it (the daylilies don't mind it a bit). I've also got several different brands of potting and garden soil thanks to pandemic shopping issues, and some of those are clearly doing better than others.

In spite of the problems, the cucumbers (all growing in pots) have really done gangbusters, and the larger tomato plants - the Husky Cherry Reds I bought as starts - are providing a steady little stream if not a raging river of tomato goodness. We have yet to harvest any of the heirloom varieties, but they all have green tomatoes on them, so hopefully it won't be long now. I am hand pollinating the squash to ensure that we get a few to eat; so far we've had the best luck with the lemon squash, but I harvested two of the white scallops this week, and they were pretty tasty.

The raised bed with cow peas and corn is coming along quite well, although the pea vines are growing faster than the corn, so I don't know if the vines will get the support the corn was supposed to provide. I hope the corn will catch up because I'm out of stakes and cages and can't find more at the local garden centers when I do make my rare visits to them.

The daylily bank and pollinator patch are full of color and bees now, and I'm already thinking about how to expand on those areas next year with new bulbs and better organization in the small space that we have. It's exciting to see the bulbs we planted months ago sprout and finally flower! The glads and liatris have been especially fun to watch. Next year the daylilies and other perennials should be even bigger and more robust, but they're already putting on a good show this first time out.

Keeping my fingers crossed that I get a bigger squash harvest before the vine borers make their destructive appearance!

The Summer Bounty Begins!

It's early June now, and the heat has definitely arrived, along with the summer staples of the vegetable garden! This week we're eating cucumbers, tomatoes, and the first of the summer squash (finally!). We've got blooming flowers for the pollinators and herbs in full swing. Welcome to summer!

I have pulled up the bolted lettuce and the green peas, which were lovely while they lasted, and replaced them with glass gem corn and cow peas, both of which have already sprouted in their raised bed. I'll be planting more cow peas once the vine borers bring their usual doom to the squash beds, probably by early July. This will be my first time growing corn, and I have chosen glass gem just to do something really different and provide some support stalks for the black-eyed and purple hull peas.

The heat and rain have given the other summer vegetables their rocket fuel boost after the cold spring. So far the lemon cucumber is the champ of the garden. It's 8 feet tall and loaded with flowers and baby cukes. The dragon's egg plants are the slowpokes - will we actually get to eat dragon's egg cucumbers this year? We'll see! Both the DAR and Salad Slicer are producing, so we don't have a shortage even if the dragon's egg disappoints us. The lemon cucumbers are fun with their round shape but taste just like regular cucumbers. They're very mild and add a nice crunch to a dish.

Husky Cherry Red tomato plants are producing a slow but steady stream of fruit. It takes a few days to get enough to make a meal, but we do get there. The heirlooms are growing quickly; I hope by July they will be yielding. I love a big dish of different colored cherry tomatoes! Right now we are eating the red ones with pasta or in tomato cucumber salad, both summer standards at our house.

I was super excited this morning to pick the first of the lemon squash, two little beauties with gorgeous color. They look like Christmas ornaments. We'll be eating them tonight to find out how they taste. So far I have been hand pollinating the squash in an effort to ensure some yield. The zucchini is finally taking off, though, so I might soon have all the squash we can eat with just the pollinators taking care of it. I'm hopeful that the white scallop now has at least one pollinated blossom going, so maybe next week we'll get to harvest the first one.

The flower garden is also taking off, with more daylilies blooming and lots of color in the pollinator patch. Liatris is in bloom, too, and I am seeing a lot more pollinator activity during my daily garden checks. The flower areas are more chaotic this year than I had originally intended due to the pandemic, but we're letting it be a little wild with more clover and less mowing to help the pollinators while we consider the long range plan for the beds.

Next week I hope to check in with more cucumber and squash progress!

* Just this week found out about Baker Creek Seeds' crazy attempt to invite Cliven Bundy to be a speaker a while back. I'm not throwing away seeds I already bought but won't be linking to them or buying from them in the future. There are plenty of other places to buy seeds that are more in harmony with my values as a consumer!

2020 Garden Update: May 28

Today marked the end of the lettuce season here in my North Alabama garden. Our salad at lunch definitely had a bit of a bitter, bolted edge to it, which told me it was time to pull up the lettuce patch and get ready for the next crop. Just recently the weather turned steamy, with 85 degree days and lots of rain, and the lettuce decided it was time to move on to the next phase of its life cycle. My family ate a lot of lettuce since our first harvest on March 10, so the lettuce patch was definitely a success!

I grew three kinds of lettuce this year - Merveille des Quatres Saisons, Little Gem, and Salad Bowl. The Salad Bowl seeds were left over from 2019 but germinated just as well as the 2020 seeds. Little Gem proved the favorite with the family, although the Quatres Saisons provided some red color and a different texture that enhanced our salads. I would grow all three again, but I'm also eager to try out some different varieties if I get the right weather for a fall lettuce crop. I've already ordered several packets of new lettuce seeds from Baker Creek to experiment with if we get the cool weather for it in October or November. Sometimes North Alabama goes right from summer to winter, so I won't know until we get there!

My runty carrots have mostly been pulled in service of our salads, and the green peas are seven feet tall and showing some signs of the heat, but the rest of the garden is just now getting into gear. I have several baby lemon squash, a slow but steady trickle of Husky Cherry Red tomatoes, and so many baby cucumbers that I'm a little worried about what we're going to do with all of them. The lemon cucumber plant has become a behemoth that threatens to take over the whole patio, but I'm too charmed by its massive size to do anything about it except create ever more support. I'm curious to see just how big it will get.

The pandemic continues to affect our errands and projects as we stay home in spite of our state's rush to reopen. I'm glad to have the garden to keep me busy and provide fresh produce for the household. The pollinator patch is a jungle of growth, the daylilies are beginning to bloom in earnest, and we have a family of house finches nesting in our carport, so each new day brings something of interest to see in the garden. Soon my blog posts should be full of cucumbers, squash, and tomatoes!

