3 Crackers-Worth

The Great Harvest of 2012 yielded a grand total of ONE perfect cherry tomato:

Yep, just one. On the entire cherry tomato plant that I was convinced would sprout a bumper crop of precious red orbs. You can see in the corner of this picture that there is, in fact, a brand new little green tomato baby on the scene. She came out of nowhere, around the same time that I realized that Little Red was totally ripe. So perhaps I'll get two tomatoes this summer. But there are no other buds to be found.

I felt a lot of pressure to do something totally awesome with the globe-y little miracle. I had grown this tomato FROM A SEED! My very first gardening success. It got off to such a rocky start. I was sure it was doomed. But I was also determined. I faithfully watered it with water rescued from the shower drain and  inspected its leafy nursery every day for bugs; giving quiet thanks for the delicate spider webs that seemed to be doing a great job of that for me. This tomato grew out of a labor of love, and chugged along even though all of my other garden hopes and dreams fried in the ridiculous heat. This tomato was the lone survivor.

So I thought about what to do with it, and concluded that the only reasonable thing to do would be to transform it into a tomato's highest calling: fresh salsa.

Left over organic cilantro from a recipe last week, the tiniest garlic clove you've ever seen, and a tidy pile of onion bits, left over from the nubbin of onion we didn't use in last night's dinner.

Add some Lime Juice and a dash of salt, and you have the smallest portion of salsa I have ever eaten!

Exactly three perfect crackers-worth.

Tiny Orchards

I'm still hopeful that my lemon tree will have some buds soon. Les assures me that he saw bees up in her lemon blossoms several times, so, fingers crossed, I hope I will soon be updating you with some lemon buds. But I haven't seen any yet.

As I reported a couple of weeks ago, my gardening successes have been a bit underwhelming so far. One green bean (now shriveled from the heat), one cherry tomato (still green) and a handful or so of surviving herbs. The green pepper plants are still chugging along, but so far no sign of fruiting.

So, I was getting a bit antsy about a "harvest". I decided that if I saw an established plant at that farmer's market that looked promising for a payoff, I would buy it.

And so, I lugged this beauty home last weekend:

A Fig Tree! Whoo-hoo! For $12!

With starter-figs on it! Just a few weeks to go, said the farmer, and these little nubbins would be ready to eat. And if you're asking yourself "Does she really eat enough figs to justify a whole tree?" the answer would be Yes. I love dried figs and I'm learning to love fresh figs. And they are not cheap. So, I thought that if I can 10 or 12 fresh figs from the tree this year, that would be a good start. Plus, it's just a pretty tree. Kind of swooping and sturdy and almost bonsai-ish.

But I am, in fact, trying to grow these guys in North Carolina. It is supposed to be 105 degrees today. And it almost hit 100 yesterday. I've been watering my new little tree every day, but it still looks a bit scorched and sizzled when I get home. Those plush figs in the photos are looking a little worse for wear in this nasty hot spell.

Oh well. They're trees, right? So if I can keep them alive we can try again next year. They are still young. They will live to see another figging. In the mean time, I can do more research about container orcharding.

You Win Some, You Lose Some. Or Why You Should Never Ask Me for Gardening Advice.

I decided it was about time to check in on my little garden for an update. It ain't so pretty.

For reference, here's the shot I took last month when I had just happily plunked my little plants into the vertical garden:

So cute, so green, so promising!

Well, friends, some combo of too much/too little water, too much/too little sun has turned my plump little basils into these straggly yellow miscreants.

They're still kickin', but I'm less hopeful that they will live to see themselves star in my "Totally Made From Scratch Tomato Basil Mozzarella salad" (yes, my plan is to make my own mozzarella from scratch to see that dream come true).

But speaking of tomatoes, I was delighted to come home from a long weekend away to see this little baby hanging out all round and chubby-cheeked when I returned!

Is it normal for your tomato plant to have only ONE tomato on it after several months? Don't get me wrong - I grew this little baby FROM A SEED, and I will eat it like it is the Most Amazing Tomato That Has Ever Been Grown. Because after it's inauspicious start, it will definitely be that incredible to me. 

