Garden Notes

2024 Gardening Season Officially Underway

Tuesday I liberated this little sweet mint plant from the grocery store because I have a lifelong goal of being a girl who can cultivate a mint patch. I had a good one going before the move but needless to say that's long dead and gone. Hopefully I can get the pot back, though. It was a really pretty molded terra-cotta pot. On Wednesday I snagged a couple pots of potting soil from dad's house and brought them home on the bus. Thursday I finally got the motivation to move my mint plant over to a more appropriately sized pot for growing a sustainable patch for making sekanjabin and tisanes. Also food I guess, probably? My roommate got motivated to go pick out a hose. It's super long but that's what we need. Our water spigot is on the opposite side of the house from the garden. :/

The household chef requested I try to grow this bit of ginger left over after he cooked us some Massaman curry, so I potted it up this afternoon after we got back from the Emergency Room. Said chef woke up this morning and couldn't remember yesterday. Turned out to be nothing serious and probably a blood sugar thing, but it still took all day at the hospital to get everything figured out. After our roommate got home I took advantage of the bro time to have some alone time for myself in the garden.

I cleared out last year's dead plants and the leaves that had accumulated in and around the raised garden beds. Didn't snap a pic of the dead plants and debris, but I got one after. I got another after I cleared out the terracotta water pots and the sunflower stalks we're trying to repurpose. I was still full of nervous energy and anxiety, so I started on amending the soil. I added some well-aged manure to what seemed like pure Colorado topsoil. As I go I try to pull out the big rocks but there are so many here. It just goes to show, some places you pay for someone to give you rocks, and sometimes you pay someone to take them away. So far I just toss them into the rock mulch. Maybe someday all of them will be out of the raised beds, but that day is not this day. Or any day any time soon. At the end of the day, these were the fruits of my labors:

Roommate for the win! He went out to get local compost and biochar on his day off. I finished mixing the manure into the big bed Thursday, then roomie jumped in to do a big final push with all his giant muscles (he's a giant with reasonable muscles, not a normal sized person with giant muscles, to be clear). He spread the amendements, turned the soil, and left me this lovely bed for planting. Squee!

It took my boy and I literally all day to water in the fucking beds. That is all. Glad I started laying out some of the live plants we have already, otherwise I wouldn't feel like I actually did anything with plants.

Ok, there's a little hand-waving here. The boy and I did get the water-retention pots back into the beds yesterday before we watered the beds in. But this is the view of the garden as of the end of today. All the ready things currently planned for the beds is in the ground. Pea trellis construction is underway. Pest-prevention methods for the garden are being implemented. So we're gonna flash back a little to look at my evolving garden plans.

Obviously the first plan is the closest to the brainstorm/dream phase, with reasearch added before drawing my initial plan. The scale is all off because I did it from memory and memory sucks, kids. Plan 1.2 was what I drew this morning to adjust for more realistic measurements. The final plan is what I drew after I'd finished for the day and was watering in again. As and after I finished with that I gathered up leaf debris, some of which I cleaned out of the bed a few days ago, and spread a light layer over the top of the soil to help keep it from drying out. As an added bonus I saw at least 4 sleeping ladybugs I transported to the garden beds along with my leaf debris mulch. Added pest-fighting bonus for being resourceful.

Surviving the Snow

We had a terrible cold snap that came with several inches of snow that stuck around for 3 days because. It. Just. Kept. Snowing. Then it took awhile for the night time temperatures to come back up above freezing. I was sure that everything would be crushed and brown when the snow finally melted, but I was wrong! Everything was fine, greener even from all the water in the melting snow. The cat grass had sprouted under the snow along with both shallots, some basil, and maaaaaybe some garlic?

After seeing how much these little mirror garlands cost online I made my own. Heavy fishing line, little crescent moon mirrors, and E600. I added some little bells and I have prisms to add as little hanging bits. Now I just have to figure out how to get it high enough it won't clothesline the guys.