busy. busy. bolting, beds
Things have been pretty hectic. Last week had a lot of stuff for school going on, oh books why must you be so expensive. Then we were down the shore for the weekend with my family. Most of them are not back yet, so it is more peaceful in the house than normal. I've been doing a lot of gardening, the week of pretty intense (for the very start of spring) about a month ago seems to have caused a lot of our stuff to bolt. Almost all of the brassica plants, all of the lettuce that wasn't hiding underneath squash or bigger lettuce, and it seems like the majority of our daikon decided to bolt. I got all of the lettuce and greens pulled out yesterday, all of the brassica too. Now I have to replace the brassica and get around to pulling out the daikon.
We didn't really try too hard to get a harvest with our beans since we were planting them in a terrible bed and hoping they'd make it nicer. They still did pretty well but weren't really staked or anything so we have a pretty awesome looking mess. Next year will be better, but we have still gotten enough beans to go nicely with a meal or two and for a lot of snacking. I think I might just sow daikon back in where it bolted in the hopes that we can keep it from doing that again with careful attention to the soil temperature. The messy bed has sprouted several enormous mystery squash and a ton of mystery tomatoes. We hope they flower at least a bit since surprises are awesome.
Our hot peppers were doing awfully until the rain stopped, they've grown about a foot in the two weeks since it stopped. This is mostly exciting because in the prior two months they did pretty much nothing. I mostly gave up on the garlic, having mulched it pretty late I think i damaged a lot of the leaves and either the rain led to a lot of them rotting or the leaves just died early for other reasons. All around a bad garlic effort, but we did get about 20 smallish bulbs which should be a bit more cloves than the number I put in the ground. They are in the dining room curing now, and hopefully the cats won't keep knocking them over.
Our sage and oregano plants are going nuts and won't stop growing into one another and squeezing the chamomile's sunlight. Between them and the squash I'm not sure how much longer the chamomile will last. We have gotten a pretty good amount harvested of it and dried though. The dill has all died except for the dill we didn't plant but came around in strange places anyway. The trumpet vine is still not dead. I can pull it up one day and the root that is too deep to get at without digging up the garden shoots two more feet up by the next morning. Maybe if we are diligent it will mostly die by fall and when we put in the awesome herb garden we are planning we can dig up the roots.
Our mint is doing really well down by the pond, and pretty okay in the dappled light of the woods near the property line. Our shiso is getting big but we really have no idea how to make it grow properly to make a lot of leaves so who knows what we will get. None of our parsley is doing particularly well aside from the plants we threw into the messbed and is crazy crowded by daikon squash and beans. It too has become enormous. This bed also has the worst drainage, least sunlight, and lowest concentration of dirt that isn't just red clay. Apparently this makes for happy plants. Our buckwheat has mostly finished flowering and is starting to make its seeds. We are going to try to harvest it and save the seeds for next year and/or cover crop with it.
We planted more summer squash where the garlic was, since it is sunny we ought to be able to get some out of it before the frosts hit. Our tomatoes are doing well in pots on the deck, and would be doing much better if Rocky would stop jumping in the pots to look for his tennis ball when no one is throwing it for him. Labs are such awful beasts, at least cats are destructive on purpose and not just because they are so completely oblivious. We love him in a certain way though, except for when he goes crazy and jumps on people. That is not so awesome, neither is the barking. Never known a lab that thought it was a guard dog before.
I will stop talking about plants now.
Last week Sharon and I finally ordered some nice bikes. They should be in, put together, and basketed tomorrow so we will go pick them up along with a photograph we had framed. Who knew getting things framed was so expensive, but at least we won't have to frame it again - hopefully. It is a very nice picture and if you ever come visit us we will show you. It was taken by a Canadian boy we knew in Japan, and he is a very good photographer. A professional now I think, photographing digs and things for archeologists and other way awesome things. If you go to the Japan section of his portfolio I think it is photo 17, the one with the old woman walking through rice fields in a sunset. http://www.ommphoto.ca/evrium/index.php
We had purchased some seemingly decent bikes from target for a bit more than $100, but turns out while that gets you a fine bike in Japan it gets you a bike put together wrong that falls apart in ways you've never seen a bike fall apart before in the U.S. We returned them and got the money back at the urging of a friend, which was nice because it made the pain of paying almost $800 for the new ones only 75% of what it would have been. We got them from a right proper bike shop though, where the people will put the bike together properly and we can bike there when we have issues.
