My garden is the venue and source for many stories. This is my chronicle of life in my garden, the garden knowledge I have acquired, and any other garden legend and lore that I see fit to add. Enjoy! Photo by Tom Sundro Lewis, Autumn, 2011.
Life in Colorado has unique qualities. After a winter of very little snow overall, spring arrived and we suddenly received 47" of snow. It didn't all pile up because in between storms the temperatures would rebound into the upper 60s and low 70s.
Then we have times like what we are going through yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Yesterday was a hot day in the 80s. Today is a transition day in the 60s. Later is forecast for thunder and rain. By tomorrow we will be shoveling out of 3 to 7 inches of snow. We have four seasons here, but sometimes we have them all in one day.
Last year we were into summer by now and I lost the chance to properly plant those veggies that need cold weather. So this year I made a point of getting out to plant those seeds in March. Then the weather got unusually cold. Some of the seeds have survived, others have not. So I must do a little replanting.
I am planting extra peas this year because the peas rarely make it into the house. I tend to eat them right there in the garden. Many of the strawberries go the same way.
For the last few years my spring planting included many veggies for my mother. She passed away last August, so this year I need to rethink much of what I will grow. I don't care for beets and parsley, so I don't need to grow those this year. I use a lot of onions, so more of my garden space will be given over to them.
I hope that the strawberries and raspberries will be even more plentiful than last year. I discovered the
amazing power of red berries to reduce my blood sugar. I also discovered that they taste so much better than anything I can purchase in the store since they are able to ripen entirely on the vine and become naturally sweet and delicious.
Already I must make plans to thin lettuce, but it will have to wait until after the next snow storm.
After all it is that fickle Springtime in the Rockies.
This was a busy week in the garden, trying to get the spring work done. I spent up to six hours a day out working away. There is soooo much to do at this time of year. A character on an old British sitcom, Good Neighbors, said it best -- she's angry at "that Mother Nature person. She sleeps all winter and then wakes up and goes stark raving mad!"
I spent a great deal of time out in what I call "the north forty." This is the three raised beds at the north end of my lot. I was turning soil, amending it, and removing weeds and wood chips. This is where the majority of my Egyptian Walking Onions are planted, and my sage, oregano and leeks are growing. I had a lovely chat with the bees in the purple sage flowers. I also ended up in a rather strange conversation with a couple of homeless men who were walking by and came over to talk with me. This was rather alarming since most people just talk with me from the sidewalk. One of them was asking me to hire him to work in the garden -- a trailer park is not the greatest place to look for someone who has the money to pay for odd jobs. The other was telling me about the garden he had worked in while he was in jail. I couldn't help but wonder about these two. I certainly hoped that they were just passing through and not looking to create a problem. Apparently they were okay. They finally ambled on after a third man who had no interest in cornering me in the garden,
At the top of this photo you can see the north 40. The nearer garden bed is a "pond." I wanted to put a pond into my garden, but couldn't see trying to keep pouring water into a real pond in such a dry climate. So I made a representative pond. You will see more of the pond as the spring progresses and I get more of it cleaned up. There are frogs and swans in there, and Huck Finn goes fishing there.
A neighbor stopped by one evening to ask gardening advice and what to plant that the deer won't touch. This is a very limited list, but she was happy with what I had told her -- onions, sage, oregano, and irises. For some reason the deer haven't been around lately. I miss them, but I am grateful that I haven't needed to use the stinky spray to keep them away from the roses and clematis.
Naomi was as entertaining as usual. Especially when I found her curled up on a bunch of mulch and a bit of trash in a bucket:
This is the same cat who has her own chair on the patio just a few feet away. Go figure!
It was also time to mow the lawn this week. This is the only thing I don't do myself. I really hate mowing, so I find it better to let someone else do it.
My fantastic photography skills are clearly apparent in this one. I have a cheap little digital camera that doesn't have a screen to review the photos I take. I will be better once I get used to it.
Thursday night I stayed out late working in the north 40. This meant that I was out there when the Cruiser Ride came by. They come by most Thursday nights and there are hundreds of them. There is a bike path at the end of my street so it is a natural route for them. Here is a video of the Cruisers made by my friend Jonathan Machen. He's the one singing. The one swinging is his son, Orion. Jonathan is an amazing artist.
They generally shout "Happy Thursday!" to all and sundry along their route, although some abandon that to yell "Love your garden" at me.
Life in Boulder is rarely boring. There are too many of us oddballs and weirdos here. I am pleased to be one of them -- and a native of the city. I actually live on the same street I was born on. Few people in this country can say that.
Some of my patio pots have not been growing -- or at least growing properly. I have been wondering what could be happening in this lovely, strangely early spring. Then I noticed the cat. She was trying to eat a radish sprout. Then she tried to curl up on the lettuce. Uh-huh. I was beginning to get the picture.