The Mid-May Garden: Salad Days of Spring

We finally got to enjoy some nice weather this week, at least nice by garden standards since it has been warm but also rainy. My cucumbers are growing by the minute, there's a baby lemon squash on one of my plants, and I have several cherry tomatoes ripening on the kitchen windowsill to keep the rodents from beating me to them. The heady harvest days of summer are still ahead, though, and it will be a few more weeks before I have big baskets of produce to share with my friends. Right now we're in the salad days of spring, with smaller, cooler weather crops producing perfect ingredients for tasty salads.

We have eaten an amazing amount of homegrown lettuce this year, partly because I planted more of it and started it earlier and partly because the pandemic means we're going to the store much less and really want that freshness in our diet. I think the Little Gem has turned out to be the family favorite; it has the romaine crunchiness and structure and has grown really well. Usually we eat a mix of all three varieties, but with the weather turning warmer now I'm trying to use up the more sensitive types and keep the Little Gem going longer because it's supposed to be the most heat tolerant.

 In the first weeks we had to supplement our salads with lots of canned or store bought toppings, but now we have our own produce! My runty carrots might not be good for much, but they are big enough for salads and also have tasty greens that can be added for more carrot flavor. My store bought Husky Cherry Red tomatoes are also producing a small but steady stream of fruit, which is great because it's going to take a lot longer for my seed grown heirloom varieties to do much. This cold spring was tough on baby tomato plants! The other exciting addition now is fresh green peas. My vines have been growing like champs; they're about six feet tall and loaded with pods. I have two types of peas this year, but I can't really tell the different between them. We eat them raw in our salads, but in a few days I should have enough to cook and serve with dinner. It would help if we stopped eating them in the salads, of course, but they're just too tempting.

 I've also found a great homemade salad dressing that uses my herbs. This herbed honey mustard dressing is simple to make, keeps in the fridge for up to two weeks, and uses whatever combination of herbs you have growing. I'm using sweet basil and thyme in the current batch, and it makes a fabulous finishing touch for our garden salads. If you're growing shallots you can certainly add them, but I am making this recipe without them and don't miss them.

Here's a summary of what's yielding in the garden as of May 19:

Green peas
Husky Cherry Red tomatoes
Little finger and Parisienne carrots
Lettuces (Little Gem, Salad Bowl, Merveille des Quatre Saisons)
Herbs (basil, thyme, oregano, mint, rosemary)

Spring Flowers: May 2020

It's another cold, rainy day here in North Alabama, with a cold front once again plunging temperatures well below average for this time of year. Every cold snap slows the warm weather veggies, but other parts of the garden have not minded a bit. Today we're checking in with the flowers and looking at what's doing well so far this first year at the new house.

First daylilies of the new year!

First up is the perennial I'm obsessed with, the daylily! We transplanted all of our Oakes Daylilies plants to the new house back in October and then bought some more earlier this year. I also brought over some smaller fans of the other daylilies I had at the old house, so there are quite a few daylilies in both the front and back yards. This week we had our first one bloom! A Stella D'Oro flowered in the front bed and brought some cheerful yellow color to the view. This powerhouse rebloomer is the daylily type you'll see at lots of shopping centers and public places because it continues to produce flowers all season long. It's inexpensive, easy to find at garden centers, and undemanding in the garden, where it shrugs off all weathers and grows in any kind of soil. While I like the Purple D'Oro better just for color, I was delighted to see the first daylily blooms of the season! Many of my other plants are forming clusters of scapes now, so I hope to have lots of blooms in the near future. Right now I'm only adding rebloomers to the collection so that the garden has more color for longer periods of time. I've got my eye on a few more additions from the current Oakes catalog!

Purple irises in the low ground bank.

The irises that we transplanted from the old house have also bloomed this week, and I'm pleased to see them coming along. Next year they will be stronger and have more clusters, but I only moved the smaller, younger plants from the old house and left the most robust clumps for the new owners (I sure hope they appreciate them!). I'd like to add more irises to our collection for next year; all of ours were accidental additions that came along with the free daylilies we first dug up from our friend's yard. I've come to like them a lot, however, and I'm looking to acquire some different colors and types when I can. Irises are especially good in a mix of daffodils and daylilies where they bloom after the daffodils and before the daylilies, extending the period of interest in the bed. We have several in the bank at the lowest spot along the fence, where everything seems to be taking the wetter conditions in stride. Later the irises will give way to the daylilies planted all around them, but there's plenty of room for both irises and daylilies to spread.

I had trouble with my dwarf sunflowers this year, mostly because little critters dug several of them up early on, but the few that made it are now starting to bloom. The little teddy bear sunflower is really cute! I hope the chipmunks don't come back and finish it off. The dwarf varieties seem fussier than the tall sunflowers and less eager to germinate, but the tall ones became magnets for squirrel raiders last summer, and I ended up having to cut them down once the rodents stole the heads and broke the leaves, leaving only tattered stalks behind. I might have to give up on sunflowers entirely and switch to something less like a rodent buffet, which is a shame because I love the big flower heads looming over the garden.

Salmon pink lily with three blooms.

 The pollinator patch is also filling in really well now, with tall spikes of gladiolus at the back, although my experiment with the low-growing variety of wildflowers is not nearly as exciting. I might stick with the original mix from now on, even though it has a lot of clover in it. Last year the pollinator mix grew with abandon and brought joy to bees and butterflies all summer. The rest of the flowers are a mix of previous hits and new experiments. Around the garden we can see liatris, mini glads, tall glads, lilies and other flowers making progress. Some of the lilies have already finished blooming, but several are still working up to their first flowers, and it has been interesting to see what colors we ended up with from the mixed bag we bought. The mini glads have been slower to sprout than the tall ones, and I think quite a few of them might not grow at all, which is disappointing, but I'm glad we hedged our bets with a bag of the tall types! In the fall we'll add more bulbs to the beds, taking into account which kinds the squirrels seem least interested in eating. It will take a few years for the empty patches to fill in as the plants spread, but eventually my cottage garden dreams will be fulfilled.

