You may have guessed by now I'm not afraid of trying new things. In fact, I often find it interesting. Sometimes it's a matter of making lemonade when it seems that life is giving you lemons (although it all depends on how you look at as to whether it's lemons you're getting in the first place - on closer look they could really be oranges.)
So as in any new venture, and even in not-so-new ventures (after all, research, which is generally done by very experienced people, ends out with some proven hypotheses and some disproven ones too along the way).
As a rule, I can be very thorough about some things (like my 10,000 strong recipe database that I dabble at - when on earth am I ever going to find the time to make that many recipes anyway?). But sometimes, I'm a bit less thorough.
So, in the case of this gardening venture, I really needed to just start at it and begin to see a little success after the continual disasters in my life and how I ended out back here anyway. So I didn't worry too much about being overly meticulous. I did start a binder on the various plants I've been trying, though.
The only other gardening I ever did before this was weeding chores growing up and as I got a bit earlier my Grandmother used to pay me to do some weeding for her too. That was in Seattle though where there are very big nasty (although not terribly poisonous) spiders, which I hate with a passion. So my gardening pretty much ended there, although when I lived in Russia there was a time when I considered planting some vegetables that I missed from back home, but then I didn't have access to garden space for very long there, so that never materialized.
So now I've had to learn about soils (including mulch, fertilizer and compost - I have a little kitchen composter, as well as individual plant preferences for sun, water, climbing, and pruning, and also about the nasties - snail, ants, mold and other such plant-killer. It's been a lot of trial and error, but it's helped me keep my head together and also give me something to cook with sometimes too. currently I need to think about recipes with dill.
So here's my little garden photo op:
This is my jungle. As you can see I have limited real estate, and had to be creative regarding how to accommodate my 3 gherkin cucumber plants and 3 hubbard squash plants. My greatest nightmare is having a squash (the actual vegetable) grow 3 feet in the air - I understand they can get to be 10-15 pounds.
What you see here is my willful squash. I kept telling it that eventually there would be no more screen to hold onto, but it kept climbing up the wall anyway. Eventually I rigged a higher level of string for it to turn around and climb onto. From the inside it looked a little like the invasion of the hubbard squash (Eeeekk!) If a squash started on top of the air conditioner that might be a very good option, however. But that's yet to be seen. The air conditions is directly under the window.
What you see here are 2 large male hubbard squash blossoms. One is drooping from the heat. My understanding is that squash, in general, like the heat, but they droop during it to conserve energy and then perk us as the temperature drops. My brief and very limited experience, however, is that this is true for the leaves, but not the flowers, which don't perk back up again once they've drooped.
This little blossom with the bulge at its base is the female hubbard squash flower. We don't have a lot of bees here, but there are some. I try to encourage them to come to my flowering vegetables so that they can get their nectar and pollinate plants as they go. The squash haven't been blooming for long yet, so I still have hope. I understand that each plant produces 1 to 2 hubbard squash, which means when all is said and done I should have between 30 and 60 lbs. of squash, which is more than enough for me.
Moving on, this is a rather sickly example of an incipient gherkin cucumber. I already lost one to withering away, and there are signs that this one might be following the first one to a premature death. Hopefully I'll have enough cucumbers eventually to make dill pickles from...
... except that the dill, as you can see, is already coming to a head, so the cucumbers really have to hurry if I have any hope of making dill pickles. Otherwise, I'll have to think of something else, I guess. In the forefront you see my leek plant. I planted the squash, cucumbers and dill from seed, but I got the leek as a young plant at Home Depot.
The white fence in this picture was supposed to be for sugar snap peas. However, 1) the peas don't like the heat, so I have to try after the weather cools down, and 2) pea tendrils can't grasp on to something as large as wooden slat fences. So I had to also drape string over. But they died anyway from the heat. I really like the sugar sprint peas, but I only found those seeds once and haven't been able to find them again.
