Back

@gardening more half-winners:
#Strawberries. My hill of strawberries is in its second year. This spring, I re-planted every plant on a little hill of compost and covered the ground all around them with large mesh chicken wire. That kept my garden chickens from scratching up the plants. It was so cold and wet for so long this spring that the first flush of berries was half pollinated at best - just a mess of gnarly, seedy, not very sweet things. The chickens, the wild birds, the slugs and I didn’t care at all, and we battled it out for the best berries. I started putting chicken wire cones over the plants as the berries got ripe, but that only stopped the chickens - the wild birds find the gaps!
Big ups to the two nests of paper wasps living under the siding by the hose bib: the ladies pollinated those first berries when nothing else was awake to do it.
All of my plants are ever bearing. I didn’t get any more berries until *August,* because I got really zealous trimming the runners. It turns out that the flower stalks look exactly like runners for a very long time. Don’t do what I did. You’ll be so sad.
Despite having so many strawberry plants I had to give two dozen away this spring for lack of space, I ordered four more. They’re *specimens!* They’re *special!* Two of them are Marshall plants, supposed to be exquisite, and the other two are supposed to taste like raspberries.
I didn’t have anywhere to put them - see above, re giving away strawberries - so I put them in a new raised bed near the other berries. None of the new plants managed to make fruit, but they’ve survived and thrown out runners and I’ve got high hopes for next year.
Earlier this summer, I started a batch of the miniature Alpine strawberries from seed. They grew endearingly fast, and now they’re all transplanted out to their permanent homes and even blooming. The house came with an empty strawberry planter, so I filled it up and planted a few more with it in the front yard. And I’ve got a wired, raised bed with a healthy blueberry and a dying blueberry, and I gave them the remaining Alpine strawberries.

@gardening the last of the half-wins:
#basil. Basil is, like, *the easiest herb* to grow. I’ve grown basil in apartments! But not in nice concrete planters, not this year, oh no. Took me three different sowings to get two knee-high plants.
#beans. Most important lesson learned: I *love* filet green beans. I could plant ten times as many as I did this year. Lots of frustrating failures too, though.
Slugs love beans. Don’t plant the beans too near the slugheims.
My bush dry beans are pretty puny. One full bed of them is struggling along at less than knee high. Another bed, home to many failures, ended up with a thriving tomato and two clumps of thriving bush beans. We’ll see if they make.
All of the pole beans were whimsical late May plantings, grown in unimproved soil near the garden fences. I LOVE FILET BEANS. I’ve been eating them raw. Peas are my spring salad, beans are my summer salad.
#Peppers were a real mixed bag. I lost most of my transplants to the cold. Both sowings, a month apart, hardened off - but the highs didn’t get above 60 until some time in May.
The two peppers that lived were the ones nearest the south wall of the house. One is in a concrete planter, proving that it’s not the soil that’s the problem with them. The other is in a fabric grow bag, in a plastic bin, tucked up beside the house. It’s the warmest sunny spot in the entire property, and that pepper grew huge and set like fifty fruit so far. It’s also concealing one of the wasp nests, and they don’t appreciate me bungling around too much, so I’m not counting.
Both of the peppers are “bridge to Paris” sweet peppers. They’re nice. I wish some of the hot peppers had lived! No complaints about the variety, I just wish I’d had others too.

@gardening some successes.
#melons. They’re not ripe yet, but I’m calling them a win anyway, since I have four semi thriving plants and two of them have fruit ripening! Even if we don’t make it, getting this far this year is a win by me. The Adaptive seeds “Kazakh” melons are setting fruit, and the Sand Hill Preservation “sakata sweet” is blooming.
#tomatoes. I’ve grown enough tomatoes to give to visitors and to make sauce three times so far. All of the varieties I started have made ripe fruit - “Uralskiy Ranniy” dwarf early determinate, heavy producer, loved containers. “Johnnys striped German” in a wine barrel has given me five pounds of ugly deliciousness so far. “Sokolades” isn’t *easy* to grow but the one in the grow bag gave me a few huge uglies, and the one in the bed with the beans is sprawling lavishly and setting some lovely fruit.
I planted “Graham’s good keeper” in a shady spot that was overrun by clover, but it’s made a few fruit anyway.
And three “Napoli roma” in the old raised bed are about to ripen loads of fruit.

More tomorrow, it’s time to listen to a podcast and chill with my kiddo!

@gardening another big win: #garlic.
I grew so much garlic! I grew enough garlic to give away and to use like mad in cooking. The chickens damaged one of the three beds before I protected them, but two of the beds made so many fine bulbs.
#leeks are coming along fine I think. I started two varieties, “verdonnet” and “mechelen blue,” this spring. It’s a rather intricate process - you start them outdoors, in very fine soil, and grow them in crowded rows until summer. Then they get transplanted into properly spaced rows in their full time beds. I’m at that stage - both varieties are knee high, but the dwarf ones are shorter. They look fine and nothing is bothering them, so they’re a win.

@gardening
#potatoes are a win, with an asterisk by it. I’ve eaten several meals of delicious homegrown potatoes! I made new, different mistakes this year, and I think I’ve got a better plan for next year. And for the rest of this year! The asterisk is because so far, I’d have had *more* meals of delicious potatoes if I’d just eaten the seed potatoes
I ran out of garden beds by the time I planted potatoes. I made one new potato patch by covering the lawn with cardboard and six inches of compost. Some of the potatoes were planted straight in the compost, and some got a scoop of bagged soil for their starting homes. A second bed used to be raspberries, with a layer of rough compost on top, with potatoes planted straight into the compost. I had still more seed potatoes, so the third bed is in the meadow, in the terraces with the corn.
The no dig lawn did really well until the chickens invaded. It’s made an entire 8 oz container of potato berries. Some of the plants are still going, but it’s honestly ruined by chickens. The rough compost has too many bugs for them to leave it alone, and they keep uncovering the tubers. Every single plant is growing tubers that are already bitter green and sprouting. Same story with the ex-raspberry bed.
The potatoes in the terraces are living a different life. I scratched them into unimproved dirt, and when they started coming up, I hilled them with what was handy - layers of hay and bagged soil. They hilled up great! They’ve given me an entire jar of potato berries! One of them went wilty so I pulled it, and its many tubers are next on the potato menu. And most importantly, nothing has bothered them. The equines ate the corn in the terraces, but they don’t care for potato vines. I’m going to plant the entire terrace space in potatoes next year, muahahah.
One of the seed companies sent me an email urging me to buy fall seed potatoes, so I looked it up, and yep it’s a thing. All you do is plant your green sprouty seed potatoes in August or September and let them get a head start on life. *I* have green sprouty potatoes! I’ve already replanted some russet burbanks in a fresh bed. Gonna get the terraces ready next!