Remember if you're new to gardening during the pandemic that there are lots of online plant retailers who will ship seeds, bulbs, bare root plants, and even potted starters to your door. Holland Bulbs, Eden Brothers, American Meadows, Smokeys Daylilies, and of course my favorite, Oakes Daylilies, are all ready to set you up with all the flowers you could possibly want! You can also look for flowers at your local, independent nursery, where social distancing and safety measures are probably well established by now. Visit them early in the morning on a weekday if possible to avoid feeling crowded, and remember to wear your face covering and use hand sanitizer!

2020 Garden Update: April 29

The lettuce and green pea bed is doing great!

With the end of April we're moving into the real growing season here in Zone 7, although we've continued to have rainy, cool weather and a few cold snaps. I'm hoping to see the heat loving vegetables put on some serious growth over the next few weeks! The pandemic continues to affect the usual round of garden store errands and supply runs, so we are mostly making do at home. We made one trip to the local nursery last week with masks and hand sanitizer and picked up some much needed potting soil along with several more plants, but I think it will be quite a while yet before I venture into Lowe's or any more crowded store. The future is far from certain, but at least the garden gives me something to look forward to each morning when I go out to check on everything and see what has changed.

Lettuce continues to be the champ of this year's garden; we get several salads a week out of my crop, which I'm still using as cut and come again to get the most out of it. Alas, I once again failed at growing carrots. Only the Little Fingers germinated, and while they produced big, promising green tops they only grew runty little carrots. We ate them, anyway, and cut the greens up into our salads. I think this will be my last attempt at carrots; I don't actually like carrots enough to keep struggling with them!

Runty carrots again. Sigh.

The green peas are blossoming beautifully with many little pods starting to form, and I'm keen to eat those again because they were a big hit with the family last year. I just hope the critters don't make off with them! We had plenty last year without a net, but the chipmunks here at the new house seem determined to wreak some havoc. I will probably find out soon if I'm going to need to cover the peas with a net, but I hope not! The vines are growing really tall now, and once again I wish I had planted more of them, but this year is a learning curve with the smaller space and raised beds. Both types of green peas have come up just fine, but at this point I can't tell any difference between them.

The squash and zucchini are not nearly as big as I would like, but they are starting to have flowers, too, and I hope the warmer weather ahead will help them grow. I'm not sure they are getting quite enough sun where they are, but we'll see how they do over the course of May. It might just be the cold weather that has held them back, and I did plant them out pretty early this year. The lone survivor of the original cucumber seedlings - a dragon's egg - has also produced flowers, even though it is still a puny runt of a plant. It just won't give up! I admire that and potted it up even though my second round of seedlings is growing much better. The store bought tomatoes all have baby fruit now and lots of flowers, but the heirloom varieties are slow growing (as they were last year). I haven't been able to find the determinate cherry or yellow pear types because of the pandemic and not going to larger garden centers, so we're working with what we've got for now. I expect the darn chipmunks to make off with the lowest hanging tomatoes as soon as they get at all red, but the plants should soon get too tall for them to reach.

Astilbe is doing really well.

The shade garden has filled in quite a lot with hostas, astilbes, ferns, and coral bells. Most of those were bought as bare root plants in mixed bags, but we added several coral bells on our recent nursery run. I would love to have twice as many! I really like the colors, especially the lime. It's a tricky bed to plant in because of the drainage tube, buried pipe, and cables, but we're getting there.

The sunny flower beds are also coming along, especially the irises we moved from the old house. The first one bloomed today! I can see scapes on the Stella D'Oro daylilies and hope to have the first daylily blooms soon. The regular lilies have been doing well, and the tall glads all came up, but I think the mini glads are proving to be a disappointment. I also found out that the chipmunks dug up and ate all of my replanted tulip bulbs from the Valentine's Day pot! At least they didn't get the tulips we planted in the fall.

By this time next month I hope to have lots of flowers and some real vegetable success stories to share!

Love for Lettuce

This year I got my lettuce started on time and have been really pleased to have fresh salad greens available at home throughout the early spring. It can be so hard to wait for the warm weather crops to get growing, which makes rows of tasty lettuce all the more delightful! Lettuce is an easy crop to grow in cool weather, in a small space, and with minimal fuss, and you can easily find a couple of different varieties to liven up your salad bowl. Lettuce is definitely going to be a staple in my kitchen garden going forward!

I sowed seeds from three different types of lettuce this year: Little Gem and Merveille des Quatre Saisons from Baker Creek Seeds, and a Salad Bowl variety from Burpee that I grew last year. All three have done equally well this year and each offers a different color or texture that goes well in combination. I'm using all of these as cut and come again, although the Merveille and Little Gem do form heads (we'll see if I'm patient enough for any to get to that point). I sowed the rows thickly so that I could thin them out as we go through the season, and so far there's still plenty of each growing. I have a row of each in a raised bed in the garden and a large shallow pot of Salad Bowl growing on the patio; the pot actually grew more quickly than the rows, partly because I could move it around for maximum sunlight.

With the pandemic making grocery runs more complicated, it's hard to keep a lot of really fresh produce on hand right now, and the lettuce has been much appreciated as a way to get a garden fresh green into our regular diet. We're experimenting with different salads using canned or packaged ingredients; one favorite has been a salad using canned peaches, pistachios, fresh mint from the garden, and feta cheese. Lettuce is also great for perking up a sandwich, bedding under a bean salad or couscous, or plating with an omelet. The best part is that the lettuce is there when we're ready for it instead of wilting in the fridge.

Our weather this year has been up and down quite a bit, so I don't know how long my lettuce will keep growing before the heat gets to it. If you're in a cooler planting zone you could still plant lettuce for your pandemic victory garden now, assuming you can get the seeds (many online retailers are sold out due to a tremendous surge in demand). Next year I hope to add even more varieties of lettuce to the early garden now that I know how easy it is to grow in containers as well as beds. What varieties of lettuce do you grow? I'd love some suggestions for the 2021 garden!

Newbie Gardener: You CAN Grow Mint!

I planted this pot of mint last spring.

