Buckets of Rain

Unlike everyone else East of the Rockies, the month of June brought us shit for rain. If it weren't for our rain harvester (which is running low) we would have lost a lot of our younger transplants. Thankfully the past couple of days has brought some spits in fits and took some of the stress off of things for at least another day or two.

He Says, She Says

He says: Are these parsnip seeds ready to be cut and dried?

She says: I have no idea.

What do you say?

Art and the other white meat

We took a break from the backyard today to honor an invite from my good friend Andy. Our destination was the Manayunk (pronounced Man-ee-unk) Arts Festival. The folks in this area, and all of Philadelphia for that matter, know and fully support the arts. We are very fortunate to have all of this available to us and mass trans accessible to boot.

The day was gorgeous and the booths were plenty. There was a small mid-afternoon shower,


which made time for beers.

After the rain let up we commenced our walk down Main Street and laughed for a good while at this:



The festival had its very own pork tour with all sorts of pork propaganda. I can't explain why, but it just felt out of place. Now I love pork just as much as the next pork eating person, but if it's not handled right, things can go real bad real quick. A quick assessment of the staff told me today was not a good day to toy with my health.


Lord knows I don't want to end up like this guy. Although he does look rather jolly.

The only other not-art related entertainment was...


these guys. Where I went to college, the hired help still rode horses.

Spuds

I spotted our first potato flower today—a bit later than last year's first, but that's to be expected since we planted them late. The Yukon Golds and the All Blues are loaded with buds, but so far none have popped. We got some much-needed rain tonight, though, so perhaps they'll be inspired to show themselves tomorrow.

Chickens make terrible gardeners

I know you all have plenty of volunteer tomatoes, squash, and other whatnot's growing in your compost bins and we are no different. However, this year we discovered a volunteer (we think) squash plant in the chicken's pen area. Unfortunately we will never know what variety it is because the girls just can't keep from gnawing at it. If they only knew how much food they could get I'm sure they would leave it alone.

I Suck at Tag

So, it seems that Ali and Our Friend Ben have tagged us for the Six Random Things meme.

Six Random Things...

hmmm...

Six Random Things...

Okay here we go:

1. We got married first and told the ‘rents later.

2. I readily adopt accents although my Pittsburghese is predominant. Over the past couple of years Meg’s accent (she’s not from the ‘Burgh) has been raising some suspicion.

3. We weren’t even dating when we moved in together. We foolishly thought we would just be roommates.

4. We do not own a microwave.

5. We’re both hopelessly devoted to our Nalgene bottles, and say to hell with leeching carcinogens.

6. Before people meet us, we’re quite often mistaken to be lesbians because my name is Kelly. But we like that, because we like to challenge people’s assumptions about gender norms.

A lot of people have done this one, I think, so if you haven't done it yet and want to play, consider yourselves tagged. If you dare to accept this challenge, the rules are as follows:

Link to the person who tagged you.

Post the rules on the blog.

Write six random things about yourself.

Tag six people at the end of your post.

Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

Enjoy & Cheers

Just shy of a soapbox

If you haven't already, stop by The Slow Cook and check out Ed's post on fish sustainabilty. Please don't take this as a preaching of politics, I'm in love with our differences, but I do appreciate being informed. I knew salmon and a few other species were on the "oh shit" list, but damn, there are a bunch more that need to stay off my plate. If you find what Ed has shared helpful, kick ass, if not... well, still kick ass. Cheers.

Scape Time

Our garlic started putting up scapes a few weeks ago, and we've been harvesting them to cook with. We probably let them get too big—the conventional wisdom is that cutting scapes off will let the plant spend more energy on making a big, fat bulb of garlic—but we're lazy and they look cool. Incidentally, Patrick just put up a really interesting post about breeding garlic from seed that's worth checking out if you're interested in that kind of thing.

