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: 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!

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.

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!