If you've never successfully kept plants alive, starting a garden of any size can be a daunting prospect. This spring lots of people are turning to vegetable gardening to cope with anxiety and provide a stable food source for their families in wildly uncertain times, but for the absolute newbie or apartment dweller those rows of tomatoes and massive mounds of squash can be a non-starter. Where to begin if you want to grow SOMETHING but don't know anything about gardening?

I've got one word for you: MINT.

If you have a semi-sunny space for a pot anywhere then you can grow mint. Mint is so hard to kill it basically functions as a weed. Once you start a pot of mint you will have plenty of it for as long as you want. The one thing you must know up front is that you should never, ever plant it in a bed because then you will have beds of mint forever, and the mint will spread and take over until you have mountains of the stuff. PLANT THE MINT IN A POT!!!

Aside from being impossible to kill, mint is super handy in the kitchen. You can use it in tea, alcoholic beverages, salads, meat dishes, and even desserts. The more you harvest the more it will grow, so feel free to use it liberally once your pot of mint gets established. There are quite a few kinds of mint if you have specific uses in mind, but a generic mint is tasty and versatile.

Put the pot of mint in a sunny spot, water it every now and then, and watch it grow like crazy. It doesn't need fancy soil conditions, fertilizer, or any special treatment. Pests mostly leave it alone and will have a hard time making a dent in it even if they do pay a visit.

My pot of mint from last year wintered over, died back in the cold weather, and is now bursting with new growth. My front beds, unfortunately, are also full of mint because the previous owner naively planted it there, and I will be pulling mint out of those beds until I'm old and gray.

There has never been a better time to start growing something, especially a practical kitchen staple that you can use lots of different ways. You can get small pots of mint at nurseries, home improvement stores, and even grocery stores (our local Publix always carries small kitchen herbs in pots). Call and ask about delivery or curbside pickup if you need to avoid any risk of contact.

2020 Garden Update: March 29

Thyme, thyme, thyme!

You might think I would have more time to post with COVID-19 keeping everyone at home right now, but planting season in garden waits for nothing. I've been outside every day planting, potting, and tending the flowers, herbs, and vegetables. It feels really good to have something productive to do and something to look forward to each morning.

We called ahead at our local garden center last week to make sure they were open and able to maintain good social distancing measures before we made a trip over there to stock up on plants. With a dozen greenhouses and lots of outdoor paths we had no trouble keeping our distance from other patrons, and we tried to make sure that we bought everything we'll want for quite some time to come. I'm glad that we could support our independent nursery in spite of everything going on. Normally I would be in there constantly this time of year! We bought thyme, basil, a cucumber start, a gorgeous fern for the porch, a succulent pot, and quite a few plants for the flower beds.

Cucumber seedlings Take 2.

Back at the house things are really growing and settling into spring. The Lady Banks rose produced its first blooms, a great sign after the stress of moving it in the fall. The green peas are shooting up, the lettuce is going gang busters, and the tomato plants are all thriving so far. The squash and zucchini are doing well, too, and the pollinator beds are full of tiny sprouts. I started several new cucumber pots after the disappointment with my first round; this time I started some of the tried and true Salad Slicer seeds as well as the fancy ones I got from Baker Creek. I hope I will have better luck with them this time, but I also have the Lemon Cucumber start from the nursery as a backup. I might be drowning in cucumbers in a couple of weeks, but I'm sure I can find homes for them!

Our gladiolus order from Holland Bulb Farms also arrived last week, so we now have 70 glads planted in the front and back beds. I can't wait to see how the flower beds look this summer; we've got daylilies, lilies, glads, and liatris ready to take over from the daffodils and tulips. The shade beds are also filling in nicely, with the astilbe doing especially well and the hostas and ferns coming along, too. Eventually I should dig the monkey grass out of those beds, but I wanted to make sure other plants would actually grow there first.

Lettuce, green peas, and squash.

One of the challenges this year is a robust slug population. I never had any trouble with slugs at the old house, but a nightly slug hunt has become part of my routine lately. I use a cup of soapy water and a flashlight to hunt them on the raised beds and pots. They almost devoured my original basil plants before I figured out what was happening, but now I move the basil out of slug reach each night, and the plants are recovering.

Many of my intended garden projects will have to wait for summer or next spring, but even in the midst of the pandemic there is plenty to do right now. I started gardening as a response to anxiety, and I'm really glad to have this outlet now as we cope with such a massive crisis. I hope you are also keeping busy and managing to get some fresh air while staying safe!

Starting Your Kitchen Garden While Social Distancing

With the pandemic keeping everyone at home this spring, you might be looking for something productive and stress reducing to do, either by yourself or with the kids. This might be the perfect time to start that kitchen garden you've always talked about wanting, but you might not know where to begin. Since I'm still relatively new to gardening myself, I know how important it is to have plants that won't die, will grow quickly, and will tolerate mistakes or weather changes. Of course, the pandemic complicates shopping right now, but if you have a sunny patio, balcony, or a backyard of any size you CAN start your kitchen garden while social distancing!

Baby lettuce growing in a pot.

First off, home improvement stores are essential businesses because you still have to fix broken toilets and replace fridges, so your local Lowe's or Home Depot is still open. Garden centers are usually not crowded on weekdays or evenings, so time a trip accordingly if you're going to shop. Make sure you get everything you want in ONE trip. You'll need soil (either potting or garden), containers if you're using them, seeds or starter plants (try a mix), some feed/fertilizer, and a hose or watering can if you don't have them already. Leave the kids at home for this part, practice good hygiene while you're out, and wash your hands often. Independent garden centers might also be open in your area, depending on your location, and the ones where I live are now offering curbside delivery and phone ordering, so try those if you want to support local businesses and minimize contact. Don't forget to buy stakes if you are going to grow climbing plants!

Basic Supply List:

* Soil (potting or garden or both depending on your plans)
* Containers (pots, a raised bed frame, grow bags, or whatever you want to use)
* Seeds or starter plants (seeds are cheaper but take longer)
* Feed/fertilizer (especially if you're planting in regular yard dirt!)
*Watering system (a watering can, a long hose, or even a soaker hose if you're getting serious)
*Stakes for climbing vine type plants
*If you don't have them - a shovel, a spade or two, gloves, other tools depending on your plans

Squash is fast and prolific!

