Here comes SUMMER

Well Spring was about a month of tornadoes, hail, and floods. The garden was a trooper, nothing perished but most are stunted. Summer arrived the next day and brought with it 90 + temps....bring it! :)

The lower beds of the garden were flooded pretty bad several times with the 20"+ of rain and as a result most plants in them have stunted. I'm sure with the coming dry spell, they will snap out of it. If not, heck we are close to the Fall gardening dates :(

The rest of the garden beds are thriving and quickly filling in! We are really pleased with the progress and have even needed to put up the cucumber trellises. Speaking of cucumbers, I picked my first one tonight! "Beau" has beautiful dark green skin- I just hope it tastes as good as it looks! What do you think?

"Beau" Cucumber

As promised I will now be posting finished pictures of this years garden....drum role please.

Beds #1(left-floods easily) & #2

Beds #3 (left), #4 (right), #5 (back- floods easily)

Bed #3 (Beau growing on the trellis!)

One of the helpers

A container garden

So what do you think? These pictures were taken shortly after everything was planted so the flowers etc. have not grown in just yet :)

Is it Spring yet?!?

I think we can finally put the last freeze behind us and it's mid May, YIKES! I lost almost everything I had planted back in March (tomatoes and herbs), so I gave up the entire month of April. The alyssum and petunias, amongst a few other things, somehow made it through all of the hard freezes, yippe not a total loss! One thing that loved the roller coaster weather was the lettuce! I was able to make our first salad with 3 different types of lettuce, kale, and arugula. The onions on the other hand didn't fare well and a few of them decided to bolt. Once onions bolt, you need to pull them pretty quick or the bulb will split and rot. I was nervous about mine since I didn't think they had begun to bulb and planned to use them as green onions. I was wrong and my onions are farther along then I thought!

 I just finished working my fingers to the bone putting all of the tomatoes, peppers, and tender herbs in the ground, in hopes that I'm not too late or that we might, dare I say it, have a cooler than normal summer? I really need to have a true Spring for some of the tomatoes I'm trialing! Most of the larger tomato varieties completely shut down in our heat, and I'll be upset if I have spent the better of 5 1/2 months baby sitting them to not get a single tomato. UGH, THE HORROR!


On a different note, I'm sure you would like to actually see a picture of my entire garden......well I'm going to wait to show you until I can get the last few plants in! I want to show it as a before and after type thing, you know, like a big reveal! Give me a few weeks and it will be photo worthy :) Until then, here are a few to tide you over.

Chamomile

Petunia

Alyssum

Lettuce

Million Bells/Snap Dragon

Catching a Fever

The planting fever! :) Our weather has been so sporadic lately, snowing one day then the next it's 75 then back to snow. It has really kept me indoors the past month for fear that anything I did would just be ruined. Until last week! It is close to my average last frost date, March 31, so I decided to put some hardy plants in the ground with the ability to cover them if the need arose. I even planted an Early Girl Tomato transplant because I couldn't help myself :) I also started implementing some of my design themes like the Alyssum and the dark purple Petunias (thanks TLC for having them on sale!) for the ombre look, but am having issues finding the trailing lavender Lantana. Do you have any suggestions for a light purple flower that won't get very tall and will fill in as a border? For once in my life, I cannot pinpoint the exact plant i want to use.

This week i plan to begin hardening off all of my home grown transplants 1. because it's about that time and 2. I'm out of room under my grow lights and really need to start more warm season crops. Today I sowed Burgundy Okra, Clemson Spineless Okra, Soybean, and a whole lot of herbs. When room is available i need to start cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, gourds, and sunflowers.

The Irony of Oklahoma Weather

Just when I thought Spring was coming, this happened...twice.

I'm sure Mother Nature is laughing at me for thinking that the forecasters could accurately predict her weather. 

Any who, everything that was already planted survived (thank goodness!) and the garlic is sprouting today! Today, DH and I spent the day outside since we had another Spring like day. We tilled the final bed and I planted my Dixondale Onions that arrived on Valentine's Day. Here are the varieties I planted:

1015Y Texas Super Sweet (short day)

Red Creole (short day)

Texas Early White (short day)

Candy (intermediate day)

Red Candy Apple (intermediate day)

Super Star (intermediate day)

Red Marble Cippolini (intermediate day)

pictures courtesy of Dixondale Farms

I also planted Red Clover Radish, Amarillo Carrot, Sugar Snap Pea, and Brussel Sprouts. Tomorrow's high is suppose to be back down in the 40s (today we reached 75) so keep your fingers crossed that Mother Nature goes easy on us :)

Beautiful Day

What fabulous weather we are having for February! It has been plain perfect outside, and I hope it is as nice where you are! Taking advantage of the Spring like weather, I have been outside in the garden. DH and I did some house keeping, tilling, and I'm sure you could have guessed, some planting!

Elephant Garlic

On a trip to the OSU-OKC farmer's market yesterday, my favorite organic nursery Sunrise Acres had some cool season transplants available so I purchased Arugula, Siberian Kale, Red Russian Kale, White Russian Kale and Dwarf Vates Kale. Then, because I have no self control, I stopped by TLC and purchased some organic Elephant Garlic, Purple Italian Garlic, Yukon Gold Potatoes, Russet Potatoes and Adirondack Blue Potatoes. We planted everything yesterday and moved the Swiss Chard to a sunnier location in hopes that it would be happier. (over wintered from the fall garden) Also in preparation of an early spring, I have started hardening off my Amarillo Carrots, Cosmic Purple Carrots, and Bloomsdale Spinach seedlings. I hope to be able to plant them in the next week or so along with Sugar Snap Pea seeds.

