I SPY

I spy with my little eye:



A little tomato, one of the midgets, that I would call ripe (but Dave says not yet).



A ripening Stupice. These are early things by reputation.



A baby Jalapeno pepper.



Corn growing up!



A collard plant that fed some little creature well.



But not this little creature. He only likes to play with the radishes.



Lots of insects! This little ladybug was on patrol in the radish quadrant. (There were also a trio of parasitic wasps, too shy and too fast to pose for photographs, on the hunt for caterpillars in the kale quadrant.)

Also:

We had our first hornworm sighting. Dave caught a little hornworm munching away happily on the purslane. The sluggish little thing was examined (no one thought to grab the camera) and then exiled (read: flung over the fence) into the neighbor's yard.

In the bolting stages: Bok choi, mustard, cilantro, and the Thai and Italian basils. Ah, well!

We fertilized (mostly the patio plants) last Friday. As rich as our soil is, I don't think the garden is going to need much fertilizer for awhile.

Thursday Garden Report

The garden looks roughly like this, this week:



The shadier bed: Along the wall the micro-greens are sprouting. The nasturtiums are coming along well. We had a couple of nasturtium flowers in our salad tonight (along with some lettuce and radishes.)



The sunnier bed: The tomato cages are up around all but the Brandywine. We've added marigolds here and there.



I love marigolds.



We added collard greens sometime last week--or the week before maybe--into the shadier bed.



Kelly thinned the sunflowers. They're planted among the beans.



The kale has been under attack by cabbage worms.  We started spraying with BT on Tuesday night. I hate doing it.



The corn is grow-grow-growing.



The bok choi is bolt-bolt-bolted, completely so.

Feasting

My new goal is to eat something, anything, from the garden every single day.

Tonight (Tuesday) we had radishes.  Crunchy, a bit spicy, and delicious.  Of course they're delicious.  We've watched them grow from seeds, seedlings, into plump red roots.  It may have take a bit longer that the package said it would, but it's still been magical.  The magic of biology.

On Sunday, we had kale, chard and bok choy, sauteed with garlic and shallot (sadly not from the garden; the garlic I planted hasn't really taken off).  Oh, and we had some chives in scrambled eggs with some nice sharp cheddar.  The chives are actually from last year.  They overwintered, untended, in a dilapidated pot.  They're still in that pot, and as happy as can be.  Thriving even.

I'm afraid we didn't eat anything from the garden on Monday, but I know that K&K had a nice salad with lettuce and radishes.  They also had some radishes for brunch with visiting family on Sunday.  K. has actual farmers in her family.  She was worried that her corn rows aren't straight enough to pass muster.  I hope they were impressed with our radishes.

Tomorrow I hope to have a salad with lettuces and nasturtiums from the garden.  And radishes, of course.

Thursday Morning Garden Report

Yes, there are mushrooms growing in the lettuce patch.

Okay, I might be over-watering a bit. 

But let me distract you from my lack of watering skills with a little hypocotyl action.


The beans are coming up! Little baby beans. So exciting. The Blue Lake and Kentucky pole beans and the snap peas are all coming up.

And here's a beautiful thing of nature that I'd like to kill:



This little cabbage moth (seen here taking an early morning snooze on the sundrop) and its little buddies are laying their eggs all over the cabbage, kale and bok choi. So far I've kept the resulting cabbage worms at bay by knocking eggs and worms off manually, but it's tedious work checking each leaf of each plant each day.

Additionally, we're still dealing with cutworms, which I just read on the internet are the caterpillars of the Miller moths that we had earlier this and last month. If I would have known I'd be dealing with their little destructive offspring, I'd've had much less sympathy for the poor dumb moths to begin with. Yesterday's victim was a nasturtium.



This little radish was my reward for getting my garden chores out of the way early. Like 6:30 in the morning early.

Can't Get A Plant In Edgewise

Some photos!



That little guy helps out around the garden. Here he's checking on some little yellow pepper plants.



Corn!



Behind the chard is the broccoli. Or, well, there would be a broccoli plant there, but half of our broccoli plants have fallen prey to what I think are cutworms.

And this is Boltin' Joe, our Chinese bok choi variant. Yes, we're fools to plant bok choi in the summer in New Mexico, but hey.



At least we tried.