Anyway, tomato baby is looking good. The green beans, on the other hand, have had their leaves chewed off and are sporting only ONE faintly green-bean-looking appendage:

It looks like I'm going to be making a pretty pathetic garden melange. Contents: One green bean, some droopy basil, and a cherry tomato. 

Even my mint, which I hear is supposed to grow like a weed, is suffering under my unskilled gardening thumb:

 Great. I kill weed-herbs too. I rock.

Besides my hopeful tomato, the only other plant that seems to have inexplicably thrived with me at the helm so far is.... drum roll.....

The Lemon Tree! Hooray! It's bursting with lovely pink blossoms just waiting to open up and get all good and pollinated by some of our frisky neighborhood bees. It's like prom season over here. My little girl is getting dressed up in her flirty frocks to bat her eye lashes and get smooched by some eager pollinators. That visual quickly turns my lemon tree into a trollop when I try to make the leap to her producing some sweet lemons, so I'll just end it right there.

So, this little porch garden is full of hope, pathetic vegetables, pink blossoms, and some too dry/too wet herbs. And it is still my favorite place in North Caroline so far.

Suggestions welcome for my brown-thumbed failures.

Up with Veggies!

Several Mondays ago, I whipped out my hammer and hodge-podge of random upholstery tacks and nails and went to town on a pile of natural burlap and a plywood scrap (from our friendly neighborhood Habitat for Humanity ReStore for $3) to make my Vertical Garden dreams come true:

My wonky little scrap of plywood.

Supplies: nails, hammer, burlap.

Technique: eyeball your burlap strips (double thick) into thirds and tack up some pockets.

Editor In Chief supervised my lazy math and reminded me that a  ruler or tape measure would have been handy.

I tacked up my vertical garden slab, but none of my plants were robust enough to plunk them into the burlap. Remember my little basil and tomato sprouts?

They were sweet little munchkin nubs when I built the Vertical Garden.

I waited impatiently for weeks (over a month!) for them to get bigger. And today I decided they were finally ready. But I had 6 pockets in my vertical garden, and only one tomato and 2 little basils had actually survived my ignorance and instruction-non-reading, so Les and I went to the Farmers Market to get them some friends. 

This afternoon, I gave Tomato his own room and transplanted his basil brothers to one of The Pockets.

My how you've grown!

Yay! You were just seeds a couple of months ago! And now you look like food!

Here's my Vertical Garden with all of her pockets stuffed with herbs and stuff!

1. Upper Left: The only 2 green bean sprouts to survive the Heat/Rain/Rain/Heat/Bugs of the last couple of weeks.
2. Upper Right: 3 different types of thyme
3. Center Left: The Basils!
4. Center Right: Rosemary and I think Lavender (crazily, I can't remember, and it smelled more like Rosemary to me than Lavender when I planted it)
5. Lower Left: Mint
6. Lower Right: Feverfew - pretty little flowers, and good for drying and mixing into tea for headaches, which we sadly get a lot at our house.

I'm hoping that by making this garden tall rather than low, it will get a lot of sun. I moved the whole operation to fit under the roof overhang, because I noticed that my tomato and basil leaves were turning a bit yellow from a little toooo much water. I want to be able to have a bit more control of their moisture.

Now, I'm sure there is a proper way to plant these bad boys. I know several of them spread like mad and may need to be moved into bigger containers. But I wanted to try this, since the whole thing cost a whopping $8 ($3 for the wood, $5 for on-sale burlap). It's an experiment, like most of these endeavors.

Oh! I also bought a 6-flat of green peppers at the Farmers Market, and planted them in halves of the Trader Joe's coffee cans I've been hoarding (with holes poked into the bottoms/lids for drainage.) I knew they would come in handy for something.

The other little starter pots are the beans that I haven't quite been able to give up on yet. They have slim signs of life.

I did have to give up on the peony bulbs I planted. Sad. They just never came up. So I assuaged my grief with these lovely little dahlias, grown by a more capable farmer, and transplanted into the pot I bought for the peonies.

