Accidental beauty

Is it just me, or is this just gorgeous? I've been rather unimpressed with regular potatoes that have grow eyes, but this sweet potato has so much character.

I wonder if I can cut it up and put it in the ground like a regular potato.

Garden salad

I'm not getting as much produce out of my garden as I hoped. But the cucumbers are still growing and I'm getting enough cherry tomatos for a small salad each evening.

I had a run-in with red ants yesterday. They appear to be living under the stepping stones next to my raised garden bed... I'm still trying to figure out how to get rid of them, I'd like an organic solution. Limestone, which is supposed to work like diatomaceous earth doesn't seem to have an effect.

Cucumber!

This is my first cucumber plant. Next year I'll plant at least two. I love how the little tendrils grab onto things so it can climb. And it seems to grow about an inch a day, which is just amazing to watch...

Isn't it cute?

And I haven't really had any trouble with pests. I picked a few caterpillars off one day, but that's it.

Low Maintenance Plants

The camera and cord have alternated being MIA, but we got a new computer connection and the camera has been available enough for me to finally post something...

I'm all about low maintenance... so I've been very happy with the Dusty Miller and Mexican Lavender in the front yard. I was expecting the lavender to smell good, but was sorry it learn it doesn't. This year I got some English Lavender to fill that role.
The dusty miller is so happy that I had to pull about 15 little Millers out of the lawn this year.
And our 'lavender' rosebush:

and the rather pretty rose from the rootstock.

I'm not a huge rosebush fan, but I love that they keep coming back despite our less than stellar care for them.

Kitchen Garden: Growing Avocado Seeds

Many years ago, when I was a college student dreaming of my future garden, I found a book that described growing food from seeds and leftovers from purchased food. The idea stuck with me and I have successfully grown potatoes and garlic from sprouted food in my kitchen.
Now I'm trying out avocados. We eat about one avocado per day when they are in season, so growing our own would definitely be a bonus. I never liked the idea of impaling an avocado seed with toothpicks and after some googling I learned that A) avocadoes can grow in my area, B) you can grow avocados by putting the seeds directly in dirt, and C) you can grow avocados in water without impaling them.
My first attempt was a seed in a Medela freezeable breastmilk container (imagine a tall plastic beaker). Oops, the seed expanded and got stuck halfway in the beaker, no way to add water, no way to remove the seed without harming it.
Then I spotted all these wonderful small shotglasses and medicine cups sitting around the kitchen. The ideal situation appears to be a cup with V shaped depression, so the seed sits halfway down the glass, supported by the sides. Keep water approximately halfway up the seed. Add water, when air appears below the seed. Some sources say to plant in dirt when leaves sprout. But to avoid seriously messing up the roots, I'll try to plant before the roots look as scrunched as the far right has.


Unfortunately, I don't know which varieties I have growing... but it will be fun to see how many little trees I can start. We've found at least four varieties at our local farmer's market, including a tiny version (they are called "Mexican" something) with edible skins. Somehow I managed not to save a seed from those. I will definitely do that this year. Those tiny ones are so darn yummy. The far left and far right seeds look the same to me, but they are sprouting in reverse of each other. The left one barely has any roots at all, while the right clearly had more roots before sprouting up.
Unfortunately, avocados don't bear fruit until their 4th or even 10th year, so we may have left this home by that time, but I can hope to see fruit before we go.
Have you had success growing food from your kitchen?

In the Garden

Technically this is the backyard... but "In the Garden" just sounds so much prettier.
Anyway, some good news and some bad...
Good:
My irises have come up. I love the color lavender, and since lavender/purple is a darn difficult color to find in plants and flowers, I have expanded my love to blue. Note the lovely blue rosemary in the background. Ignore the date on the photo (the camera doesn't seem to know what "no date/time" means, ugh).
I love perennials that have the audacity to naturalize and thrive in my 'garden'.

