Tag: vegetables

Sad Garden This Year

Wolsey1 Comment
It’s going slow.

This years garden is sad. None of the explosive growth from two summers ago. My plants are not doing great, and I am not sure why. I’ve had extreme pest issues, and in general a lot of yellowing leaves around the base of everything, and I have just not figures it out yet.

However, I’ll just keep at it.

Saddest tom’s and basil ever.

The most sad are the tomatoes and basil. I could not get any direct seeds to go, so I just bought some starts at the local place. It did get me to a nursery that I like, but I would have preferred to direct start the seeds myself.

When my shed project is done I am putting in a Spyder grow tent for early starts of my own. We will see if that does the trick, but for now, this is what I have.

Green onions are good, but nothing else is.

My nappa cabbage got consumed and is like two leaves total because the pest issue. I am not even sure what’s doing it. It’s not a bug I can see when I look, so it must be a night eater. No chives, but I had difficulties with those last time as well. I must be doing something wrong. My green onions are great though. They really are thriving.

You can see the potatoes are starting to grow out of the grow bags. I might add some extra soil and mound them to make sure we get a bunch of them come fall.

I have squares that are bare. My radishes did poorly, and an early heat patch caused them to bolt like woah! I never did get a beet to come up, and the turnips are weird and not doing anything but leaves when I check.

I ordered some more seeds from Epic Gardens for my summer planting. Although if you want fast, they are not it. I love the quality of their seeds, and the volume of info on the packaging. I ordered some zucchini summer squash, turnips, carrots, eggplant, and beets on 6/26/25, 6 days ago, and they do say 3-6 business days the shop out, but the 4th is this week, so we will see if it ships at all before next week. I was kind of anxious to get a move on, but we will see. My biggest gardening weakness is my lack of patience.

I still have lot’s of soil from spring, and the gravel to make my other two beds work better. I will probably make that work in winter when I have more time. The shed projects are taking up all my available healthy days for work.

So whatever happened to my garden this year, I am still undeterred. I will continue to try and research to see if I can find a solution.

It’s Official! I Have a Garden!

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The closest I have ever come to having a garden, was once when we lived in a trailer park, I planted tomatoes in a raised concrete bed. It worked out well, but the internet was not as good as it is now for hobby information, so I had a few flyers, and my grandmothers garden wisdom. Spoilers: My grandmother was not exactly a successful gardener.

I think that beauty bark was the best, most economical idea. I don’t have any issues walking on it, and it’s protecting the landscaping fabric.

I really like the layout here, but I think I am going to buy some garden bags, and plant potatoes in them and put them down the center next year. I got some potato seeds, like honest to god seeds for potatoes from Botanical Interests, and I am going to try those, as well as normal potato slips.

So far the chicken wire cage has kept all manner of critters out of things. We have feral cats, possums, squirrels, and whatever else. I am pleased with how well this has worked. I was worried I’d overdone it, but so far so good.

Above I have 4 sunflowers growing on the left side, then dill, parsley, and basil. I am kind of hoping the birds don’t demolish the sunflowers, but they can get into the chicken wire pretty easily. Just a tiny sliver of the herbs are visible.

Above, the green onions that are biggest are actually grocery store green onions I planted after I used up all the green parts. I have this fodmap thing with garlic and onions, and green onions don’t seem to mess with my stomach, so I use them a lot. The Tokyo Whites in the squares closest to the straw are just not doing as well. I didn’t get as much germination as I was hoping. I will replant some of the areas that missed tomorrow.

The broccoli has really taken off. I had to replant one square, but the rest are huge. I don’t really know when you harvest broccoli? I guess I am hoping I see it and get it before it flowers.

These are 55 day tomatoes. I think I planted them a wee bit early, as the weather has been on and off. I have the tomato cage set up, and I will train them up on twine. I need to rewatch a Gardner Scott Youtube video on how to remove the suckers on them. That one time I grew tomatoes I planted half a billion seeds and just let it go wild.

Above is my red cabbage and my strawberries. I bought the strawberries from Scenic Hills Farms on Etsy. I am very pleased. I ordered 10, and they gave me 12, and they all survived beautifully so far.