In addition to my joy at finally filling the Vertical Garden, adopting some flowers, and using the coffee cans, I ALSO skipped to the car with this little beauty tucked under my arm:

My long-dreamed-about Meyer Lemon tree. Yep. I'm going to grow lemons on the porch. The grower assures me that they will fruit even at this sprouty age. She can grow up to 5 feet tall, and needs to stay indoors in the winter, but during the spring, summer, and fall, she should make us some lovely sweet lemons. Oh, be still my heart. If that actually works I am going to freak out with joy. Living in the Midwest for so long I forget that people actually grow fruit in their yards in our very own country.

Last but not least, I also gave my own dahlia bulbs a late-starting shot by planting this little guy who had courageously sprouted inside the bag that I was planning to wrap up and put into storage until the fall.

Come on up and join the Porch Party!

I'm super excited about these new plant friends! Keep your fingers and green thumbs crossed that they actually do their thing and I don't kill them off before they bloom/fruit/veg.

Porch gardening, and justifying my peony pots

Go look at some greeny-green gardening sites and books, and most of them will urge you to focus your energy, space, and resources on EDIBLES ONLY. Flowers take up space, sunlight, water, and lots of mental and physical energy. Practically speaking, they are - gasp! - wasteful.

But since I can't imagine a garden without flowers, there was no was I could stomach that indictment. I just had to find a way around my practical brain. No problem. I am an Epic Rationalizer.

The biggest hurtle I came up with was the water. We get plenty of sunlight, the pots don't take up that much space, and if the bulb kit I bought can be trusted, they shouldn't require a lot of other special TLC. So, where can I get some extra (otherwise wasted) water?

I looked into rain barrels, and though tempting, they are kind of expensive and would require me to alter the eaves and gutters on our rental. Our landlord is already a bit twitchy about our little menacing dog, so asking if I could take a hack saw to the gutter pipe seemed like pushing my luck. I took a trip to the hardware store to survey my options, and came up with this:

When I was a kid, I remember that my grandma kept a bucket in the bathroom next to her tub. And I asked her why. She told me that she uses the bucket to catch all the water that goes down the drain while you wait for the water to get warm, and then any more water that drips out of the faucet while you are in the shower. She used the water to water her plants. And wouldn't you know it, I fill up the ENTIRE 3.5 gallon bucket every time I shower. Geez oh Pete, that is a lot of totally wasted water!

But my plants don't need 3.5 gallons of water every day. So I got this too:

A big plastic garbage tub with a snap-on lid. I filled this baby up with just a little over a week's worth of showers. Now when I go out to dump my shower bucket, I check on my plants, and give them a little drink if they are looking dry.

And today I started a bunch more of my organic veggie seeds. Cherry tomatoes and green beans. In little starter cups and an egg carton:

 Check it out! My itty bitty basil sprout is now joined by a whisp of tomato sprout! All the shower water and sunlight are actually working. I have to say, I'm amazed.

I think Aug thinks that if he lays in the sun, he might keep growing too.

Anyway, now that I have more than enough water for my plants, I have no problem planting my dahlia bulbs as well. As soon as I get some more big containers. The peonies haven't shown any signs of life yet, but I'm hopeful.

Woot!!

Look!!!

A basil sprout!! My first sprout! My very first vegetable-related sprout. And I didn't even use a Simple Garden Dome! I put my Simple Garden pot out on the back deck, and have been faithfully checking it every day. And today, lo and behold! A tiny bit of green in each of the quadrants where I had planted my basil seeds. Yesterday, nothing. Today, micro-bits of sprout. Of course, it has also been 80+ degrees here during the day for the last couple of days so I'm sure that helped. And my peony pots are still just bowls of dirt, and my strawberry seeds appear to have been dug up by some local critter. But in ONE of my 4 pots, some hope.

I try some "simple gardening", screw up, and make a mess

I started out the day with such high hopes.

Having Sunday and Monday off instead of the traditional Saturday/Sunday weekend has actually turned out to be great. I get a ton done in the office on Saturdays when I am one of the only people in the building, and on Mondays, I can Accomplish 10,000 Things! At least, that's what I think every Sunday when I start planning for my day off.