Adirondack Blue Potato

I planned out how I wanted to plant these in accordance with my "theme" so the garlic was planted along the border of the bed (alyssum will grow directly above the garlic), then the potatoes where also planted in rows so A. I can keep the varieties organized and B. When I plant things above the potatoes, I know where to dig so I do not unearth them :). I'm not impressed with the creativity, but sometimes it makes more sense to be logical than creative.

Amarillo Carrot

Cosmic Purple Carrot

SEED UPDATE:
I have started to separate seeds that germinated in the same 4" pot, as I can only have 1 plant per pot. I didn't catch a few of the earliest tomatoes, so we will see if one seedling dominates in order for me to cull the others or if they will just fuse together. So I have had 100% germination with every herb, flower, and veggie except peppers! UGH! Peppers are very temperamental and it might be better off for me to just buy transplants this year and from every year forward.  I will keep trying for the next few weeks until it is too late! Tomatoes were exceptionally easy to sprout- most did before I purchased a heat pad. All others sprouted with the heat pad and siran wrap making a greenhouse effect. The garden is looking to have a very productive year!

Enhancing a Theme

Last year's garden was a mad scrambled plot of plants that I threw out there to see if I could actually garden and harvest. I admit, it didn't exactly turn out to be the "potager of my dreams".

This year, I will be trying to enhance the potager theme and make it recognizable! I will be incorporating flower borders, herbs and companion planting.

First off, flower borders. Adding flowers will help strengthen the geometric aesthetics that I personally love about potagers. They always look so neat and organized, more like a beautiful landscape than vegetable garden. Also by adding flowers i will inadvertently be improving my yields! Flowers bring pollinators and pollinators aren't picky about which flowers they visit so..... anyone? They will also pollinator my vegetables!! Yay pretty flowers and more veggies!! It's a win win!! I plan on using sweet alyssum, Lobularia maritima, in a mixture of white and purple on two beds directly across from each other, then a purple trailing lantana, Lantana sellowiana, on the next two beds, and finally a dark purple petunia, like Petunia hybrid 'Condoblue' on the last bed. Catch a theme here? I'm going for the stylish ombre look fading white to light purple to dark purple as you walk through the garden! What do you think of the color scheme?

Next, the always important herbs, the real spice in life! I had a few herbs last year but they were neglected with everything else, so this year they are getting an honorable place among the veggies. I have already began purchasing transplants and seeds so look out, there will be some fabulous things happening in my potager! Annual herbs will be planted in the beds and perennials will be kept in (I hope!) aged moss covered terra cota pots so I can move them from season to season as needed. I just so happened to get my hands on a few medicinal herb books, so a few herbs might be foreign to you (as they are me!) but we won't be sick! :)

This brings me into my next topic for building my potager theme, companion planting. It may or may not be an old wives tale that planting certain plants next to each other creates a mutually beneficial habitat or on the flip side would be a growth inhibitor. For example, growing carrots, basil and tomatoes next to each other is suppose to produce a stronger flavor in tomatoes and sweeter carrots! Place onions and peas next to each other and you probably will not have any to harvest! There is a whole theory behind this style of planting including veggies, flowers and herbs, and I plan on incorporating it where ever possible. 

Thoughtfulness and being intentional with my plants will be the key this Spring!


UPDATE:

My tomato seeds that were sown over Christmas have all germinated and have produced lovely little seedlings! My grow light project turned out hiccup free, so I'm off to start a second round of toms and some peppers!

Let There Be Light

Now that all of the grow lists, purchase lists, and wish lists have been made, edited, and re-edited (and who am I kidding will continue to be edited) and seeds purchased, I am ready to start my seeds!

 I like to start my tomatoes and peppers early enough that if they fail, I have time to A. either start another one or B. buy a transplant depending on when it fails. Also a nice thing about starting seeds early is that you get to harvest earlier! Looking through the pictures from last year, you might notice that I started my seeds for the fall garden on a window sill/ledge about my bathtub that has a bright South facing window. I was only able to fit about 5 flats at a time, rotating them constantly so the plants didn't become leggy or bent over to one side. Since my grow list has grown tremendously, I decided this just wouldn't work this year and I needed a different set up. (And Hubby hated it, I couldn't keep the cats away from it, and I slipped in the tub a few times from all the excess water)

 I have searched and searched for a growing setup that wouldn't break the bank. Here is what I have found and will be making courtesy of Noggins and Nonsense:

http://nogginsandnonsense.blogspot.com/2011/03/ready-set-go-garden-go.html

I priced all of the materials needed to build this grow light setup locally and it came out to just over $100! In my book, that is a steal when you see them listed in catalogs for $400! (and no more bathtub mishaps) So off to Home Depot I go! When I get home, the setup should take about 10 minutes and then to starting seeds!!!!! (I plan on having HD cut the pvc pipe for me in store)