The lettuce survived, but I have had to replant radishes and carrots. I need to replant spinach and possibly beets. Hmmm. We had two fights yesterday -- it included some rather colorful cat language as we hissed at each other. She didn't want to get out of the lettuce in the morning, and didn't want to get up off of the red cabbage plant in the afternoon.
I'm still getting used to how my new digital camera works or you be able to see that she is curled up next to a red cabbage plant. Moments later she tried to curl up right on top of it to take a nap. She was not happy when I tried to move her on. After sulking for about ten minutes she took a stroll through several other pots.
You can see by the look on her face, I was still not her favorite human right at that point. I am now wondering if she might be just a little jealous of all the time I am spending with the pots. She doesn't act like this when I am out in the raised beds.
After almost six hours at hard labor yesterday I stank, was covered with topsoil and sheep manure, and when I sneezed, mud came out. Do you supposed I took up gardening because it was a great outlet for my OCD? The cat thinks so. She kept staring at me like I was crazy when I was working in the rain this afternoon. I was racing the storm to get my cilantro plants in. I almost made it and only got mildly damp. She was certain I had lost my marbles when I went back out in the rain to pick onions to go with dinner.
On the other hand, now that it is really raining, she is the one sitting outside on the covered part of the patio. There the spoiled girl has her own towel-covered love seat to curl up on. If this does not suit, she heads for the neighbor's patio where there are three cozy cushioned chairs from which to choose.
Worms, the great gardening companion, have been very good to me. As I move out into the rest of the yard and the raised beds I am finding a great number of "presents" from the little critters. Worm tracings, or castings, or, well, poop to the lay person are a wonderfully rich deposit for the garden. I collect them and add them to my compost bin.
You can buy composted worm tracings. You can also buy "worm tea," which is taking the composted tracings, placing them in something like cheese cloth and soaking the resulting bag in water for several days. This brew can be diluted with additional water and sprayed on or used to water your garden plants. I prefer to compost my own.
I have a worm breeding ground on one end of my patio. Leaves gather thickly there over the winter months and when the spring rains begin to awaken the worm population they make a beeline for this food rich area and begin to propagate the species. By the time I come along to clean up the patio for the spring, there is a wealth of worms in various stages of development. I collect the worms and place them in the compost bin where they can do what comes naturally.
Unfortunately, this is also where centipedes gather and spawn their young. This is because they love to eat worms. So I am cautious as I work to steer clear of the unpleasant bugs. I also find the centipede babies and try to make sure that they go in the trash instead of into the compost where they would target my worms.
I am guessing that my large amount of worm poop is partly due to the warm dry winter. Whatever the reason, I am grateful for the generous donations.
When I start weeding the lawn, I will undoubtedly run across similar deposits from the deer. This also goes into the compost bin. Waste not want not. Or waste -- yes!
Adding organic material to your garden is a great start. There is more that you can do to support the health of your soil and it doesn't have to cost very much. They are items that are commonly found around the house or picked up at the grocery store:
Epsom Salt: Yes, the stuff you keep on hand for soaking wounds. This is magnesium sulfate and will help your plants grow strong and green. You can mix it well into the soil in the spring to help get plants started, or dissolve with water in a hose-end sprayer and spray the plants every few weeks.
Ammonia: This can be nasty stuff in large quantities, but a little goes a long way in the garden. Ammonia is nitrogen, one of the most important substances to having a healthy garden. Master gardener Jerry Baker calls ammonia "thunderstorm in a bottle." Mix two ounces with a gallon of water and apply to soil. For larger coverage, one cup in a hose-end sprayer to apply to the entire lawn and garden every few weeks. The caution here is to not overdo on fruits and vegetables or you may end up with great looking, leafy plants that are not bearing. It is a case of a little is good, but more is not better.
Coffee Grounds: Used coffee grounds make a great soil amendment for nitrogen. If you are a coffee drinker this is a great way to recycle all of those leftover coffee grounds. If, like me, you are not a coffee drinker many coffee houses are quite happy to save grounds for you. The Starbucks in my grocery store will save grounds for me. One of their employees lives in my neighborhood and has dropped grounds off for me. Any grounds I still have beyond soil amendment go into the compost bin. If you really don't like anything about coffee, be forewarned, your garden will smell like coffee for weeks.
Baking Powder: This is a great, simple way to add calcium to the soil. This is especially for plants prone to blossom end rot. For me and my neighbor this has been an ongoing issue with our tomatoes. So far the jury is out on how well this works, so I am placing this particular soil amendment into my "experimental" category for another year.
As I mentioned in my previous blog on soil, much of my garden is in patio pots. It may have been noticed by some that I did not mention using potting soil for this. One of the reasons that I do not use commercial potting soil is because I can mix my own to the specifications I select, and I can alter them from pot to pot based on what I will be planting.