Bad:
The mole/vole/gopher/stinking varmint fight continues. I suppose if we had a smaller yard, this wouldn't be a problem. But when you have 1/3 of an acre, the dratted animal can just move to another part of the yard. These seven piles showed up two days after we thoroughly watered the holes about 15 feet from this spot...

Vermits!

Between rain showers this weekend, I got some gardening in. Oh happy day! I planted a combination dwarf asian pear tree, a nectarine tree and an orange tree. They join a combo apple tree planted a few weeks ago. I'm finally fulfilling my dreams for a fruit orchard... I've been making lists of what I want to grow since high school. There's more to go, but we're on our way!

We know we have some sort of critter in the back because these piles of dirt magically appear in the yard. I just smoosh them down and continue trudging through the yard. But while digging a hole for one of my trees I found this:

Out of fear for my trees and plants in my new plantar I purchased and have been spreading around this stuff to scare a variety of critters away. We'll see how effective it is. So poor little (cute I'm sure) critter found his/her tunnel closed off, which a handful of the go-away powder to make our sentiments clear.

Was it a bad idea to plant the tree right there anyway? We'll see. I'm not that fond of nectarines anyway.

Something Green

I don't have much time for the yard, but snuck in some time on Saturday. And discovered this cute little green sprout poking out of the mulch in my new planter box. Someone suggested it is celery. I'm pretty sure I didn't plant celery, but I did put in one rhubarb. So maybe it is rhubarb.
I bought a rhbarb rhizome (I think that's what it was) on a whim - don't you love how that happens? You go into Home Supply Depot and leave with all these fabulous things you don't know how to use/grow/eat. Well if it is rhubarb and it survives all the way up to ripeness (oops, something else to figure out), then we'll tackle what to do with it.

Lavender, Sage, Calendula, and Figs?...

flickr.com/photos/7326810@N08/, CC BY 2.0

We caught an ad for a Peace and Harvest Festival at a relatively local organic and natives nursery... So guess where we were on Sunday.
I have a weakness for herbs, so we came home with a six pack of calendula, 3 varieties of sage and two forms of lavender. Also found a fig that would fit in the car and a cute strawberry tree that has the most gorgeous little flowers.
So not only do we need to get the raised bed filled with dirt, I have to find places to plant all my lovely herbs and baby trees.

Raised Veggie Bed Part II

One raised bed is made. It look a few extra trips to Home Depot for silly things like extra screws and clamps. But it looks very nice... and huge. That thing is going to require a lot of soil.
We ended up with redwood, cedar was only available as fencing.
We'll put this one in the ground and make raised bed number two when we feel confident about number one.
Also decided to mostly use purchased soil with this one... so I can plant earlier and we can wait to buy straw after Halloween, when bales will probably be free/cheap. I still plan to use cardboard and grass clippings that we got from a freecycler, on the bottom. And I'll sneak in compostable kitchen items.
I'm crossing my fingers very tightly that the dog doesn't decide to dig in my new bed. She has a fondness for burying her rawhides in flowerpots. The raised bed will probably look like a lovely giant sized flowerpot.

Raised Veggie Bed

I skimmed Lasagna Gardening years ago, before having a yard. So I had the concept and a feeling that determining and finding the ingredients would be tough. But I always wanted to grow my own veggies and fruit trees. The frugal bug was also always there, but organic didn't occur to me until later in life (ugh, that makes me sound old, I'm pretty sure I'm not). I recently borrowed my LLL leader's copy of Lasagna Gardening to brush up on the details, but I never got around to reading it. I finally returned it after 3 months. Happily, there's an abundance of information on the web. Googling "raised garden beds", "no dig gardens" and "lasagna gardening" got me all the information I need.

We're finally getting ready to build a raised veggie bed.
Following Sunset magazine's directions. With a few adaptions from this blog.

We're aiming for organic, so cedar wood (ouch!) and probably lasagna style greens and browns for the soil.

So far, we're getting free cardboard and grass clippings from a friendly freecycler. The rest will come from Lowes, Home Depot or OSH. Now for the price comparisons to begin...