Perhaps We Should Build a Rock Garden

In yesterday's post, I mentioned that part of our process for digging garden beds involved sorting through the soil, one wheelbarrow load at a time, to remove large rocks.  I even made a joke about how our soil seems to resemble New England's in the fact that its primary crop seems to be rocks.  Just in case you thought I was exaggerating...here is a photo of the 4' x 8 x 1' bed Nick dug this weekend, with the adjacent pile of rocks in the foreground.

That is why we collapsed on the couch Sunday night and could barely get up.  Ibuprofen is a wonderful thing.

Well, Hello There!

Yesterday Nick started digging the third (and final for this year) garden bed.  He has dug up a few cicada grubs, much to my disgust and repulsion.  So when he did a double-take looking into a shovelful of soil and remarked, "What the heck?" I was prepared for the worst.  I was not prepared for this little guy:

Frogs are awesome.  That is all.

Dig a Hole, Fill it Up

As you know, Nick and I have decided to try our hand(s?) at raised bed gardening.  The first bed was an experimental one over last fall and winter.  We bought a kit to create the bed, filled it with about a food of soil, and managed to grow radishes, lettuce, a few carrots, and even a little bit of broccoli.  Not bad for an experiment, but this year we wanted to do it right.  This meant actually digging the remaining beds.  We planned to expand from one to three this year.  Eventually we would like to have more, but we thought three was a manageable number for us beginners.  Over the course of about a week and a half, Nick put in bed #2, and we are nearly finished with bed #3 (finished digging it this afternoon).  Here's an overview:

Nick found some relatively cheap cedar to build the remaining two bed frames.  Cedar is best because it is the most naturally rot-resistant; you don't need to treat it with any chemicals that you would then have to worry about leaching into the soil.

Next, he marked off the 4' x 8' bed

After that came the heavy labor of digging.  He dug our second bed all by himself one day a week or so ago while I was away at work.  This involved digging up basically 32 cubic feet of dirt, since he dug about a foot down.  Except that our "soil" is in fact red clay that grows rocks the way New England soil does.  So each wheelbarrow load had to be manually sorted to remove large rocks as well as any vegetation already present.  Suffice to say I came home that day to find my husband collapsed on the couch.

After this came the fun part!  We have been collecting piles and piles of small trees and branches as we have cleared them for several months, and they've been sitting in heaps drying in the backyard.  

It was time to put them to use to create "biochar".  This process involves burning said plant matter in the trench to create a mineral-rich ash to feed the soil.  

Nick carefully tended to it to coax the small fire to migrate from one end of the bed to the other.  Once we were happy with it, we parked ourselves on the newly painted backyard swing and had a well-deserved drink.

Biochar!  Smells great and it's nutritious!  

Once the biochar had cooled (ie. the next day), Nick placed the frame, and in the empty site mixed in manure, a little bit of peat, some high-quality garden soil, a little bit of topsoil, and the original soil that had been dug out of the bed.  Et voila!

Isn't it gorgeous?  You'll notice that the walls on the bed he built (foreground) are only six inches tall, as compared to the twelve inches on the store-bought (background) bed.  That's because we did not dig the store-bought bed, so the twelve inches contained there is all there is.  It's a foot deep, whereas the new bed is about eighteen inches deep, most of it below-ground.

Both of these beds were seeded about a week ago with a variety of fruits and veggies, and we have transplanted some of our seedlings.  The transplants don't look so hot because we did not "harden them", or allow them to gradually acclimate to being outside.  We should have, and they may not make it, but if that happens the local farm store has transplants.

On a related note, the baby herbs are growing well, with the exception of my parsley and lavender which are not growing at all.  Bad seeds?

On the flip side, the radish seeds are definitely good; they were planted in the second bed only a week ago, and this is as of yesterday:

I foresee delicious pickled radishes in our future...

Goldfinches

Last week we had an impressive visit from some local (?) goldfinches.  In theory, Virginia is a year-round goldfinch habitat, but this is basically the first we've seen of them since we moved in.  About a half-dozen of them spent all day at the finch feeder, and consumed about 1/4 of the seed.  I can't help but wonder if were were just a pit stop for them on their way to another location, since a) they were ravenous; b) I haven't seen them since.  Hopefully they will come back, but I did snap a few photos from the inside of the house while they were pigging out. 

One goldfinch and a pair of sparrows 

(L) Three male and two female goldfinches; (R) Four male goldfinches!

While we're on the bird theme, my mother-in-law gave me this lovely birdhouse for my birthday.  Now I just have to figure out where to put it.  I'm thinking backyard since that's where the birds hang out, but I can't hang it on one of the many trees Nick is planning on taking down...

