what's happening

our garden features several unusual varieties of vegetable such as vining okra and loofah.  we also have an artichoke, various colors of eggplants and tomatoes and two of my favorites are the lemon cucumber (on the left) and cardoon (on the right).  the lemon cucumbers are small and about the size of a lemon with a pale yellow rind, hence the name.  they also have the best cucumber flavor of any we have ever grown.  the cardoon was chosen specifically for it's display, large artichoke-like flowers that are surprisingly fragrant, and it's height.

along the front walk of the house, we added two lasagna beds as you may recall from earlier posts.  in between the beds was a scraggly collection of hostas.  we have decided to officially turn this space into a hosta garden.  we moved around some existing hostas and added some chocolate chip ajuga, also called bugleweed, and in the future we will add more so keep checking back for more updates.

some of the most successful plants in the garden are the cannas.  last year was the first year we had them in the garden.  we were given some rhizomes by chris, one of the cousins in Kentucky, when we visited them during the holiday season of 2006.  darry placed the cannas in the ground in the spring of 2007 and we watched them take off last summer  in spite of the drought.  last fall, darry cut the amount in this bed by removing half of them and placing them in an empty space by the end of the driveway and in another bed out front.  they have once again doubled in this bed, if not tripled and are well over 6 feet tall.  we will be removing almost all of them in this bed come the first frost, they are simply too big and invasive for all of the other plants here.  as a result, we will have rhizomes to share!

more info on cannas

welcome visitors

spending time outside means encountering critters.  in the garden, that means encountering nasty critters.  from mosquitoes to wasps to ants that bite, i run into them all. 

this is a photo of a leaf footed bug, they don't bite people but they are big and ugly and they fly.

they are sap suckers, meaning that they pierce the fruit and suck out the juice doing damage that causes the fruit to be stunted.

when i am outside in the garden, i love to listen to the birds.  often, i can identify the frequent visitors when i hear them.  these black eyed susans are a favorite of the goldfinches.  so far, when i have been able to hear them and have attempted to photograph them, they have flown away.  any kind of movement near them will scare them off.  they spend time up in the trees and they are very vocal.  i have also encountered bluebirds in the yard, a male specifically, but no opportunity to photograph him has occurred yet.

tomatoes have begun to ripen!  if you came to dinner this past weekend, you could have tasted this tomato salad.  it has chocolate cherry, gold nugget and bonito ojo tomatoes in it.  i also added some banana peppers and lime basil from the garden and tossed it with balsamic vinegar and olive oil.

our first crop green and yellow beans are finishing up, it will be time to pull them out soon.  in this salad, i blanched the beans, added chick peas and kidney beans as well as onions and banana peppers and tossed it with vinaigrette.

being in the south, you become accustomed to having a bowl of cucumber salad on the table.  we had a bunch of cukes to use so i sliced them up, added more banana peppers (pepper plants tend to produce lots of peppers when it is hot, and it is hot here!) and dill from the garden and i tossed it with some cider vinegar and a little sugar.  i could easily live on this salad!

more to see in the veggie patch...

this year we planted two kinds of melons, these are rocky ford and they are a green flesh melon.

for the first time, we planted a brown tomato and these are chocolate cherries.

above left is casper, a white eggplant and on the right are sweet banana peppers.

the little peach tree is trying hard to stay upright but the dozen or so peaches on it are bending it over.  if it ever gets large, the branches will be on the ground!

garden update for 7/14

this year, we are happy to report that we have tomatoes!  the top left shows the collection of plants in this years garden.  the two buckets are some bradleys that were given to us by our neighbor and as you can see, if you want to do them in buckets, go with the 5 gallon buckets and they will do a lot better.  on the bottom left is gold nugget, a yellow cherry and on the bottom right is bonito ojo, a small red tomato.


we planted watermelons this year, and have been threading the vines through the fence.  so far we have about 6 on the vines.

these are the zucchini plants grown from the seeds that the girls brought back from their mediterranean cruise last summer.

honeybee sighting

i am marking 7/13 on my calendar as the day i saw the first honeybee in the garden. 

