Mystery Solved & Photos

An update on yesterday's onion mystery: they are indeed scallions, not bulbing onions.  I'm slightly annoyed at the mislabeling, but I'm not too horribly let down since I enjoy green onions more than yellow.  I was just so looking forward to making our own onion braid....

So I think I'll cheer myself up with a few beautiful pictures Chad recently took.

    (A pink strawberry blossom.)

(Water drops on lettuce leaves.  Some of the earliest lettuce we planted are pretty much ready for harvest, now!)

 

(The sugar snap peas getting a good hold on the trellis.  These are also blooming!)

Friendly Crawlies & Onion Mysteries

My my, it's been a little while since my last post!  I must watch that.

I made an exciting discovery in the garden a little while back.  I was completely horrified by these creepy crawlies that I'd never seen before:

   

I mean, really, how creepy looking is that thing???  I killed 3 or 4 before I thought, hmmmm, let's go google the description and find out what the heck these things are.  It took forever, but I finally found out that they're ladybug nymphs!  That's right, these ugly little suckers are baby ladybugs, which are excellent pest control for which many organic gardeners pay good money!  So I called a truce, and I have been quite happy to share my patch of earth with these ugly little beasties.  I've even seen a few full grown lady bugs around, so my garden is getting a little additional pest control until these babies turn into speckled aphid munching machines!

See?  Not all creepy crawlies are bad.

The onions, in the meantime, keep me guessing.  I've never grown onions before at all and I chose what I thought was supposed to be a globing onion (I got the set from the farmer's market and they're called "candy"), but they looked more like scallions when I purchased them and I'm not seeing globes when I push back the soil.  I don't know.  I do suspect the kids planted them too deep, so maybe the globes are way down there.  I think I'll just dig one up tomorrow and see if there's a globe at all.  I'll be a little let down if it turns out that they were merely mislabeled scallions, but I must admit that the tops do look particularly green and tasty!

First Strawberry

We sampled the first of our strawberries the other day, and it tasted like absolute perfection.

I am convinced that there are few culinary pleasures as amazing as a organically grown strawberry so freshly picked that it still tastes of sunshine.

Organic is Easy

Pssst. I have a secret.... Organic gardening is easy!

No, seriously! Especially for urban gardeners, with our smaller gardens to care for, going organic is pretty simple.

I believe the key is to relax and start with the basics. I mean, you're not a farmer, you're not required to comply with certification standards, and you don't have to become a specialist. Just start with the simple conviction that you will grow the most nutritious foods possible without using chemicals. This means swearing off:

1. Miracle Grow and other chemical fertilizers
2. Roundup and other weed killers
3. chemical insecticides

Replace them with:

1. compost
2. mulch and a little weed pulling
3. a spray bottle of soapy, garlicy water

Those three changes are probably the most essential steps in going organic, and I think the rest can be learned as you go. There's far too much to learn it all in one sitting, one season, or even one lifetime! Yes, you'll run across pests that are tougher than diluted dish soap, but you don't want to spray one of the harsher mixes until you really need to anyway (because they can kill off the beneficial bugs, too). And of course "100% organic" produce is grown from certified organic seed, but you're not a farmer at risk of losing your certification because you purchased some of your seeds from Home Depot.

It's also important to appreciate quality more than quantity. Your heirloom tomato plants might not start producing fruit the size of footballs the second you put them into the ground like some hybrids, but they will have exceptional nutrition and phenomenal flavor if you keep to organic growing methods.

Finally, be forgiving of yourself. If you lose a plant to an infestation of bugs, know that this happens to all gardeners, organic or not. Do some googling to learn how to prevent them next year and chalk it up to experience. Gardening leans heavily toward trial and error, after all, no matter how many books you've read.

Pictures from Yesterday

I'm up early after an evening of cheap Pinot Noir. That always happens when I have a few too many glasses, but the nice thing about this morning's restlessness is that it was accompanied merely by a craving for Diet Dr. Pepper instead of by a headache.

So here I am with my giant cup of soda, thinking about what a nice day yesterday was. Chad captured much of it in pictures.

