Claim it. Own it.

I got a late start today. Copied the garden  plan I'd made into a notebook. I've spent so much time reading up on different combinations of plants and what additives each kind of plant needs when it's transplanted, that I can't remember it all.

Home Sweet Home
The Land is outlined in red, my plot is in white.

I hung fence around the perimeter of my plot. I put up the garden trellis, but I made it bigger and a slightly different shape, dug out about a foot of soil from inside the trellis to mound around the edges. Tomatoes will go on the mounds and be trained up (and over?) the trellis.

I flattened the soil inside and used boards to hold up the mounds from the inside so it wouldn't fall in. I laid some carpet strips on the inside to keep the packed dirt down, weed free, and not too mucky.

Mr Hu, Mr Tse, Mrs Lang, Mrs. Gao, Mr. Bu, and a few others were outside working in their plots. As I was working on the trellis, they asked if I was building a house. The carpet made it a done deal for them, they couldn't stop laughing.

I am often the recipient of shaking heads, chuckling, and outright laughter. Sometimes people just cruise by to watch me, some come right up to me and take tools (or whatever) out of my hands to try to stop what I'm doing because they think I am making some kind of monumental mistake. I don't mind being different, but interference or anything more than a casual suggestion just pisses me off. I rolled with it the first year and a half, but last summer, I lost my patience. There is no benefit in "being nice to old people" around here. The respect doesn't go both ways. I'm not used to this, but it's got to be a cultural thing I'm missing. I've decided it's better to stand my ground and cut off the pushy people. I'd rather be left alone because people think I'm crazy than be pestered and patronized by friends.

There trellis is open to the fence on the north side of my plot. I don't want to make too much shade for my neighbor without losing vertical space. I left an opening on the side so I can get inside the trellis area. I'm using it to store my water reservoir, tools, stakes, and other things I don't want stolen. It does look like a little house and by mid-summer, I hope it's covered in tomato plants, flowers and climbing vines, with a cool, shady place inside.

I laid in three rows of soybean seed, all of the yellow onions and garlic. I put in three rows of carrot seed, and I set in the reclaimed onions I took out last week. We still don't have access to water, so I didn't water anything in. The soil is really light and was pretty warm today. I hope the dry, cool conditions will keep the garlic and onion starts from rotting until I can water them. Tomorrow I hope.

I've set aside and "alum patch" for all of the onions, garlic, and carrots. They are supposed to play together nicely and they will be near-ish tomatoes, soybeans, brussel sprouts and peas, which is supposed to be OK. When I first drew the plan, I thought I might have planned too much space for them, but when I've put them in the ground, it looks like it will be OK.

The plot seemed to change shape as the day went along. First it looked so big, then too small, then bigger than the other plots that are still untouched. By the end of the day, I checked the fence line. I'm glad I put it in before I started. My plot looks so much bigger than the plot next to mine. I felt guilty, but everything checked out OK. I adjusted the hay bales so they didn't push the fence over the north boundary.

Dehydrated and worn out, I cleaned up my mess of twine and fence packaging and came in. I think I was outside for 4 or 5 hours. I finished a lot more than I thought I would. I'm going to try to get water to the garden tomorrow, put in the last of the onions, get the peas going, plant the rhubarb and chives I'd brought inside and water it all in. Tomorrow.

It's supposed to be in the 30's Thursday and Friday nights, so the live growing things will have to be kept inside until they are tougher, then cloched when outside.

My antsy self is satisfied. The plot is mine.

2011 Recap

Last summer I decided to plant Russian Mammoth Sunflowers. I'd read up on them and was excited to see if I could get close to the 10 foot goal. When the stalks were about 5 feet tall, they started to bloom (very early) and accelerated seed production. When trees do this, it means they are under stress and they're going to try to drop seeds before they die. These sunflowers were on the back border of my garden plot. When I checked them, I saw that all of the leaves on one side of the stalk had been cut off. Long story short, my garden neighbor, Alexi, cut them off without telling me. When I discovered it, Valentina (Alexi's wife) was in the garden and I was really mad and asked her what happened. When I saw Alexi, we went through several stages: he was mad that I upset his wife and got up in my face about it, he would never apologize (Jesus died to forgive all of his sins), and he mocked me. The idea that I was upset with him because of what he did versus the value of the damaged plants didn't seem to sink in.