These are a row of a type of celosia that has big red blossoms. They're coming along nicely - I wish all seeds were so successful. In front there is a boxwood basil. Here's a better picture of it:
I had 3 of these, but they're a bit finicky, as some of the herbs are I've found. One thing about planting in warm climates I'm finding is that it never gets cold enough to kill plant diseases in the soil, although there is a way you can basically bake them by putting a plastic tarp over the soil, tucked in 12 inches down at the edges, for 3 months, I believe it is. Then the soil should be sterile. I didn't do that. So I constantly have to look through the leaves of this basil, as well as some other plants and check for signs of trouble. It does help being vigilant. I'm learning how to do this kind of thing too.
Speaking of herbs... since I was having a little trouble with what appeared to be soil-borne illnesses, I decided to try using planters. What you see here is an oregano plant, but there are also two small cinnamon basils and a Marseille basil in that same planter. Other planters have tiny lettuce plants and 2 (!) carrots (so far), young green onions and a baby Italian parsley plant.
This is a thyme plant and one of my little beets. I may end out using the dill in borscht instead of dill pickles.
You'd never guess that this is a 4-month old artichoke plant, the sole survivor of my artichoke cultivation attempts. I LOVE artichokes and find it very discouraging that they are so hard to grow. I get some consolation, however, when I read that the heat and the humidity here make it difficult to grow them. Maybe I should try planting in the fall so they'll have cooler weather to start in at least.
This is my stevia plant, which has been really a cinch to grow and seems to be virtually impervious to other plant problems. If it's very hot and dry, though, it likes a bit of water, but that's about it. I definitely get good use out of this plant too. I brew it (steep in boiling water) for about 24 hours and then either stick it in the fridge as is (after taking the leaves out) to sweeten my hot cereal with in the morning, or make ice cubes of it for my ever-present jug of iced tea. I just cut off the leaves to about 4-6 inches from the ground then it sprouts back, actually in multiple branches from the one stem. So I'm never lacking for sweetener!
This is my largest tomato plant. I had a roma tomato plant that finished its production and then I found a packet of these resistant roma seeds. When I planted them, every one of the seeds sprouted! I now have 4 plants, but there were originally 6, including one that I gave away. I understand that keeping the leaves from touching the ground is one way to minimize the possibility of disease, and it does appear that even though these are resistant, they're not resistant to everything, so I have had to cut off a few leaves that look suspiciously not healthy.
I'd better eat the frozen marinara sauce I made from the last plant before these one start producing!
We're going to end for now with this picture, which is the jungle I planted in my neighbor's garden. She said I could dig up her grass and plant things there if I wanted to, but I didn't want to just plant something for me, so I found a packet of mixed seeds for a "butterfly garden." She said she liked butterflies, so I went ahead and planted them. However, this ended out being more of a venture than I bargained for...
After digging up the grass (grass/weed mixture) I started on digging up rocks & coral. It must have been no more than 2 inches under the ground, but I found a tree trunk buried under there! I didn't think there'd be room for much root growth in there, so I set about figuring out how to dig it up... without disturbing the two pipes it sat across/between. One of the pipes was evidently for cable TV, and I heard conflicting reports of what the other rusted one was. I even got a new blade on my little saw to work away at this stump, but the last little bit I couldn't do, so a neighbor helped out. Meanwhile, my poor neighboor had a rather unsightly front yard. We even joked that I was trying to get to China. But in the end the plants did start coming up and a few of them are even blooming now, but there are still baby plants just starting to come up. I have to tend a bit to that garden too, to make sure snails don't take over and cut off diseased leaves as necessary to try to avoid whole plants becoming diseased.
So there you have it - my little gardening efforts. They're somewhat of a mixed bag as far as success rate is concerned, but I have enough rewards from it that it keeps me going. It helps too that I don't have to pay the water bill.
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Next time we'll start on Europe, although I understand one document I've been trying to get has been mailed to me, so when that comes I'm going to deal with that issue too.
Enjoy the day...
~ Meg