The other big question for a new gardener is what to grow. You might be tempted in the current crisis to go full apocalypse homestead, but practically speaking you should keep things simple. Start with a couple of easy vegetables and a few hardy flowers to cheer you up as we all get through the next few months. Remember to grow vegetables your family will actually eat! For kids and anxious adults, the faster growing plants will provide maximum interest and comfort.

Basic Vegetables (buy as seeds or starter plants):

* Tomatoes - the top home veggie. If you haven't grown them before try a cherry or grape variety for larger yields and less disappointment when you lose a few fruits to critters. Remember to bury starter plants up to the first set of leaves!

*Squash and Zucchini - they grow fast and produce A LOT. Give them room to spread or train them to grow vertically on a cage. These are great for kids to grow and - hopefully - eat!

* Cucumbers - I had wilting issues with the heirloom varieties I started from seed this year, so go with disease resistant seeds or buy a starter plant. Give them support to grow vertically.

*Beans/Peas - These are fast growers and great for cooler climates where spring is slower to arrive, but if you live in a hot region go with cow peas like black eyes or purple hulls. They LOVE the heat. Remember that they will need stakes or other support!

*Lettuce - A cool weather plant, but great for containers, especially if you want to grow baby lettuce as a "cut and come again" crop. Start from seed and sow a container or a few rows; if you space out starting them you'll have a longer harvest.

*Radishes - My family won't eat them, but if yours will then radishes are super fast growers and small enough for patio and balcony containers gardens.

Daylilies ordered online from Oakes.

Basic Herbs (buy as small starter plants):

*Mint - you can't kill it! Don't plant it in the ground; put it in a container, or it will take over your yard forever. You can even buy live mint at the grocery store and plant that.

*Basil - you can also get it at the grocery store in small pots. Basil is great for pasta dishes and easy to care for in containers.

*Rosemary - The scent is wonderful, and it's also super easy to care for, so splurge on a rosemary plant even if you won't use it for cooking a lot.

Basic Flowers (buy as seeds or small starters):

*Sunflowers - These are GREAT for kids! Regular ones will get huge, so buy dwarf varieties if you have a small space. There are many different types to choose from.

*Marigolds - Also really easy to grow from seed, but you can get multi packs of small ones at garden centers very cheaply. They have a great scent and deter many pests in the vegetable garden. Regular varieties can get quite big and busy, so look for dwarf types if you want smaller plants.

*Daylilies - You cannot kill them. Plant them in sunny spots in the yard, in containers, wherever. Look for cheap rebloomers like Stella D'Oro or Happy Returns for maximum enjoyment.

*Wildflower mixes - If you want to attract pollinators to brighten your home isolation, try scattering a wildflower mix in a sunny spot. The flowers will help bring bees and other helpful insects to the garden so that your vegetables get pollinated. Some flowers in the mix will grow better than others, but that's OK.

Remember that you can also buy seeds and other garden supplies online from a wide variety of providers. I use Oakes Daylilies, Baker Creek Seeds, and Holland Bulb Farms, but be aware that some seed companies like Baker Creek might be currently overwhelmed by orders.

2020 Garden Update: March 10

We've had warm, wet weather recently, and the forecast suggests that spring is really on its way now, with highs in the 70s and no lows below 50 in the near future. Everything in the garden says, "Spring! Spring!" Meanwhile, the first plants for the season are turning up at the local garden center, but for now I'm sticking with the cold hardy selections that can handle a few more cold nights if we get them.

The lettuce is doing very well, and last night we actually got to eat some of it because it was time to thin the micro greens and make room for remaining heads to grow to full size. The green peas are also shooting up, and they'll probably need their trellis to go up this weekend. I'm trying to err on the side of caution where my squash and tomato seedlings are concerned, but they are hardening off in their Jiffy pots and starting to look like proper plants.

As we head into mid March I'm definitely getting excited about the season ahead with the new garden. We have been bringing in bags of soil over the last few weeks and getting the raised beds ready for planting. The daffodils are blooming profusely, and we even got several more after a neighbor secured permission for us to remove them from the empty lot across the street (construction there would have buried them under concrete in the next few weeks). I'm eager to see how the garden will look come summer!

Sadly, my cucumber seedlings wilted, leaving me with just one Dragon's Egg seedling. I'll try again with the Salad Slicer from last year, which never had any wilting issues, but I'm disappointed to have lost all of the DAR Cucumber seedlings so early. The tomatoes probably need potting on to get their stems buried, but so far all of them are doing quite well. The squash, though, are practically begging to go in the ground! They'll have to wait a little longer; I don't want to lose any to a last-minute frost.

In the flower beds we've added some sedum, a couple of creeping phlox, and the rescued daffodils. We've got more daylilies and a big order of gladiolus coming soon. We managed to get the crepe myrtle removed from the front bed, as well, creating a nice big space for more planting. (It was too close to the house and had to go - why do builders always put trees too close to the house?)

This part of March is all about anticipation and restraint. It's so tempting to get out there and plant everything the first warm week, but we know that March is fickle! Once April arrives, we can really get cracking.

2020 Garden Update: February 21

We've had nasty, cold, wet weather this week, and I have been down with a nasty cold myself, but the garden babies continue to grow at their own pace. Outside the lettuce rows have sprouted, and there's now solid evidence of pea sprouts from the Lincoln green peas in the raised bed. My second crop of lettuce, sown in a large pot, has also sprouted, although I have yet to see any signs of the carrots. All three of the lettuce varieties are doing well, and eventually I will have to thin the rows so that the heads will have room to grow, but we aren't there yet.

Inside the Jiffy pots are full of seedlings. The tomatoes are getting their first true leaves, and the squash seedlings are really getting long and turning into vines. I might have lost one of my pots of DAR Cucumber, having been too sick to come upstairs and check on them for a few days, but I have plenty of backups and can plant more seeds directly outdoors in April if I need to. The Jiffy pots will also need thinning soon, but I want to wait a little longer to see which sprouts do the best with early leaf formation.