Now I ought to sleep, Goodnight!
We didn't really try too hard to get a harvest with our beans since we were planting them in a terrible bed and hoping they'd make it nicer. They still did pretty well but weren't really staked or anything so we have a pretty awesome looking mess. Next year will be better, but we have still gotten enough beans to go nicely with a meal or two and for a lot of snacking. I think I might just sow daikon back in where it bolted in the hopes that we can keep it from doing that again with careful attention to the soil temperature. The messy bed has sprouted several enormous mystery squash and a ton of mystery tomatoes. We hope they flower at least a bit since surprises are awesome.
Our hot peppers were doing awfully until the rain stopped, they've grown about a foot in the two weeks since it stopped. This is mostly exciting because in the prior two months they did pretty much nothing. I mostly gave up on the garlic, having mulched it pretty late I think i damaged a lot of the leaves and either the rain led to a lot of them rotting or the leaves just died early for other reasons. All around a bad garlic effort, but we did get about 20 smallish bulbs which should be a bit more cloves than the number I put in the ground. They are in the dining room curing now, and hopefully the cats won't keep knocking them over.
Our sage and oregano plants are going nuts and won't stop growing into one another and squeezing the chamomile's sunlight. Between them and the squash I'm not sure how much longer the chamomile will last. We have gotten a pretty good amount harvested of it and dried though. The dill has all died except for the dill we didn't plant but came around in strange places anyway. The trumpet vine is still not dead. I can pull it up one day and the root that is too deep to get at without digging up the garden shoots two more feet up by the next morning. Maybe if we are diligent it will mostly die by fall and when we put in the awesome herb garden we are planning we can dig up the roots.
Our mint is doing really well down by the pond, and pretty okay in the dappled light of the woods near the property line. Our shiso is getting big but we really have no idea how to make it grow properly to make a lot of leaves so who knows what we will get. None of our parsley is doing particularly well aside from the plants we threw into the messbed and is crazy crowded by daikon squash and beans. It too has become enormous. This bed also has the worst drainage, least sunlight, and lowest concentration of dirt that isn't just red clay. Apparently this makes for happy plants. Our buckwheat has mostly finished flowering and is starting to make its seeds. We are going to try to harvest it and save the seeds for next year and/or cover crop with it.
We planted more summer squash where the garlic was, since it is sunny we ought to be able to get some out of it before the frosts hit. Our tomatoes are doing well in pots on the deck, and would be doing much better if Rocky would stop jumping in the pots to look for his tennis ball when no one is throwing it for him. Labs are such awful beasts, at least cats are destructive on purpose and not just because they are so completely oblivious. We love him in a certain way though, except for when he goes crazy and jumps on people. That is not so awesome, neither is the barking. Never known a lab that thought it was a guard dog before.
I will stop talking about plants now.
Last week Sharon and I finally ordered some nice bikes. They should be in, put together, and basketed tomorrow so we will go pick them up along with a photograph we had framed. Who knew getting things framed was so expensive, but at least we won't have to frame it again - hopefully. It is a very nice picture and if you ever come visit us we will show you. It was taken by a Canadian boy we knew in Japan, and he is a very good photographer. A professional now I think, photographing digs and things for archeologists and other way awesome things. If you go to the Japan section of his portfolio I think it is photo 17, the one with the old woman walking through rice fields in a sunset. http://www.ommphoto.ca/evrium/index.php
We had purchased some seemingly decent bikes from target for a bit more than $100, but turns out while that gets you a fine bike in Japan it gets you a bike put together wrong that falls apart in ways you've never seen a bike fall apart before in the U.S. We returned them and got the money back at the urging of a friend, which was nice because it made the pain of paying almost $800 for the new ones only 75% of what it would have been. We got them from a right proper bike shop though, where the people will put the bike together properly and we can bike there when we have issues.
Now I ought to sleep, Goodnight!