Sometimes Work IS Play

It's been a crazy week out here, and that's no understatement.  Monday afternoon we rushed our puppy to a specialty hospital nearly an hour away for an emergency evaluation of acute onset severe neck pain.  Turned out he'd slipped a disc in his neck, but no surgery was warranted (and he's doing very well now).  We returned home that evening, puppy in tow, to discover our youngest cat had loosened a window screen  and escaped.  After 18 or so heart-wrenching hours, he waltzed in the back door unscathed but for a few torn toenails.  Needless to say, we did not get much of anything done around the house the first half of this week.

We're making up for it this weekend, though!  The weather has been gorgeous (sans a spring thunderstorm yesterday morning, which was pretty in its own way), and things around here are already blooming like mad.  It's a fun surprise for us to discover how the yard looks in the spring.  Take a look!  These six photographs were all taken today.

Forsythia (yellow) with what I think is some sort of flowering cherry tree? 

The backyard view from the newly updated swing.

 The backyard view from the newly updated swing.

 

Flowering backyard tree

 

 

Our seedlings are growing nicely.  I now completely understand where the "Jack and the Beanstalk" story came from, because the bean seedlings are huge!

 

 GIGANTIC bush bean seedlings

 

Go tomatoes, go!

Basil!  I'm going to make pesto...and then some pesto... 

Even the herbs outside in the mini-greenhouse are germinating

 

Yesterday and today Nick and I picked the dead leaves up from the front of the house and re-mulched the whole front.  I did not take pictures because it does not photograph very well, but trust me when I say it looks much better.  The other area we are trying to tackle is around the big oak tree, also in front of the house.  There are a few scattered daffodils coming up there, but they are only on the side of the tree that faces the house, and the rest of the area around the tree was crowded with baby trees and shrubby stuff.  I say "was" because today we cut and pulled out all the baby trees, cleaned out the dead leaves, and I planted some bulbs that we dug up from the backyard last fall.  I have no idea if they'll grow, but what the heck?  Nick wants to use rocks on our property to make a circle around the tree and plant flowers (mostly daffodils) inside it.  I think it will look great!  It won't be finished until next year, though, because we want to move the daffodils currently growing closer to the tree.  Apparently you're not supposed to dig them up until about 2 months after they are done blooming, so it'll have to wait.  In the meantime, we can enjoy the daffodils as-is, and you can enjoy this photo of Nick with the colossal root he pulled up:

 

 

We've also been working on the bedframe for the guest bed, but I'll post photos of that when we're all finished.  Needless to say, I'm exhausted!  It's a good, accomplished sort of tired, though.  Plus, we have a whole day tomorrow to get even more done!
 



New Additions

Spring has well and truly arrived here in Northern Virginia.  Today it was a beautiful seventy degrees, and over the next few days the forecast predicts a climb to eighty degrees.  Tonight Nick is grilling our dinner outside, another marker of spring.  While he grills, plan to relax and enjoy a hard cider while sitting comfortably on our redone swing.

 

The swing had been left behind by the previous owners, and was sitting neglected in the front yard when I moved in.  I neglected to take a "before" photo, but picture an off-white frame covered with dirt and patches of rusty, and filthy beige seats with little clumps of moss growing on them.  I took the whole thing apart, cleaned it, spray-painted like a fiend (frame and seats), and enlisted Nick's help in putting the seats back in and rehanging it.  He also moved it to the backyard, which is a more pleasant place to sit and relax.  I kind of took over the project time this weekend with this thing (we were originally planning on sanding and staining the bed frame that Nick has finished building), but given how nice the weather is going to be this week, I think we'll be glad to have it.  It's pretty comfortable, too!

We have two other additions that are actually new.  The first is a beautiful personalized windchime, given to Nick as a groomsman gift from a wedding we recently attended.  It is quite pretty, and sounds even more lovely than it looks!

The last is more garden-related.  We ended up moving our bird feeders around to evade the squirrels, which resulted in the larger feeder and the smaller feeder on different poles.  This freed up a hook on the double-pole, so we bought a hanging basket and strawberry plants to try.  We've never had any luck growing them, so we didn't want to waste garden space on them, but a pretty little experiment in  a hanging basket ought to be fun.  If the squirrels don't get them first, that is.

A tiny baby berry!  Hooray!