During the last warm weather over the Presidents Day weekend, we bought more garden soil for the raised beds and also picked up several bags of plants at Costco to start filling in the shade bed along the patio. It's a very sheltered area so not exposed to the worst of the cold and wind, and when we moved in the only things growing there were clumps of boring monkey grass. We planted hostas and astilbe and will see how they get along until April, when we can start filling in with more plants from the local garden centers. I hope to add some bleeding heart and ferns and other shade lovers eventually.

The daylilies and daffodils continue to shrug at whatever the weather dishes out, but I can tell that we will have plenty of empty spots in the bank bed to fill once spring arrives. Luckily I keep getting plant catalogs in the mail to give me ideas!

2020 Planting Record: February 11

The first round of lettuce has sprouted in the raised bed, but the Lincoln green peas have not yet shown any signs of germination, so I ventured out this morning while it wasn't raining to get a few more cool crop seeds started.

Seeds planted on Tuesday, February 11, 2020:

Salad Bowl Lettuce (Burpee)
Little Gem Lettuce (Baker Creek)
Garden Sweet Green Peas (Burpee)
Parisienne Carrots (Baker Creek)
Little Finger Carrots (Baker Creek)

Except for the Little Gem Lettuce, all of these are seeds left over from last year, so I expect slightly lower germination rates. So far all three of my lettuce varieties are sprouting nicely, and I'd like to have at least a second round of lettuce before it gets too hot.

Last year the Garden Sweet Green Peas were a bit hit and grew readily, and I'm feeling impatient about the Lincoln peas not sprouting yet. We'll see if this new round of Garden Sweet takes off!

Garden Sweet Peas from 2019

I have yet to have any luck at all with carrots, but since I have the seeds I am giving them one more go. It's a bit early to sow them, but my garden is very sheltered with its narrow space and high privacy fence, and I've got more of the seeds in a large pot that can be moved if some truly terrible weather heads our way. I would really like to grow a few decent carrots!

The problem with cool weather crops here in North Alabama is that our winters are wildly variable and spring gets very warm very quickly. We can have 60-70 degree days throughout the winter and then rocket up to 90 degrees early in the spring and stay there through October. I often wonder if our planting schedules and general advice really take the effects of climate change into account. I'm experimenting with the carrot seeds to see if I have any better luck with them by planting them in weather that feels more like a typical old-fashioned spring than our actual spring feels like these days.

2020 Garden Update: February 10

We've had wet, warm weather much of the last week here in North Alabama, which means lots of plants are sprouting and growing outdoors. With a cold snap moving in this week, I'm hopeful that my sheltered backyard will be protected from the worst of any frost, but the only seeds already planted there (green peas and lettuces) are cold hardy, anyway. Still, there has been plenty to do whenever the sun comes out!

My indoor seeds are doing well, with the Purple Bumblebee tomatoes germinating really nicely in spite of being seeds left over from last year. The sunflower and cucumber seeds are also sprouting robustly. Hopefully the few stragglers will make an appearance soon. The zucchini, the Purple Russian tomatoes, and the straightneck yellow squash are the only seeds not to show any signs of life yet, and all of those are also leftovers from last year.

Outdoors we are slowly bringing in garden soil for the raised beds (always a big expense and a lot of work when you have to start from scratch!). We went back to the old house and divided some of the daylilies and irises already growing there and transplanted some babies to the front yard beds at the new house. There will be plenty growing for the new owners at the old place, but now they won't have to be divided as soon over there. Hopefully our transplants will spread and grow as well as they had in the old garden! If the cold snaps should kill any of our transplants it will be OK because we can replace them later.

The daffodils are coming along in the front and back beds, and we have our first flowers now, which is very exciting. I'm already wishing we had planted more bulbs back in the fall! This coming fall I will have a better sense of the new garden spaces and what I want them to include and look like through each season, but I expect to have 15-20 years with this garden to make it everything it can be.

While I'm at it, here's a reminder to novice gardeners not to plant mint in open areas or large beds. It will take over! The previous owner planted mint in the front beds, and I have been pulling it up nonstop ever since we moved in. I love mint, but I always grow it in a container because it's so opportunistic. Put your mint in a nice big pot and let it poke along through the winter. It is really hard to kill!

That's the garden update for February 10, 2020. I'll post a report on the progress again next week!

First Sprouts of the Season!

It's February 5, 2020, and today I spotted the first sprout of the season from the indoor seeds. The Dragon's Egg Cucumber is the first to put forth a real sprout, but it looks like the DAR Cucumber will not be far behind. I'm really looking forward to tasting these new cucumber varieties, but right now I'm delighted to see the tiny seedlings emerging from the soil.

My indoor seeds are sitting in an upstairs room in front of a sunny window, so they're very warm and well lit and protected from curious cats. I've started them in Jiffy pots in seed starter mix. Last year I had a plastic starter tray, but this year I wanted to reduce my plastics use and have a very easy transition for the plants into their eventual garden homes. It was sometimes tricky to get the seedlings out of the plastic trays last year, and I have fewer extras this year to risk losing.

I'll post new pictures and updates as the seeds continue to sprout. What are you starting from seed this year, and what are you planting directly into the garden? Let me know in the comments!


* Dragon's Egg Cucumber and DAR Cucumber seeds from Baker Creek Seeds.

Time to Start Seeds!

It's February, which means it's time to get several garden projects started for 2020. Luckily we had a beautiful sunny day and warm weather this weekend, perfect for trips to the garden center and some time outside. A few hardy cool weather crops can be planted in Zone 7a right now, while others can be started indoors from seed. I've got big plans for the new kitchen garden this year, so I've got both outdoor and indoor seeds ready to go!

