Project Garden Noob - Year 6

This crossed my Facebook the other day: And it's pretty accurate.  I should say that 99% of the time, I get really tired of Coloradans bitching about our "variable" weather.  It's been this way - FOREVER.  It is absolutely nothing new.  Side Note: I was born here, I lived here from 1982 to 2005, when I moved to Los Angeles for grad school, moving back in 2010.  So I can comment on this whole situation. But this year is the first year the weather is pissing me off, but not because of the heinous commutes or the constant stream of mud my dogs like to bring into the house, but because of the garden. Just after I planted our leafy greens (spinach, kale, lettuce), we had two really rough cold snaps - single digits at night.  I figured the seeds were toast.  The onions are somehow surviving.  Potatoes were also toast. Shockingly enough, we saw the leafy green burst through this week.  And guess what? More snow, with a low of 27 degrees W...

I enjoy Facebook, just like the rest of the planet, and naturally I subscribe to a whole bunch of posts relat ed to g ardening/urban farming.  One favorite is Tiny Farmstead .  They have a super cute (read: much cuter than mine) blog about gardening in the burbs.  Today on Facebook, they posted this bad boy: Red Dragon VT 2-23 C Weed Dragon 100,000-BTU Propane Vapor Torch Kit Whos-a-jigga-what?  It took me a second, but I figured it out.  This bad boy gets attached to a propane tank and burns your weeds.  You heard me, BURNS your weeds.  So you don't have to put any of that chemical shit on your yard. Here is a meager action shot: And as if I couldn't be more excited, here is the description of all the things it can do besides burn weeds: Flaming reduces or eliminates spraying chemicals and is a lot more fun than pulling weeds. BURN heavy weeds and brush, stumps, debris and more. Perfect to burn off irrigation ditches, fields, culvert...

As I scour the blogosphere absorbing the overwhelming amount of information on gardening, I've come across many natural/household gardening tricks that I've been mulling over using in our garden this year. 1. Eggshells Apparently eggshells can be used for a lot, see this post from Care2.com - pest deterrent (slugs), starting seeds, general composting, and putting in planting holes for tomatoes and peppers to provide extra calcium. I've decided to save some shells for the tomatoes/peppers, but I've also read the eggshells do not provide any immediate calcium benefit - the shells need to break down for that.  But hey, why not get that started? 2. Epsom Salt Pinterest has been blowing up with "use Epsom salt for fertilizer."  I investigated a little more and I guess Epsom salt contains magnesium, which can help with yellowing leaves in tomato plants.  There is a very thorough, sciencey article about Epsom salt and gardening on the National Garden...

This technically is not a garden post.  It's April, it's snowing right now as I type.  We are supposed to have record lows this week.  Maybe my onions won't survive after all.  So far, they have survived! While the garden is a big part of our outdoor living experience, we have lots of other stuff going on around our 1/3 acre (well, little less, there is a house on it). One of our MAJOR projects for the year is drainage.  Woo. What is drainage? Hell if I know.  Kidding.  I do, it's just that it's so boring. When you live in a place like Colorado, where there are basements, you have to make sure you have adequate draining around your house or all sorts of disasters can happen: 1. Foundation cracks - check 2. Pooling water in yard - check 3. Water leaking into basement 4. Other horrible expensive things Let me give you a brief tour of what bad drainage looks like/leads to. Exhibit A:  When you don't have a slope of dirt at a downward ...

Chances are if you're a woman living in the 21st century, you're a Pinterest junky.  Pinterest is probably where I find most of the garden genius I decide to implement.  Strawberry pyramid came from Pinterest.  And so did this - a cucumber trellis. I showed this picture to my husband and magically, like two days later, he had made two from what he had lying around in the basement. We finally busted them out this past weekend (4/6) since it was time to plant/re-plant our lettuce, spinach, kale, and peas.  I say replant because you saw what happened to our seedlings here .  I put spinach under one trellis.  I'd like more of it since I can chop it up to freeze and use throughout the year.  Then, at the end of the trellis, at the 45 degree angle where it hits the ground, I planted a row of sugar snap peas.  The chicken wire should provide a nice, climby surface for them. Here are some various pictures of the trellises.  And our baby pea...

Today was supposed to be the day Winter Storm Walda dumped 6-12 inches of snow on us.  Schools closed down the night before.  I brought work home to work from home.  The day before major storm, I wrestled with the idea of putting some sort of cover on the ground to protect what we've planted.  My husband jury-rigged one of those big blue tarps, just in case. After talking to some work people and my grandpa, I was told to not tarp.  The snow would be all the insulation everything needed to survive.  I called my husband.  He already put the tarp down. I asked him to take it up.  He did.  All on the same day he had a root canal.  Who feels like the worse wife ever?  Me. Then guess what happens? Absolutely nothing.  Those 6-12 inches became a dusting with a lot of wind, but not much else.  So the next debate happened.  Should we tarp now?  Grandpa said yes, not gonna hurt it.  Husband said no, that the tarp ...

Saturday (3/30) was onion day (and asparagus day).  I'll admit I'm not a lover of onion.  I don't sit down and take bites out of onions (that's just crazy) or stack my burger with them.  They are a vegetable I add to my cooking because, 1) recipes always seem to call for onion, and 2) I feel like I'm eating an actual vegetable in the aforementioned recipes I make. For shits and giggles I just hopped over to Wikipedia to see what is special about an onion.  Here's what I found: "Onions contain chemical compounds with potential anti-inflammatory , anticholesterol, anticancer, and antioxidant properties, such as quercetin and glycosides like quercetin 3,4'-diglucoside or quercetin-4'-glucosid e. Shallots have the most phenols , six times the amount found in Vidalia onion , the variety with the lowest phenolic content." Thank you Wikipedia.  I also appreciate the fact that onions are supposed to store well, either in a root cellar or as I...

As discussed earlier this week, we need to get going on our asparagus. For those of you who don't know, my invisible audience, asparagus is a perennial (read: grows back every year) and it takes a minimum of two years, typically three, before you can eat the stuff.  So this is something we are laying the foundation for now, but won't be reaping any benefits for a while. It seems like a good spot to put these guys.  Out of the way, where they won't get accidentally uprooted or trampled or whatever else could possibly happen to a veggie. You buy what are called asparagus crowns apparently.  They were in the fridge at the nursery.  I'm not sure why exactly they were in the fridge, but they were.  So are the strawberries, who we will revisit later. Our bag of asparagus: Alas, I do not have many pictures of the process because I had a helper this weekend - my friend's daughter.  She is 5, pushing 6, and loves some dirt time.  So since I was bu...

Ok, I didn't cry, but I wanted to. We decided to start hardening our seedlings this weekend.  Basically this means putting them outside for periods of time to get them used to wind, climate, sun, whatever - the outside.  I put them on our deck's railing, since we were using our table to transplant the carrots and parsnip into pots. Side-note :  We do not expect the carrots and parsnip to make it.  Apparently, carrots and parsnips do not transplant well, but we started growing them before we knew that.  They are very spindly with fragile roots, so this doesn't surprise me one bit.  Live and learn.  But I still felt bad and wanted to give them a shot at life.  So they are in pots. Everyone was happy and healthy until about 5pm, when a storm tried to blow in.  And when I say blow, I mean blow.  Cuz this happened to my BEAUTIFUL lettuce, kale, and spinach seedlings - flop.  Dead. They were my strongest, healthiest looking seedli...