although they are probably out there, i haven't seen any before this one.   we have picked some cucumbers and zucchini and the various vines have melons and watermelons, so they are obviously visiting the garden, however, there aren't many to watch.  i followed this one as it went from flower to flower on the cucumber vines. 

two new lasagna beds

anyone who has been following the progress of our gardens by reading this blog should remember the lasagna garden that we built this spring.  it sits along side our front walkway in the long bed that runs the length of the sidewalk. we decided to build another one at the opposite end, it is smaller and features slightly different plants since the same varieties of coleus and begonias were not available.  we eliminated the fresh grass cuttings in favor of old grass cuttings and built the bed with compost, leaves and old grass layers and the results were better.  the lack of green material was a plus, it did not get  "hot"

and the plants did much better from the start.

Recycling at its finest!

with this in mind, we set out to build a new bed out front.  i have always wanted one with a sign that has the house numbers displayed so anyone looking for the house can find it easily.  another of my goals for this bed was to do it cheaply, imagine that-a cheap garden.  well, we did it and we spent less that $50 dollars.  while that may not seem cheap, keep in mind that gardening is not cheap if you are building a bed from scratch unless you do as we did and rely completely on the lasagna method of building layers with found materials.  first, the ugly green bed came from a neighbors yard, it had a sign stating take me-free on it and darry did just that.  the silver scroll piece is actually from the original screen door that was on the house when we bought it and linda and the girls brought the house numbers back from their trip to spain two years ago.  we assembled them and mounted them to some scrap pieces that we found in the basement.  to erect the bed and the number sign, we spent less than $3 to buy screws, nuts and wire to assemble them.  we put it all in place and began to build the bed by layering wet newspapers on the ground-better than tossing them in the bin!  next we built layers from compost, grass, leaves, peat/potting soil, coffee grinds and pine needles. Since we didn't have enough soil, we bought 4 bags for $9 dollars.  most of the materials came from the yard with the exception of the pine needles, we had to gather them at the demo garden and of course, the coffee grinds.  luckily for me, working in a restaurant means an endless supply of vegetable and fruit material for composting and we had a large pile to use.  most people do not realize that Starbucks gives away the used coffee and espresso grinds for gardening.  you can ask them for the grinds, sometimes they bag them and set them in a basket in the front of the store or they place them in large bags and store them in a bin outdoors with the recyclables which is how the store we visit does it.  we also have a lot of trees and a lot of leaves so we were able to build a nice deep bed.  the real splurge came with the plants, $35. now this may seem like a lot for plants but, we purchased 13@$.99 each and 7 @$2.49 each, a total of 20 plants which will fill out the bed nicely.  as for the ugly green bed, we brought home some seedlings for cardinal climbers and dropped in a few morning glories and before long, that thing should be covered!  the other great thing about this bed, it didn't take long to build, less than 4 hours from start to finish!

california vacation

as you all know by now, we went to california for a 10 day vacation. we joined the girls at linda's and packed in a lot of sight seeing and visiting. the weather was great and the time went fast. linda's vegetable garden was wonderful, 6 foot tall tomatoes and lots of lettuce, strawberries and green beans and even tomatillos and a pomegranate tree. the thought of photographing it must have slipped my mind because i do not have one photo to share! however, i did take a few photos of some of her flowers.

on the left is the bird of paradise plant that sits by the driveway entrance and on the right are two hydrangea bushes, the top one is a variagated lace cap that was so much prettier in person!

our travels took us to the napa valley where we spent a day in st helena. one winery that we always stop to visit is the franciscan winery. they have beautiful gardens and a giant bench that we have photos of the girls sitting on from when we lived out there.


on the upper left, the walkway that leads to the giant bench just barely visible in this photo.
upper right, some of the grapes growing along the walkway and on the lower left, some of the flowers in the garden.

playing catch up

darry and i have been home for a week now, playing catch up!  the garden was in desparate need of attention as was the entire yard!  now that we are some what there, look for posts to begin again!  we have a new bed to show off.  unfortunately, we did not take many "garden" photos on our trip, only a few in napa and most of you may have already seen them.  linda's garden was beautiful, but we were never there-we were on the go every day.