Update on the garden

I have a nice long list of partially finished posts that I plan to publish any day now.  Until then, a photo update on the garden will have to do.

What is growing:

Note the grape flowers!

There is lots of progressing the garden.  The grape vine I planted years ago is finally starting to take over our deck railing.  Until now we've had very few grapes because our dog "helpfully" pruned the grape every year by chewing it back to a nubbin.  This year it was left alone (although Darwyn did chew it somewhat) and as a reward it is littered with grape blossoms.  They aren't much to look at, but I am anticipating lots of grapes!

I finally planted onions, peas and spinach (which are all up) and a bunch of seedlings (tomatoes, basil, cucumber).  The strawberries are littered with baby strawberries (all green) which the kids are itching to pick.  And the herb garden is starting to look more green and less like dirt.

New peas

New onions

The herb bed

Projects:

Awesome sand path

- I finally finished the sand path.  It looks awesome, but the newspaper instead of landscape fabric under the sand isn't working very well.  It did all right against the grass, but the burr plants and dandelions easily pass through it.  Fortunately it isn't too hard to weed those ones out.  I think I might have laid the newspaper down too thin....it might still have worked if I was a little more generous with the paper.

- I also threw together a poorly constructed pea bed as an experiment (you can see it sans dirt at the bottom of the photo).  The area is pretty shady for growing vegetables, but I have read that peas will tolerate a bit more shade than most other things.  If they do well in this spot then I will construct a more solid bed there next year.

Pathetic cucumber trellis

- I need to build some better trellises for these cucumbers.  So far I have found these generic tomato cages to be useless for supporting anything except maybe peas.  Any good suggestions for easy trellises?

- Gus has embarked on an ambitious project to cover our back deck with a roof.  The hope is to make the deck use able in all summer weather so that it can support an outdoor kitchen.  This project is so exciting that it is worthy of its own post.  Hopefully I will get to that soon.  For now, you can just take note of the ominous beam towering 16 feet above the garden!

New deck roof

Setbacks:

Infected rhubarb

So far setbacks have been few, although it is still a little early for my plants to start succumbing to disease.  The only plant showing signs of illness is the rhubarb.  I'm told rhubarb is easy to grow.  It is as hardy as a weed (my favorite type) and will tolerate partial shade (excellent for my garden).  It come up on its own and requires little maintenance.  Unfortunately, mine gets sick every year in June and is all dead by July.  Trust me to kill the rhubarb : (  After some time online I think I've determined that it is being killed by a fungus that kills the leaves and stems and also attacks the root.  Apparently the treatment is to remove all of the infected material as soon as it shows any sign of illness, and then hope that it doesn't come back next year.  In the past I have found hoping is largely ineffective.  Also, this means the lovely rhubarb in my herb garden picture likely won't make it until July.  If any of you gardening experts have better advice, let me know.

Harvest:
Harvest is still meager, but we have used some herbs (and quite a few chives), made some fresh teas, eaten a salad with the first harvest of lettuce and enjoyed a rhubarb pie.  It won't be too much longer before I add strawberries to the list!  I can't wait.  Gardening is definitely an exercise in patience.

Why I suck at gardening

To most people, the essence of the urban homestead is producing your own food.  I'm all on board with this notion.  I grew up in a family with a huge garden and my mother loved to cook and can.  Nothing sounds more exciting to me then making cheese and I already make all of our family's bread....so what's the problem?

Food production starts in the garden.  My husband regularly reminds me that I am the world's worst gardener.  He claims this largely because every year I start a garden and every year it is spectacularly unsuccessful.  I agree that this seems like compelling evidence for my lack of skill, but I blame it on the plants.  They have three major design flaws:

1) They need watering.  I don't mind watering when I can unroll the hose and spray everything in firing range until it is drenched, but Gus has it in his head that we should water everything with rain water.  I have nothing against rainwater...but I can't hook my hose up to the barrel.  So watering is an incredibly painful process that involves standing around while the water can fills and then lugging 20L or water to the nearest plant.  This process is REALLY slow and I inevitably get distracted.  Some years we get enough rain to compensate for my short comings, but last year was a drought....even the raspberries died....

2) They need sun.  I don't know why plants need to produce their own food from sun....sure it sounds good in concept, but what about those of us that have lovely wooded backyards with plenty of full shade?  I do have plans to tackle the challenge of learning to grow some shady crops, such as mushrooms, but until then my attempts at growing food have suffered from 6 hours of sun at best.  While I acknowledge that the watering thing may be my fault, the sun can hardly be blamed on me.

3) They are not very hardy.  They need to grow more like raspberries.  I don't really need to do much to raspberries (except water them in droughts).  They plant themselves, they are bigger and badder then the weeds and they don't seem to get any diseases...all I really need to do is pick and eat.  Sure the odd weed grows in between them, but it doesn't seem to bother them much.  Veggies, on the other hand, need to be planted, and coddled and regularly weeded, and in spite of all the genetic modification, if I even think the word blight, my tomatoes will be afflicted.

In order to be successful, the hopeless homesteader really needs a garden that looks after itself.  I'm pretty sure I could sell such a garden for a lot of money, but until then I need a plan to make up for my (and my yard's) shortcomings.

So here is the plan:
1) Sun problem:
         - Convert some of the front yard into a mixed garden and some pretty plants to please the neighbors     (hopefully even most of those will be able to be eaten).  This only partly solves my issue, because the front yard is not full sun either, but it does increase the area I have that gets part sun.
         - Garden using the deck.  My deck is the only place in the yard that has full sun.  We sit on it, bake and beg for shade, while our garden withers from lack of sun.  It really is a well thought out layout.  Before you get excited about this option, the deck (crappy as it is) is already heavily used.  My previous attempts at including garden beds only lead to over crowding.  This year I hope to use the outside of the railings to hang plants.  I'm also working on using the railing as a trellis for a grape.
        - Other stuff for down the road:  I've read a few tidbits about how to make vertical gardens and how to increase sun by using reflective surfaces.  This might be a little advanced to start, but I hope to go this direction once I master the simple jobs, like protecting my lettuce from the bunnies, sprouting my carrots and getting my tomatoes to survive the summer.

2) Water problem:  The good homesteader always uses rainwater.  Down the road we may invest in a system that allows us to pressurize the rainwater, but until then I may be using city water a little more than I should.  So far I have lugged the stupid watering can...but on the days where I just won't water if I don't pull out the hose....it will have to be the hose.  Also, I plan to petition mother nature for intermittent, brief hard rains.

3) Maintenance:
        - Convert a good chunk of the garden to low maintenance crops.  Gus and I already did this by planting a bunch of annual herbs, rhubarb, raspberries and strawberries.  This leaves only a small veggie plot for me to tend.  Hopefully I can stay ahead of it!
        - Cover path between raised beds with sand or gravel to cut down on weeds (I've started this too - see picture below).  If I get really energetic I may even cover some of the gardening surface with mulch.
        - Start a blog.  It might not be obvious how this connects to garden maintenance....its more of a moral support (or social pressure) way of forcing myself to keep up with the maintenance.  It is like getting a buddy to jog with or diet with....with the sense that someone might be watching my progress, perhaps I will progress :)

For those of you that are much better gardeners than I am, feel free to comment with any other ideas you think might help my gardening plight.  I will keep you posted (quite literally) on my progress.

Our small raised bed garden (and awesome clothesline)

The shade bed - It still grows rhubarb, herbs and greens

We just put in this bed as an attempt to get rid of the front lawn.
It doesn't look that great yet, but hopefully with some more plants and less
lawn it will start to fit in.

The sand path we are putting in between the raised beds.