Day 40: Summer Garden Activity Not

The Summer Garden Activity is not as you would think with a gardening enthusiast like myself. Well, maybe I should not call myself a garden enthusiast then…Decided to test myself and see how much I would normally do in the garden without ‘forcing’ myself to. Over the course of May, June, July and August the average amount of days I spent in the garden were about two! I am not kidding, two times a month! I am outraged by myself, but I’m not listening, so, whatever.

I did spend some time in the garden this weekend – because of our newly acquired furry friend, the dog, Mango, I needed a gate on the deck to be able to contain her when moving cars around in the back yard where we normally park. This project, surprisingly, was pretty simple especially compared to last years chicken coop from last year. Home Depot knew exactly what I needed. I bought two garden gate hinges, a latch and an expensive 20′ 2X4 of heart redwood.

Here’s the brief description of the process: Cut up the redwood 2X4 to put together the frame with long wood screws. Next, I searched around the yard for scrap wood for the slats. Tried using some old wood from some other deconstructed project, but it just looked ugly, so, upon finding dried up plum branches, I thought of an idea from a cousin of mine. She uses manzanita branches that she finds around her sierra cabin for handles on doors and cabinets. I sawed up the plum branches into straight slats for the gate and used the long wood screws to secure them in place. I was a little skeptical, but kept on, and am pleased with the results. See what you think:

I’m a teeny bit concerned about the pokey things on the plum branches being painful to someones knee or shin, so I may get motivated to sand those off. Also, it should be stained and varnished before the weather gets bad and we just have a rotten gate.

Day 39: Fall Compost in Spring

The compost I put down in the fall has paid off. Right now I am abandoning my morals and my devotion to the modern, sheek, bunch grass garden to the utter joy of the spring flowers. Something I did last fall contributed to the blooming of things that never bloomed before. Here is a sampling of the display.

I did do some work, planted basil, peas and cucumbers. Did some final pruning on the plum tree. I am being wise about critters since I was reminded by the tulips what critters we have…

Aphids and Snails. Ergh!

Day 38: Maintenance vs. New

It is SO hard for me not to start something new and to maintain whatever I’ve got. It is very annoying, I  know, to always have another thing to maintain. So I’m trying to hold myself back and get all the maintenance done, and the spring planting accomplished before I start a new project, but the journey is difficult and not entirely successful. For example, I did sweep the front stoop where I discovered some rotting wood that needs to be replaced and the pots from last year which need to be replenished with new annuals or edibles (yet more maintenance to attend to). But at the same time I couldn’t help digging up the far side of the small plot of grass – which is technically not a new project, but continuing an old project which I started a few months ago, which was only new then, but now it is finishing an old project. Right?

Also, I just remembered what I wanted to talk about. It is the aesthetic vs. practical nature of the urban garden. If you are going to use your garden to grow edibles, and raise chickens or goats or whatever your city will tolerate, does it have to be only practical looking? Of course the answer is no, of course. But it is a tremendous amount of work and effort to grow and tend your own urban farm, and then add to the top of that, making it pretty? I can’t even keep my house clean!

In the garden news, the Camelia’s are going nuts, and the tulips that weren’t eaten by the deer have come up – I don’t  know how I got so many purple ones in the mixed bag, and I think we are getting more rain this spring than we have all winter. The plants seem to like this.

Day 37: Longer Days Thank You

Finally, I can start a project outdoors and it doesn’t get dark before I’m done, or at least before I make progress. Today was mostly maintenance, mowing the lawn, spreading mulch and clipping back ornery shrubs. Stay tuned for more tomorrow – I have more time, Yay!

This is the blurry picture I took of my manicured lawn in the evening when I finally went inside.

Number of minutes doing  maintenance: 120

Day 36: Garden News

Has it really been a month since I last worked on the garden? Yes indeed it has been exactly a month. At this rate 100 days is not going to be finished until 2017. What is keeping me from the garden is that I like trying to make money more than I like trying to garden. Too bad you can’t garden and make money at the same time, like with losing weight, I can garden and not eat at the same time – so that is a win-win. Don’t get me wrong, I love to garden, a lot… but it does help to have money for that too – so anyway, less trying to garden, more trying to make money – hopefully that will change again soon, then my garden, and my house, for that matter will look better.