Mesclun lettuce mix, soon ready to pluck.

And here are the tomatoes:



Cherokee purples.



The Mexican Midgets. (Still hate that stupid name.)



And the Stupice.

The Brandywine and Hillbilly have yet to flower.

Ay yi yi!

Ay yi yi!

Sunday was a long gardening day.


In the garden 
We planted: A Brandywine tomato (finally found one, the very last one at Plants of the Southwest), more mixed and micro greens, more radishes, collard greens (wishful thinking), salad burnet, borage, and perennial arugula. Dave also found a little mushroom growing in the far corner near the mesclun lettuce mix.

Also: Goddamned cabbage moth eggs are hatching on the broccoli and kale. I picked half a dozen caterpillars off a single broccoli plant (and knocked off dozens of eggs). Some of the caterpillars were still tiny inchworm looking things, some were much larger, and there was already one pupating. Tomorrow I'll start drowning them in soapy water, but today we just threw all of them over the fence into the neighbor's yard. (Karmic payback for the time he kept the damn lamb in the side yard nearest our window and let it bleat for hours in the early morning before coming out to feed it.)

I hate having to deal with garden pests because they seem so blameless in the greater scheme of things. I'm not looking forward to the tomato hornworm days.


News from the Patio

On the patio: We planted very other plant in the world. No, not true. Only borage, bronze fennel, dill, oregano, purple basil, tumeric, ginger, yellow strawberries, grasses for the cats to eat along with some new catnip and lemon cat mint.  That's just most of the edible stuff. We also planted coleus for around the altar.

The Lazy Photographer

"Take some pictures," Rosa said.  She said this since I've been saying for weeks that I need to take some pictures so I can see how things are actually growing.  Of course, the nice new point-and-shoot was nowhere to be found, and the big camera is a pain to drag out and I was in a hurry and feeling lazy, so all we have now are yet more crappy cell phone photos.

At least we can see how things look today and we'll have something to compare with tomorrows photos.  I hope I overcome my laziness and use a better camera next time.

Sunflower seedlings

Corn

Lettuces

Mustard

Oregano

What the hell?

Sad little boxwood basil

This is one of the oldest plants in the garden.  It's hardly changed since we planted it, except some of the older leaves have died. In fact, the basils and the nasturtiums don't seem to be doing well.  Everything else is coming along nicely, but these tender things are struggling.

Radishes 

Nearly ready to pick!

No Trouble Harvesting, But...

I'm impatient for more things to gnaw on from our little garden. I know by the end of summer I'll be sick of gnawing on things from our little garden, but for now I feel kind of starved for green things.

What have we eaten from the garden so far?  A handful of scrawny radishes (at 25 days, they should be much fatter maybe, considering they're supposed to be ready to pick at 30 days), kale, mesclun lettuce mix, nasturtium leaves, and the bolting tips of the bok choi and Thai and Italian basil. Most of those went into a small salad that we had with dinner.

Dave also planted a new row of radishes in the sunnier bed where the zucchini will go in July. (Don't know how much to believe it, but someone suggested dodging the squash bugs by planting after the 4th of July. We'll see.) We also started some "straight 8" cucumbers in 4-inch pots to go into the garden later.

Non-garden/patio plantings: More chard, mustard greens, beets to be used for greens, something called Red Orach (or mountain spinach), and salad burnet, a green in the Rosaceae family (so says Wikipedia). Those all went into 2- or 4-inch pots on the patio and may or may not get planted in the garden. Kind of depends on the weather, I reckon. Don't want to put greens in just to watch them bolt when the New Mexico sun beats them into submission. If they stay in pots on the patio, we can always move them into shadier/cooler spots.

Other observations:

The first pest came in the form of a little green caterpillar that is probably (given the pardon it got from both me and Dave) going to wreak havoc on the greens. I have no trouble harvesting plants, but I do have trouble keeping other creatures from harvesting plants.

There are lots of little ladybug larvae around this year, including a few in the garden and on the patio. I love the little things. They're so gross and cute all at the same time.

Gray Kitty mowed down one of the littler corn plants by stretching out on it. He also had a little lie down among the tiny beets but that didn't do much damage; they perked right back up.

Our patio is looking finer. I need some pictures to prove it, yes, but I'm starting to like all our little potted flowers and such. Today I'll move some of our larger pottery pieces out there.