When my sunflowers continued to die off because and there was so much anamosity going on with Alexi, the garden wasn't a pleasure. The blog was put together so my sister's kids could watch the plants grow since they didn't have a garden at home. The special focus was to be the line of sunflowers at the back of the garden, and when they withered and died, I lost heart.

My peppers never grew taller than about 14 inches, but by the end of the summer, I had full sized peppers that touched the ground. Most of my neighbors didn't get any fruit from their peppers.

My tomatoes got to be six to seven feet tall/long. Cherry, grape, and pear tomatoes did great. I was giving them away. Full size tomatoes in our part of the country were really bad. They took a long time to grow and were full size by September, but never turned red. In our community garden with just shy of 1000 tomato plants, folks were pretty devastated.
My sweet peas barely produced. The Asian long beans only produced 4 beans. Brussels sprouts were strange. One plant developed a stalk that was 6 inches across and didn't get very tall. The other got about 3 feet tall, but since the season had such a slow start, it didn't have a chance to produce like it could have. Edamame was very successful. I'd never grown them before and planted them too close to each other. Then ended up flattening out the plants on the sides so all could get sun. My butternut squash did great again. My herbs (lavender, mint, cat mint, sage, rosemary, chives) did really well. Flowers were a bust until late in the season.
It was such a strange year weather-wise that overall, I think the garden was successful, but not all at the same time.

Cut Off

 OK, I'm pretty much cut off as far as garden spending goes. There is only a small square of unplanted space, and I still have 20-30 seedlings, some of which I'm sure won't survive. Since everything is pretty much done, I just have to wait and watch things grow whilst watering daily. The weather is coming along nicely, and I appreciate the rain. "They" haven't fixed the water spout, so we have no source of water on the outside of the building. We're all making laps in the front door, water from the craft room, out through the back door to garden, and repeat. It smells like rain tonight. Pictures to come.

The garden is going to be tilled on the 21st.

I wanted a full plot, but I only get 1/2 because it's all sold out. The guy in charge said "we are old people" "next year, you take my garden, I don't want" and the unspoken - maybe someone will... die. It cost me $3.25. Seeds are coming along gangbusters - soybeans freakishly so. Garden neighbors were pretty hard on me last year for wasting space. It's gonna be loaded up this year. Dad's gonna help me with climbing structures and manure.

April 15

Checkin out the merchandise. She didn't bite a thing. 

CP1

Look! My babies are having babies! Ok, that's not quite right. The two-leaf sprouts now have 4+ leaves. When I transferred these, I thought they were peppers, but it looks like they may be tomatoes. So Poof2 is peppers? Time will tell. If these are tomatoes, they are cherry tomatoes.

CP2

Just transplanted from the starter kit to the cheesy poof so everything is kind of wonky. In a couple of days, it will look better.

Salad Bowl

The seedlings seem to be doing something called seed-stretching. It comes from having a closed cover. More research is due. 

Soda Bottles

Day 1. Soil and seeds. Nothing to see, really. These are the big beefy kind of slicing tomatoes. Or should be. We'll see.

Lots of seeds for one little corner of window.

More stuff in the dirt

Yesterday I was in the garden after the rain. I planted the hanging baskets (herbs) and lemon grass (contained this year). Also squash and bean seedlings, peas, sunflower seeds, cucumber seeds, more carrots. I still have 3 3'x6' plots to plant and room for 2 more herb plants and I think I'm going to add some flowers. I don't think the neighbors are going to dog me for not growing enough stuff this year. It scares me to think about the output if all is successful.