The agricultural extension office for Colorado at Colorado State University has an excellent article on soil amendment.
Once again yesterday and today I spent hours amending the soil in my garden. The health of the soil is crucial to being able to grow strong and healthy plants. This sounds like a simple concept to us these days. However, less than a century ago people thought that soil was an infinite resource that could never be depleted. It was upon this foundation that the United States agriculture policies were based. It led to the greatest ecological disaster in our history. The rich top soil that it had taken Mother Nature thousands of years to perfect was plowed up and turned into farm land. Crops were planted, grown, and harvested year after year with the belief that they could do this in perpetuity. Then drought struck the nation in the early 1930s. Nothing could grown on these lands since irrigation was also largely unknown. Dry winds picked up the depleted soil and blew it across the country, creating what became known as Black Blizzards. They would often rage for days on end. Killing humans and livestock alike by clogging lungs with the dirt. People lived, ate, and slept with the dirt of the Dust Bowl, as the affected region became known. This occurred in conjunction with the financial collapse of the world economy.
It would take years of soil conservation, including things like crop rotation, fallow fields, and soil amendment to bring back the richness of the farm lands. So you little garden or urban farm may not seem to rate on the same scale, but your soil is just as vulnerable as if you were working the north forty.
Since I live in a mobile home park, much of my urban farming is done in pots, more than thirty-five of them. Growing depletes the soil, as does watering in being able to wash away the nutrients with the pot drainage. So amending my soil is crucial. I start each year by emptying all of the pots and remixing the soil. This is because some of the plants are heavy eaters, while others are fairly light eaters. There are some plants that are also known as caterers. These plants actually deposit nutrients into the soil. Most notably this comes from peas and beans. So by remixing the soil I am basically "rotating my crops" by planting different things in different "fields." At the same time I generously mix in additional organic material in the form of manure and compost. I generally buy this locally. If you can get fertilizer direct from someone with cows, horses, or sheep, the manure needs to be aged for several months before it can be added to the soil. Raw manure it too "hot" to use right away.
I also tend to buy the cheaper amendments, which often come loaded with wood chips in them that have not been completely composted. I take the time to sift the material through a colander and save the wood chips to use as mulch on top of my pots and raised beds. There are supposed to be some more expensive brands that are less prone to wood chips, but I have yet to come up with them.
Of course, keeping your own compost heap is a great way to recycle yard waste and vegetable scraps into lovely organic material that your garden will love. Many people refer to it as "black gold." However, that is a subject for another time.
You can also purchase hay or straw to use as mulch to conserve moisture.
In arid and semi-arid climates like Colorado, moisture conservation is
also crucial. The organic matter added to the soil also helps maintain moisture around the plants roots. On some of the hotter, drier days of the year, I will need to water twice.
Once the soil is completely remixed and refreshed, it is time to start planting.
Welcome to my new blog. I will be sharing my garden adventures past and present with anyone who bothers to read. It not just about the growing. It is about the trial and error, the abundant wildlife, the neighbors, the weather, and the things that go on in my head while I garden.
It happened again today. That weird thing. A woman came riding by on her bicycle while I was out gardening I thought that she had just ridden on by, but a moment later there she was, off her bicycle and standing at the edge of the patio telling my how much she loves my house and garden. She said that the whole reason she chose this route through the city was so that she could come by here often. I am always a bit startled by how effusively people compliment my garden and that they will go out of their way to tell me. I thanked her as best I could. I am never quite certain how to respond, but I try to be open, friendly, and gracious. I do love that they find as much pleasure is seeing it as I do in creating it.
Spring is unnervingly early this year. It has already been over 80 degrees, everything is growing and in bloom weeks ahead of schedule. The Chinese Trees of Heaven are leafing out more than a month ahead of normal. The main concern behind this is that we could suddenly still have a huge snowstorm that would damage the plants. An early heavy snow last October already decimated the trees around here.
My butt is freezing right now from sitting on the front patio working on the pots that I will be planting in soon. I am amending the soil with sheep manure and mushroom compost. I have already planted beets, lettuce, spinach, radishes, carrots, red cabbage and cilantro. Still so much to do. I have onion sets, garlic sets and seed potatoes for planting in the raised beds. I will also plant cauliflower in with the potatoes since they are supposed to make good companions.
I gave up and came inside when Naomi came and told me it was time to go inside for a nap. She loves the garden and spends as much time as possible there. She loves it even more when I am out there working. The only thing better than that is when one of the neighbors stops by to chat while I am working there. She will also will waylay strangers in the street just to say hi.
In my head today: Ideas for the novel I plan to write in November for the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) later this year. It feels like an awesome idea that has a lot to do with my garden. Not telling what the actual idea is, but it will be funny. And it will be unlike the novel I wrote last year, which I am still procrastinating about getting edited and rewritten. But now it is spring and Mother Nature beckons.