You Get the Picture

Finally, some photos. Crappy cell phone photos taken at high noon, but still.

This is the shadier bed:



The shadier bed is planted with mesclun lettuce mix, mustard, arugula, kale, broccoli, chard, leeks, yellow onions, beets, radishes, jalapenos, sandia red chile, yellow peppers, bok choi, and nasturtiums.

This is the sunnier bed:



The sunnier bed is planted with sunflowers, corn, beans, tomatoes, boxwood basil, Thai and Italian basil, oregano, creeping thyme, and nasturtiums.  The overturned cups are acting as lids for the ollas Dave made and buried in the ground next to the tomato plants.

Here are some close-up pics of the plants in the shadier bed:



Broccoli, chard, radishes.



Mesclun lettuce mix, oakleaf lettuce, arugula, kale.



A few cubic square feet of seeds (carrots, mache, and...something else...mustard maybe)  just now starting to crop up.



Dave carefully planted the radish seeds 16 seeds per square foot.



Leeks in front with cilantro behind. (The cilantro in the shade is doing better than the cilantro in full sun.)

These tomatoes (all the tomatoes, as a matter of fact) are planted in the sunny bed. This is the Cherokee Purple that we bought in the gallon-size at the Co-Op. It already has fruit on it that grow visibly from day to day.



It wasn't until this year that I learned that tomatoes are classified as determinate and indeterminate. This (and I think all the tomatoes we have so far) are indeterminate, so we're looking at eating a lot of tomatoes this summer.

This is the corn field:



There are twenty-six square feet of corn (one plant per square foot). This morning Kelly thinned and transplanted the seedlings to make it so. I definitely don't have the heart for thinning. 

This afternoon I planted two varieties of beans between the rows of corn. Tomorrow I'll plant two rows of snap peas. (I would've done it today, but I didn't read the package and so didn't know that the seeds need to be soaked for 12-14 hours before planting. Oops.)

Some observations:


We're watering (well, over-watering probably) twice a day. (The second watering is really to make sure that the seedlings don't dry out.) 


The plants at the end of the sunnier bed (the herbs mostly and the nasturtiums) are not thriving. Guesses as to why so far include over-watering, too much sun, and too much compost.  Maybe it's a combination of all three.

The bok choi and broccoli are already bolting in the heat.


The cats have so far declined to sully their paws by using the beds as a litter box. Saba is really well trained and comes in from outdoors to use the inside litter box. Gray Kitty--well, we don't know where he does most of his business, but he doesn't seem to like the soft, moist soil on his paws.


The only thing consumed from the garden thus far is a single radish sprout that Kevin plucked and ate. (No, maybe that's not true. Kelly tasted some of the chard, too, I think.)

May Day!

Most of the work of planting is done and pictures are soon to follow, but here are the basics:

The beds were finished at the end of March and the soil and compost arrived from Soilutions the day after, thirty-eight cubic meters (some of which is still sitting in the driveway under tarps).  Planting began the first week of April and continued through the month. (s) indicates that seeds were sown directly into the garden. Everything else is from bedding plants.

4/4
Mesclun salad mix (s)
Oakleaf lettuce (s)
Mustard  (s)
Arugula (s)
Boxwood basil

4/6
Broccoli
Chard
Kale
Italian basil (this did not do well and was removed and replaced)
Creeping thyme

4/8
Oregano
Leeks
Cilantro
Radish (s)

4/15--Temperature was below freezing on this night and all the plants had to be covered up.

4/16
Mache (s)
Beets (s)
Carrots (s)
Miner's lettuce (s)

4/20
Bok choi
Sweet basil
Cherokee purple tomato

Not sown in the garden but in pots, all from seed: Purslane (verdolagas), ground cherries, thai eggplant, and shiso


4/22
Mexican midget tomato
Stupice tomato
Jalapeno
Thai basil
Sunflower (s)
Corn (s)

4/29
Hillbilly tomato
Yellow onion
Sandia red hot chile
Yellow bell peppers
Epazote

There is still a bit of bed left, shady spots behind the onions (maybe perfect for more lettuces) and a very sunny (as of yet) spot in front of the corn (which I'm eyeing for a big zucchini patch and/or cucumbers).