Chicken Tractor, or, Meat Sounds

The chicken tractor is built. It only took a few hours to do, and now we can finally put the chickens to work on something other than breakfast. It would be nice to let them completely free range, but we have neighbors who would think that's a bad idea. What we plan to do is toss the ladies in the tractor every morning and park it on a bare garden bed or under some trees*. After years of neglect, there is a fair amount of bad shit crawling about this place and we, with the chickens' help, aim to improve the situation.

*Have you ever heard the sounds a chicken makes when it eats a really fat grub? Imagine someone eating a raw steak with their mouths open. It may not be as loud, but yeah, it's nasty. I just have to remember that the slurping makes the eggs taste better. Shit, that doesn't help at all.

Meet n Greet

Today, I took the kitten out to visit the chickens for the first time. I was hoping for some cute antics but, alas, the chickens were terrified and the kitten learned to hiss.

Flyover

About 20 minutes ago I heard an incredibly loud woosh-ing sound coming from outside. I looked out the window and saw the basket of a hot air balloon about two inches from my face. I could plainly see the people inside, though they were looking the other way. I'm sure they were admiring our garden.

I took this photo after they had flown over the house and started to lift a bit. They were so low over the backyard that I'm surprised they didn't snag the flag pole.

Whisper words of wisdom

Our flowers are beginning to bloom and the garden is literally buzzing with activity (I can't believe I just used that pun, how pathetic. Bartender!).

We are still very new to flowers and things here are a little haphazard. Hey, what can I say, we're veggie people. Anywho, we want more flowers. It won't change the flavor of our blog, but we thought we'd warn you just the same.

A Vertical Garden

If our garden is anything, it's tall. The latest addition to our trellis collection is for our dry beans growing around the flagpole. The lines peak at about twelve feet. By the time we're done our garden will most likely look like a small city with natural (and very edible) skyscrapers.

Taters

This year we've paired our potatoes with corn and beans. The taters were buried in trenches while their companions were settled on the top of the mounds. The plan was to fill the trenches in as the taters grew. So we did just that.


We got some straw and chopped it up a bit with some hedge clippers. By the way this is not easy, straw is tough. Meg has got some guns.


After we filled the trenches pretty good with straw, we looted some compost from a heap of leaves that was left in our yard since before we even moved here. The compost was pretty good, but Meg ended up getting some poison ivy on her face. It's not too bad, but it still sucks all the same.


We topped off the straw with the black gold and gave it a good bit of water. What all this will do is allow the potatoes to produce tubers off their buried stems and it will also allow the corn and beans to generate stronger root systems. Oh, and it looks real nice too.

A Good Shelling

We've had snow and snap peas for a bit. Yesterday we had our first taste of some shelling peas. For some reason we have always had a hard time growing these things. Usually a warm or cold blooded pest was to blame. This year things were a bit slow to mature because our first planting got mucked with by chipmunks and I am also suspicious of a bad batch of seeds. Oh well, that's the gardening experience I suppose. Did I mention that Meg is clutch with the Alfredo sauce? Throw in some of these peas and... Hot Damn!

The Newest Member of the Menagerie

We went to a party bearing lettuce and a Lego helicopter, and we left with a kitten. So far it's been a good trade. And I don't even like cats.

Top o' the Coop 6/14/08

The top of the chicken coop offers the best view of the garden, so every once in a while we take photos from up there. It's a good way to see what's going on.

Battle for the brassicas

Last year everyone of our brassicas was molested to ruin by a flock of cabbage moths and their demon worm spawn. This year we installed some spun forcefields (just say no to chemicals) and victory is ours. We just harvested our first head of broccoli and it was effing delicious.

Please Send Salad Dressing

Our Buttercrunch and Black Seeded Simpson lettuce is delicious, but it's not very heat tolerant. This past week of 100 degree weather came close to doing it in, so today we harvested everything that was getting ready to bolt. Now we have about six gallons of lettuce.


Needless to say, we'll be foisting this on everyone we see.