A few strawberries in the June-bearing basket are turning red, and this one looks soooo tempting.

I was enamored by our Red Lady Fern, which was nothing but a pot of curly little twigs when we first purchased her.

Chad started taking a closer look at some of the plants in the veggie garden, including the Little Gem Romain:

And the ruffly basil that lives between the Supersweet 100 and Genovese tomatoes:

As I tended the garden, I found that both the basil seeds and some type of grass or weed has sprouted around the tomatoes. I weeded the grass and put cardboard down on the areas where it was trying to grow and will look into buying some straw on the way out to my parents' house in the country later today. Straw makes a nice mulch for vegetable gardens..

Chad worked on part of one of the side flower beds, putting in our creeping phlox. It's a grassy, weedy bed that's had no preparation, but we couldn't really put weed block around a creeping plant we want to creep. So he brilliantly cut cardboard to fit the space, leaving holes for the still small phlox plants, which should kill off much of the weeds before it biodegrades and lets the phlox do it's thing. With some of my super cheap potting soil thrown on top, it's already looking a little prettier.

We then took a walk to the wine store and looked at all of the plants our neighbors have been putting in. These pink flowered bushes were one of my favorites just based on their solid color, and I simply must hunt some down once I learn what they're called:

Can anyone tell me what they are? Perhaps I can catch the owners outside sometime and ask them.

I'm also in love with this funky little tree, manipulated bonsai style:

I'm guessing it's related to a weeping cedar? Whatever it is, we saw a couple on our walk and I'm terribly fascinated.

Well, today should be lovely as well. Nice and cool, in the 60s. We're going to try and make it out to the arts festival for a bit, but I want to visit my parents and take them their tomato and strawberry plants. I'm really eager to see how the flower bed we planted out there is doing!

Storms & Picture Updates

It stormed last evening, here in Oklahoma City, and it apparently took a toll on my lettuce.

One Little Gem Romaine was somehow totally separated from his roots (I checked under everything for cutworms just in case, but no sign) and two (on the upper right) are looking a little beat down. I guess I'll have to give them some shelter whenever the rain comes in from now on.

The onions have been growing like crazy, and they're sort of all over the place after last night's rain.

I walk out there and see those three squares and am just so impressed. I'm definitely going to need to pull a few young onions as "pearls" to even out the harvest a bit.

Our monstrously huge radish plants are overshadowing the still small cucumbers! We've harvested most of the really big ones around the left cucumber, but the right one is still hidden away. I'll clear the worst offending radish for tonight's salad and that should do it. The cucumbers should easily rise above the new crop of radishes I've been planting as we harvest.

All of the young tomato plants look fine.

Even the brandywine that I thought I'd lose is perking up and getting green again. I'm keeping the extra seedlings on hand in case he takes another turn for the worse, but I think he's almost out of the woods. If he keeps improving, then I'll just leave him alone and let him do his best.

And, just for good measure, here's the potted Sweet 100 looking pretty great. I love looking at healthy plants like this and knowing I raised it from one teeny tiny little seed.

So I'm a day late on the "Earth Day" post, but then again, every single day should be Earth Day. That said...

I want to comment, first, on what a wonderfully green thing vegetable gardening is. After you've picked up or ordered your seeds and compost, your vegetables' carbon footprint is nearly complete. It's far more fuel efficient to transport seeds and a bag of compost than months worth of veggies that are shipped from out of town, if not out of country. Try to purchase as much of the rest of your food locally grown/raised (from your farmer's market or food coop) as possible and the earth will love you, indeed! If we all did this, both we and our the local farmers would breath a little easier.

I'd also like to say that I've never understood people who disbelieve our effect on climate change. Not because I think "they're wrong and we're right," but because there are so many ways we effect our environment other than climate change. All that gasoline burning results in unhealthy smog, chemicals disposed of improperly end up in drinking water, junk takes up space in land fills that must be topped off, plastic ends up in the oceans where sea animals choke on it, and on and on and on.

Whatever side of the climate change debate you're on and no matter who is "right," there's no escaping your responsibility to this planet and future generations.