Above here is my cucumbers. I have four sunflower on the far right, but the rest are cucumbers. I chose a version called Homemade Pickles. It’s a 55 day version. I wanted as short a growing cycle as possible.

Above is my rhubarb. I know normally you split a plant and do it that way, but I know nobody in my city. I just bought seeds off of Amazon, and planted them. The seed package was less than helpful. I planted four sets of seeds in the 2 foot circle planter. One set did not take. I will replant that. I can always thin them back. Rhubarb always grew like a weed in the rental houses from my teens so I have no idea how one optimizes the environment. I have googled, and it seems like most articles spend time on how long the plant lives not on planting from scratch.

This is the mint planter that the feral cat got into, before I had a chance to wrap them in chicken wire. There is the teeny tiniest bit of mint starting. I am not too worried about the mint, because as the tag says, it’s garden herpes. I have this planter on the far side, away from anything else, and near a gravel driveway, in a raised bed. Containment is hopeful secure.

I did switch from some pretty copper name plates to white plastic ones. I found after a month, the copper ones corroded and were illegible. I didn’t want to use plastic, but pragmatic needs such as readability trump pretty.

I am very much looking forward to cooking with my own vegetables. I am able to harvest the grocery green onions, but the rest are still growing.

Lawn Terrorism & Other plant and food updates

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-Originally posted on Tumblr

My lawn was destroyed this winter. Part fo the reason is they used garbage fill dirt to level the yard, front and back. This means the dirt is filled with roofing shingles, plastic, metal nails, bear bottles, and ripped up beer cans.

Add to this, that we had a couple feral cats decide the front lawn was thier litter box, and I swear they dug up half the front lawn before I figured out what was up.

I love cats, so I just go out every time I see them in the lawns and since they are feral and the neighbors across the street are taking care of them, they have stuck to that side of the street lately.

To fix this, my wife and I bought 5 pounds of white clover seeds. I don’t like grass. It’s ecologically crappy, grows fast, and requires a lot of mowing. I hate mowing. Clover is also good for the soil, and returns nitrogen to it.

Planting clover is like ecological terrorism because I am sure my neighbors with nice manicured lawns are not going to be happy if it takes hold and spreads.

I am a shit neighbor, because I just planted it out. I have hated grass, to a weird spectrum-y level for as long as I remember. It’s creepy. It’s ecologically a poor idea. I am going to be shit neighbor and grow clover.

My raspberry jam worked out except for one 4 oz jar. We will just eat that first. I am on to strawberry jam today. I have to make some berry pancake syrup but I will plan that out and do that next time. Also, QFC did not have corn syrup which my recipe called for and I am not searching all over town for it.

I swear, I feel like I live in a 3rd world country. I can’t get tater tots or hash brown patties. Tahini is gone, and now corn syrup. I never know what product is going to be unavailable week to week. Hell, I have only seen oyster mushrooms in grocery stores once since the whole pandemic began.

Once my garden is established I should figure out mushrooms.

This is my broccoli. I planted it way too late in the season, but we will see how it goes!

My red cabbage is peaking out too. It was also planted way too late in the season, so I am watching it as well.

I bought some strawberry shoots off Etsy. I literally know nobody in my area, so I could not bum a shoot or two off of anyone. I bought 10, and they gave me 12, and they are already starting to perk up after 24 hours. Here’s hoping next year I have a good strawberry crop. I am glad I got the Etsy ones.

My green onions are not coming up yet, so I planted my grocery store green onions. I saw a video where someone did that and it worked out really well, so I am just going to do that with the last bunch I have in the fridge when I cut them down, and we will see how it goes.

Still no sign of life from my tomatoes. I am worried about them. If nothing happens in a week or so, I will buy some tomato starts from a nursery.

In all, this is going really really well. Buying a home has opened a whole world for me that I could not image being a part of. I am still angry that not everyone gets this chance.

Being able to garden, and having kitchen big enough to can? I think some folks don’t understand the incredible privilege it is to have that kind of space. I could not have done this in my last 564 square foot apartment. I couldn’t even afford to store canning materials I was only going to use once a year do to space constraints.

I am so grateful I can do this. I don’t think I will ever take this for granted.