We have a lot of work to do in the kitchen garden this year because it's a new space with the disappointing soil you'd expect in a new construction area. We'll be adding garden soil to the raised beds as the spring progresses, but today we only needed one box ready for the green peas and lettuce. Last year I started both much later than I should have, and the hot weather arrived early, so we had less time to enjoy them. I've got green pea seeds planted in the back half of the garden box and three rows of lettuce (one row of each type I have) in the front half, with a concrete block in the center to serve as a stepping stone. Ideally I'd have access to the box on both long sides, but the small space and sloped yard mean the boxes have to be against the fence (we've also found at least two cables barely buried by internet providers, etc., so we have to work around those, as well).

My lettuces this year are Salad Bowl, Little Gem, and Meveille des Quatres Saisons, the last being the freebie I got with my Baker Creek Seeds order. I grew Salad Bowl last year but hope to have much better luck this time because I'm getting it started on schedule and won't have to worry about the heat so much. My green peas are the Lincoln variety from Baker Creek. I have some left over from last year and might plant them a little later. Everyone at our house loved the green peas last year, and I know we'll eat as many as I can grow!

I also got my indoor seeds started today. I have 26 Jiffy pots with a variety of squash, cucumber, tomato, and sunflower. I've set up my seed starter space in a sunny upstairs room where the cats can't knock the cups over (assuming we keep the door closed!). For most of the seeds I planted 2-3 seeds in each cup, with two cups per variety. Because the new garden is small I will have to choose the best seedling to plant and give the runners up to gardening friends. I don't really need to grow the sunflowers from seed indoors - they'll grow just fine from seed outside in April - but I like the morale boost of sunflower seedlings, and I have several kinds this year that I'm really curious to see grow.

Seeds started indoors on February 2nd:

Green Bush Zucchini (Baker Creek)
White Scallop Squash (Baker Creek)
Lemon Squash (Baker Creek)
Straightneck Yellow Squash
Hartman's Yellow Gooseberry Tomato (Baker Creek)
Purple Bumblebee Tomato (Baker Creek)
Purple Russian Tomato (Baker Creek)
DAR Cucumber (Baker Creek)
Dragon's Egg Cucumber (Baker Creek)
Dwarf Teddy Bear Sunflower (Ferry-Morse)
Dwarf Sunspot Sunflower (Ferry-Morse)
Gold Coin Sunflower (Baker Creek)

I'm using Jiffy pots because I'm trying to use less plastic going forward, and they're easy to label clearly, so I should be able to tell which plants are doing the best from each category. I'll post updates as the seeds sprout!

Three Cheers for Daylilies!

I like for my garden to be attractive to people and pollinators, so I always mix flowers and vegetables together as much as possible. I've learned a lot about my flower priorities over the last few years, mainly that I like perennials that are easy to grow, able to handle our extreme North Alabama weather, and colorful. I don't have the energy or talent for fussy flowers when I'm trying to keep the tomatoes alive and it's 100 degrees outside. Luckily I found daylilies, thanks largely to some friends who offered us all we could transplant from their yard. Daylilies are basically the perfect flower, as far as I'm concerned. They come in all shapes, colors, and sizes, they're almost impossible to kill, and they look wonderful in clusters around the kitchen garden.

If you're afraid to start growing flowers because you don't have a "green thumb" and have had bad luck with houseplants, then daylilies are there for you. You can buy very inexpensive ones at your local garden center for less than $5 each. Plant them this spring once they show up at your area's stores and watch them thrive. They spread over time, which means you'll eventually have a robust cluster you can divide after 3-4 years to add to other parts of your garden. Other than that, they won't ask much of you, just a sunny spot in the yard. They're drought tolerant but won't mind a rainy week, either, and they aren't picky about soil types. Just make sure they get enough sun; my only daylily failures last year were in too much shade. The plants survived but did not bloom well, and we've now moved them to a sunnier spot in the new garden.

As I mentioned, I started with a few truck loads of free daylilies from a friend, and if you can get free ones then go for it. They survived and bloomed even when transplanted in the heat of July, and they came back stronger the second year. Most of our freebies were the commonly seen orange blooms sometimes derided as "ditch lilies"; they're all over neighborhoods here in Huntsville through the summer months. I was delighted to have them but soon found out about the breathtaking diversity of daylily varieties and wanted more. (Warning! Daylilies are habit forming and addictive!)

We headed to the local Lowe's and found another popular daylily, the yellow rebloomer Stella d'Oro. This is a solid first daylily if you are buying yours at a chain garden center, where you should get them for under $5 per pot. You will find other varieties as the season progresses; Happy Returns and Purple d'Oro both turn up at stores in our area, as well as a few others. Independent nurseries and garden centers will offer a wider variety; our local favorite is Bennett Nurseries, which stocks a wonderful selection of daylilies and other plants throughout the growing season. Many of the nicer daylilies at independent stores will run about $10 each, but they're worth it because they'll grow and thrive and spread without much fuss, giving you years of color and enjoyment.

Oakes Daylily Festival in Tennessee

Once I had exhausted the options at all of my local, physical stores, I started looking at daylilies online. Behold - a world of glorious daylilies is just a keyboard and a credit card away! Specialty growers can offer hundreds of varieties tailored to meet your specific garden needs. You can get short ones, tall ones, spider blooms, rebloomers, giant blooms, tiny blooms, and all in every color imaginable. My favorite online daylily company is Oakes Daylilies based in Tennessee. They even have an annual daylily festival at their farm, which we attended in 2019. It was really amazing, and we came home with lots of new plants for our garden!

The daylilies have become such a passion for us that we made sure we brought the best of them with us when we moved in October. All of our Oakes daylilies were dug up and moved to the new garden, and I'm eagerly waiting to see them bloom. We've interplanted them with daffodils and tulips for a long season of color, but there's room for more daylilies. We left the freebies and most of the Lowe's purchases at the old house to bloom for new owners, and I hope they'll enjoy them. I already have my eye on some new daylilies for 2020 and some new places to put them!

Learn more about daylilies!
American Meadows
Burpee
Gardener's Path

Garden Wishlist for 2020: Squash

Harvest early and often!