I decided that today I would start my garden. I was so excited I could barely sleep. I got up, finalized my shopping list, and headed out to the local Ace Hardware. Sometimes those huge home improvement stores just wig me out and I feel lost, and a bit like a fraud since I am not buying any j-channel or PVC pipe or windows. The Ace stores in Chicago always felt a bit more like a local home-and-garden store, so decided to give the nearby Raleigh outpost a go. And I immediately knew I was in trouble. Not only were the clerk ladies knowledgeable, friendly, and encouraging, but they both are on Pinterest, and we started swapping pin-spired ideas all over the place.

And so I ended up spending a lot more than I had planned. As usual.

I bought a couple of packets of organic seeds, a couple of mid-sized containers, some various gardening implements, and 2 bags of soil. One organic bag for edibles, and one regular bag for the peony and dahlia bulbs. (Ok, I know I really don't have any business spending resources like water and cash on peonies and dahlias. But I just.couldn't.help.myself. So we'll see how that goes. I have a plan.)

Anyway. I also bought this thing called "The Simple Garden". I thought that this would be a good way for me to gain some confidence, learn a bunch from the included guidebook, and start some seeds indoors. The external packaging made it look foolproof. I should have known better.

Cute, compact, fairly eco.

I should have realized that planting seeds from a guidebook is more like baking a cake than like microwaving a TV dinner, but in my enthusiasm to get started I failed to read through the entire instruction manual before beginning. I just started with Step 1 and careened carelessly to Step 2 and 3 without so much as a glance forward. Which is how I ended up flooding the kitchen table with about a gallon of warm water and ruining my first try at loosening the potting medium.

Potting medium in the bottom of the growing pot.

It's hard to tell from this picture, but I had stupidly placed the whole container on the table so I could work it from a comfy height. You also cannot tell from this pic that the little plastic tray that is supposed to catch any overflow of water is actually a separate piece of plastic that just snaps on to the bottom. So when I started pouring the warm water over the medium to "watch it expand to 10X its original size!" it didn't dawn on me that I was essentially pouring a gallon of water onto my kitchen table. Because it didn't absorb right away. It filled up around it, and into the overflow pan, and gloriously and shockingly all over the table in a flash. I'm really happy I had rested my DSLR on a box rather than directly on the table top.

I decided it would be wise to move the operation to the sink. And there with the help of the sink sprayer, I was able to really watch the soil become a potfull.

Neat.

 The next step was to plant the seeds. The kit came with cherry tomatoes and basil seeds, and this nifty spacing guide and seed-sticker-inner. Since I didn't read any farther than the next step, I gleefully put the seeds in their color coded spaces and tamped them down with the seed pusher.

Fun!

The next step revealed that you are really only supposed to plant one kind of plant in the container at a time, not all of them all together. Blast. I had thought that that was part of the point of a fun space saving container kit - plant complementary plants next to each other to maximize space and resources. WRONG! Nope. Straight up wrong. But the tiny seeds were already nestled into the dirt, and I didn't know how I could possibly retrieve them, so I just went on to the next step. I figured I could gently transplant some of them when they started to come up.

IF they come up. Because the last step of the instructions is to "cover your Simple Garden with the clear plastic Simple Garden Dome (not included) to start the germination of your newly planted seeds"*. Yeah. Hum. Didn't get a dome. Didn't do any kind of seed starting. I kinda thought that was the point of the kit.

Ugh.

Well, I put the pot in the sunniest indoor window we have, wished them luck, and decided to call it a day.

At least it is kind of cute.

I learned several valuable lessons today.

1. If you do not know anything about gardening, it is best to read all the instructions before plunking your seeds in the dirt.
2. There is a reason why a bajillion pinners have pinned a bajillion DIY seed-starter instructions. Apparently, seeds work better when you start them off with some training dirt/some kind of cover before tucking them in to their home dirt. 
3. Gardening is not that simple, not matter what the elegantly packaged starter kit tries to tell you.

And so I end my day off with a little bit of far fetched hope and a cute little plastic bowl full of seeds. I think I would have been better off starting out with seedlings, but what's the fun in that?

* The quotes from the guidebook are not actually quotes. They are more like paraphrases because I am too lazy to get up and get the guidebook. But you get the idea.