 

 



Say Hello to my Little Friends

We recently returned home from a trip to visit my folks in Southern California.  The thing you may or may not know about the area is that it's basically a desert.  Not quite like Arizona is a desert (we went there too!), but it is generally rather warm and it does not rain much.  Over the years I've noticed that people in the LA area are trending more and more towards planting their yards with local drought-tolerant plants.  Native sages, buckwheat, wooly blue curls, etc.  It's environmentally friendly, and it usually looks really nice; much more interesting than a giant green lawn that uses up tons of water.  One category of plants that has really caught on is succulents.  I think succulents are amazing, and if we lived in LA I would plant them all over the place.  However, we live in the Mid-Atlantic, and they might look odd in our front yard.  I haven't ruled it out, but we're spending our time and money on the garden for now anyway, so landscaping is on the back burner.

However, I stopped dead in my tracks at Home Depot today when I spotted teeny-tiny pots of wee little succulents.  I have a square glass vase (left over from our wedding) that I had been thinking would look great in the guest room with some succulents in it, but I did not expect to find any out here.  I was wrong!

Look me in the eye and tell me they're not adorable.  Seriously.  You can't do it.  Why?  Because they're darling!

Springing Into Action

It's been a week and a half since we planted two trays of seeds in an effort to start our garden, and they are growing like gangbusters!  Many of the seeds started sprouting much earlier than their packaging suggested that they would, and we are delighted.  Not all of the seeds have sprouted yet, but there are more coming up every day.  See for yourself!

Weekend before last:

 

Tuesday this week:

 

Not bad, eh?  The bush beans are going like gangbusters.  And best of all, the Crossroads tomatoes are growing!

I also planted a number of herb seeds today.  Originally they were planted last week, but we had a bit of a setback.  While at our local grocery store last Friday, Nick found what looked like a nifty shelving setup for plant storage, one that could be placed indoors or out and enclosed with a variety of covers to promote heat and moisture retention (or even block out sunlight altogether).  We thought it would be a great way to use the various pots we'd accrued from our time as renters-with-a-patio, back when that was the only way we could grow things.  So we bought it and set it up, and it looked pretty good.

Neat, huh?  One little problem.  The joints on this thing are plastic, and not the most solidly made.  One snapped while Nick was putting it together.  "No problem", he said, and he used one of the various heavy-duty adhesives we have lying around to glue it back together.  He suggested I let it cure overnight before actually asking the structure to bear any weight.  So the next morning (with Nick out of town for 24 hours), as it was still standing and seemed solid, I loaded it up.  In hindsight, putting all of the pots on it at once instead of testing its strength gradually may have been a mistake (I bet you can see where this is going).  But when I was finished, it looked great, no question.

So I figured I was done, and went out to run some errands.  I came home a couple of hours later to find a minor catastrophe had taken place.

There were very nearly tears.  Instead I settled for a bunch of whiny, curse-word-filled text messages to my husband, who told me to just take the containers out and he would fix it when he got home.  Plus I was so mad I kicked (and broke) two clay pots. 

Thankfully, my husband is creative and resourceful, so he came up with a nifty and inexpensive cinder block-based fix this week.  And while I did have to replant nearly all of my herbs, in the long run it should still be fine (fingers crossed).  So far I have: rosemary, oregano, dill, basil, parsley, cilantro, chives, garlic chives, tarragon, thyme, and lavender.  Just bought spearmint seeds today (and baby bok choy, which is not an herb but is nonetheless exciting).  In theory, once these start to grow some of them will be transplanted to the garden beds, because a number of herbs act as natural pest repellants and help certain veggies grow.

I have also been working on my garden markers, so that once all of the veggies are in the garden, I can actually identify them.  This has been a fun project and it has hardly cost me anything.  Every time we go to Home Depot, I take home a handful of free wooden paint stirrers.  Has to be Home Depot because the Lowe's paint stirrers are some sort of foam composite, which is fine for stirring paint but not for this project.  I feel bad taking more than a few at a time, so it's taken me a couple of trips to get the quantity I wanted.  Then I spray about 2/3 of the length with a couple of coats of spay chalkboard paint (a few bucks).  I like the look of the chalkboard paint/ink, but didn't want to use actual chalk or chalk ink for this since it would wash off in the rain.  So I spent a few dollars on metallic Sharpie paint markers (love them!) and voila!

 

These still make me smile.  They're so cute!  I did not like the results with a white paint marker, so I used silver.  If there is more than one type of something, the variation is indicating in gold (ie. pickling versus slicing cucumbers).  And no, I can't erase and rewrite them, but all I have to do to make new ones is swing by Home Depot (where we regularly go anyway) and spend a few minutes in the garage with a can of spray paint.  Easy!