In my last post I tackled the massive topic of tomatoes, but squash is much less complicated for me. While there are many, many varieties out there to choose from, I have to be practical about squash because my small family can only eat so much of it. Last year I definitely went overboard with six plants - 3 yellow squash and 3 zucchini - that produced so much my kid was actually relieved when the vine borers appeared. For 2020 I'll be sticking with a smaller quantity of squash that we'll enjoy until the pests inevitably take over.

Yellow Squash

The first year I grew squash I chose the most traditional Southern version, the yellow crookneck squash. This is the yellow squash I remember from my grandfathers' gardens when I was a child; it was usually destined for a casserole. I never liked them as a kid but was tempted by the starts at the garden center and brought a few home. Boy, did they grow! We found a couple of recipes we all actually liked and ate lots of squash for several weeks before the vine borers showed up. I had to learn the hard way about the predestined end of all Southern squash, and eventually I pulled up the riddled vines and called it a day.

Squash plant in May 2019

Aside from the pests, the only problem I had with the yellow crooknecks was their shape. That crook was always growing around a vine or otherwise getting itself caught so that picking the squash proved tricky. So, in 2019, I chose the Early Prolific Straightneck Squash from Baker Creek Seeds and planted three hills in my raised beds. They grew quickly and produced abundantly, so much so that we had soon eaten as much squash as we could handle and had run out of friends who wanted more. This time I planned for the vine borer arrival and pulled the plants once their presence was obvious so that cowpeas could grow in that space instead. Changing out crops turned out to be a great tactic, and I will definitely do that again now that I have a smaller garden.

This year I still have plenty of Early Prolific Straightneck Squash seeds to plant, but I think I might have just one hill instead of three.

Zucchini

Monster zucchini!

Last year I opted for the Green Bush Zucchini from Baker Creek Seeds and had good luck with them, although I think we ultimately got more yield from the yellow variety. For 2020 I'll be sticking with the same type because I still have quite a few seeds in the packet. My family actually seemed to like the zucchini better than the squash, so I might plant two hills of zucchini and just one of the squash. We'll see if my smaller space has room for these fast growing vines! I did find out that these zucchini will grow into monstrous baseball bats if you don't keep an eye on them; I came back from a vacation to find that a friend had missed a few of them when checking my garden. They were huge but not worth eating by then, so they went straight to the compost bin.

Squash and Zucchini 2019 Record

2019 planting date - March 24
2019 sprout date - April 3
2019 first harvest - May 14 (yellow), May 26 (zucchini)
2019 pull date - July 1 (vine borers)

We'll see how the weather does here in North Alabama for the 2020 planting. Our last frost date this year is April 2, but we might well warm up before then!

Do you plant squash in your garden? How much and what kinds? I'd love to try some different varieties once I figure out the spacing in the new garden and find spots for everything, so let me know what you recommend in the comments!

Garden Wishlist for 2020: Tomatoes

Tomatoes! The one vegetable I absolutely have to grow every year is tomatoes. We eat tons of them! I prefer cherry and grape varieties because they're better suited to our needs and are more prolific, making it less nerve wracking to lose a few to the local wildlife. Last year I experimented with growing tomato plants from seeds that I bought at Baker Creek Seeds. The results were mixed. Heirloom varieties were pickier and more delicate than sturdy starts I bought at Lowe's, and some of the specialty tomatoes disappointed us in terms of flavor, but others were really tasty. I also got a huge thrill out of growing them and having so many different kinds. This year I'm still interested in growing from seed, but with less experimental space I want the tomatoes I grow to be tasty, disease resistant, and prolific. I'm considering some determinate varieties in addition to my usual indeterminate types so that I can expand the container garden effort on the patio to include more tomatoes there.

2019 Tomatoes

Hartmann's Yellow Gooseberry

From Baker Creek Seeds -

Barry's Crazy Cherry (husband thought they were bland, but we had a lot of them, very prolific and small)

Russian Purple (critters got almost all of them and yield was low, but they were delicious, plum size, juicy)

Purple Bumblebee (yielded less and succumbed to problems faster but quite tasty)

Hartmann's Yellow Gooseberry (Tasty and good yield - definitely the winner of the Baker Creek picks! They were larger than the usual cherry but excellent in a variety of dishes and salads.)


From Lowe's (Bonnie Plants brand)

Bonnie Plants cherry tomatoes

Husky Cherry Red (solid producer that grew well and survived better)

Sweet Million (early producer and grew as well as Husky Cherry Red)

Volunteers from the previous year also popped up in some surprising places around the yard (thanks, chipmunks!), and I transplanted several of these to the kitchen garden. None of them produced a lot, and they were an odd hybrid of the cherry types I grew in 2018, but we still got some bonus edible produce. I wasn't going to turn down free tomatoes!

In all I had about 14 tomato plants for 2019, which was probably way too many for three people. I gave away lots of tomatoes and froze several bags of them slow roasted with olive oil.



2020 Tomatoes

Of the Baker Creek seeds, I'm most likely to grow the Hartmann's Yellow Gooseberry again, especially since I still have plenty of seeds. Other Baker Creek varieties I'm considering include:

2019 got tomato crazy! Let's do that again!

Black Cherry
Isis Candy Cherry
Pink Bumblebee
Sunrise Bumblebee
Orange Hat
Micro Tom

Bonnie Plants are the most widely available brand where I live, so I'll also be looking at these indeterminate types for starter plants later in the spring, in addition to the two types I had last year and liked:

Black Cherry (the Bonnie version)
Braveheart Cherry
Candyland Cherry
Chocolate Sprinkles
Midnight Snack Cherry
Sakura Cherry
Sun Sugar
Tidy Treats
Yellow Pear

Because I'm planning to have more containers this year, I also want to consider these determinate types:

Taste the tomato rainbow.

Red Robin Cherry
Tumbling Tom Yellow
Tumbling Tom Red
Sweet n Neat Cherry
Yellow Canary

Obviously, I've got way more contenders than space, but not all of the Bonnie varieties are likely to show up at my local garden centers, so that will limit my choices a fair bit before I get there. My goal is to have 8-10 plants in all with a variety of types and colors.

Which tomatoes will win a spot in the 2020 kitchen garden? Stay tuned to find out!