Strung Out

Today we began phase two of our tomato trellis project. This involved training the tomatoes up pieces of string so that they grow nice and tall and also look cool. As an added bonus, these tomatoes will not make you puke your guts out, though that has less to do with our trellis than it does with the fact that we don't water our garden with sewerage.

Anyway, to get our trellis in working order we first cut pieces of string slightly longer than the height of the trellis and tied little loops at one end. Then, we threw them up and over the top bar of the trellis so we could make a good, tight slipknot.

Here's Kelly throwing the string into place. He was making a weird face in the photo so I cropped that out and left his disembodied hand.


Here's the resulting trusty slipknot.


When the strings were hung above each tomato plant, we tied the end of the string loosely around the stem of each plant and twisted it up a bit, so the tomatoes were supported by the string.


I was too busy playing with string to take many illustrative photos, but if you'd like some more detail about this method of supporting tomatoes I highly recommend this entertaining video from Hanna of This Garden Is Illegal.

Too Much

Too hot.

Too green.

Purple Coneflower

Last year we started a bed of perennial flowers in the middle of the garden to add some color and also to attract good bugs. From seed, we planted daisies, black eyed Susans, purple coneflowers, and bee balm—but, since some plants take a few years to get established we didn't get the full array of blooms last year.


This year everything already has a year of growing under its belt and the coneflowers, which were absent last year, made their first appearance.

At the First Sign of Danger

Potato beetles suck. This striped little shit did not receive the same affection as did the mice we found yesterday. Oh no siree. We squashed him (or her, I really don't care) proper.

An Unfortunate Disturbance

It was effing hot today. Our greens weren't to happy about it so we brought out the shade cloth to kind of ease the pain. For convenience we keep the cloth balled up in the lower shed. I carried the wadded mass into the garden and when I unfurled it I saw a large mouse fall to the ground and scurry through the fence.

As I started cursing out the little bastard for chewing a hole in the sheet, I heard a little squeak that instantly made me feel remorse. I knew what it was and a short scan of the ground revealed what I feared. The little bastard that ate a hole in our sheet was nesting with a pair of her own little bastards.

When I showed the tots to Meg, she asked if I was going to kill them. I answered no, even though I knew I already had. I set them down where I saw their mother retreat (hopeful), but when I checked back a few hours later they were still there, just kind of squirming a bit.

I don't know why I felt sad, they really are bastards. I think perhaps it's because they never had the chance to live and really piss me off. Oh well. Little bastards.

A Bunch of Michigan Bananas

A.K.A. paw paws.


It's amazing how long these things take to ripen ... the paw paws were some of the first trees to flower, yet we won't be eating any fruit from them until October.

In about two months,

picture this

but with tomatoes.

Mr. Big Pea

He's still looking a bit thin, but he'll fatten up soon.

Gooseberries, anyone?

Our landlord has an affinity for unusual fruit, and he's planted lots of it over the years. Unfortunately, he's the only one who knows where half of it is. Recently we came across some gooseberry bushes that we hadn't been aware of—we've found four, though Christopher has mentioned a few more that have so far eluded us.

Either way, the bushes we know of are loaded with nice, fat gooseberries and the internets tell me that they should be ripe relatively soon. We're keeping an eye on them and we may make jam with them once they're ripe, since they have a lot of natural pectin. Other than that, we don't really know what to do with them.

Are any of you guys familiar with gooseberries? Got any good recipes to share?

Kind of Blue

Our potatoes are coming up like weeds. The weeds are coming up like weeds, too, but the potatoes are a much more welcome presence in the garden. The All Blue sprouts are my favorites because they're, predictably, all blue.

Click to Enlarge

Meg has a fantastic eye for photography. She pulled this shot off with our little Canon point and shoot (I can't wait to see what she does with a real camera). When I get to see the pics at the end of the day it completely changes how I see the composition of our garden. It really is pretty cool and I am so grateful for it.

By the way, this photo is taken through the bean lines on our new trellis and the object in the background is the flag pole. Oh yeah, we got a new pirate flag (two years of flight shredded the last one). I think it looks like the mast of a ship.