But I digress, and I have gardened recently, so here’s the news.

The deer have demolished the new tulip bulbs that I planted in December, twice – observe the destruction for yourself. Blah!

The magnolia petals are dropping all over my car, pretty.

We do have rats. They were nesting in the chicken coop. I know because I found the little turds. I had to put out poison so as not to encourage them, and three have died that I know of. Sorry rats The chicken coop is not rat tight, yet.

The snowdrop bulbs and daffodils have come up nicely sans deer, yay!

Weed barrier and compost have been applied to planting bed.

See all pictures in the gallery here:

Number of minutes planning: 0

Number of minutes of maintenance: 30 (mowing that lawn and turning that compost)

Number of things found in the ivy today: 0

Number of minutes working on improvement project: 180

Amount of money spent on garden today: $0

Day 35: Fruit Tree Pruning

Reinforced by my two hour pruning lesson at Ploughshares Nursery last month I begin my yearly pruning of the fruit trees. We have two plum trees and an apple which are large and came with the house. We have since planted a lemon and a fig, but those don’t count (yet) since they are relatively small and don’t need as much pruning.

I think I prune too much. My instructor says, prune branches that are too close together vertically, and prune the branches that are too horizontal and prune all the dead branches. Also, she encourages us to keep our trees small so that we can reach the fruit and so that they give us the most enjoyment. Unfortunately my trees have gotten very big, so I’m trying to make them shorter. My first sojourn has left the branches on the unwieldy plum tree looking like twigs. I hope I haven’t killed it. I will take a picture next time when I’m all done, in the mean time, here are some before pictures.

I also have a tendency to create more work for myself by making my job into some kind of organizing task. If you like organizing it can keep you entertained. Here are my sorting bins for the branches. Dead branches for the fireplace, sticks with buds for indoor decoration, green bin to send to land fill, bigger branches to dry for fireplace, and I also had another category for small branches with buds for smaller vases. I think I was getting a little tired and crazy by the end of the day.

Number of hours pruning: 6

Day 34: Finally Back to the Garden

Finally got back into the garden yesterday after a very looong break.

To answer the question I posed from the last post, the boiling water works really well for killing weeds. In the picture below, I pored boiling water over the ivy on the left, and sprayed vinegar on the ivy on the right. Definitely boiling water works better, but it doesn’t make sense unless I can boil the water over the fire – so caveman. Uses up too much energy to boil a pot using electricity and you can’t really kill very many weeds with just one pot. Erg. Round up is looking better every day, and see how the ivy is lifting my weed barrier?

I have been overwhelmed with the amount of work and my long list of tasks for the garden so decided to break it up a little. Focused on this one long thin garden bed around the camelia bush. I needed to plant my tulip bulbs, and wanted to transplant some herb starters – sage and lemon verbena into this  bed. Used the sheet mulching technique in this bed as well – there is cardboard underneath, a layer of compost and a top layer of mulch. I hope the mulch color looks better as I continue to improve the surrounding garden beds.

To top off the day I spent a solid hour sifting the soil out of the gravel by hand. Again, it is a long slow process, but a very gratifying result. The rock looks so much nicer and my hope is that the weeds won’t have to be pulled out of this garden path in the spring. Here is my sifting station – notice that now it contains a chair.

Number of minutes planning: 0

Number of minutes of maintenance: 30 (chicken feeding and cleaning, collected good compost from coop)

Number of things found in the ivy today: 0

Number of minutes working on improvement project: 180 (improving the garden bed, and filtering gravel)

Amount of money spent on garden today: $0

Gardening resolutions for the new year:

1. Spend less money on the garden by propagating plants from clippings, using up old seeds and saving out seeds from vegetables and herbs that I buy.

2. Find more gardening buddies. Anyone want to share work in the garden with me? Comment  below and we’ll talk!