Overdue garden update

Current photo of our tomato jungle.

The garden is doing pretty well. Tomatoes are producing enough to keep up with our family's daily consumption (though not enough for canning surplus, unfortunately). A lot of the plants have an early blight, so some are dropping leaves and decreasing production. Lesson learned: plant tomatoes farther apart in this wet climate for better air circulation and less fungal infection.

I'm glad we let the volunteer tomato plants in the onion bed grow - they are producing enough cherry tomatoes for us to bring home a surplus after each garden visit. Plus they were free and took no effort - the best kind of garden guest!

Here are some glamor shots of our produce so far:

Kosovo, Kellogg's Breakfast. I love both of these varieties. Flavorful, beautiful and large. Definitely hoping to get them in the garden again next year.

Hillbilly Potato Leaf (beautiful, isn't it?), various peppers, fresh herbs.

A day's harvest (Black Krim on left, Kosovo on right and top), and our onion harvest for the year.

We are learning a lot this year about gardening in a community garden plot and in a far wetter climate than I've ever gardened in before. While I like the community feel of the garden, it's a bit frustrating when garden neighbors neglect their plots and let pests run rampant. I've resigned myself to a cucurbit-free garden plot for the foreseeable future, as the squash bugs are going crazy and transmitting wilt all over the place. Not a scene I want to mess with. BUT the tomatoes seem very do-able, and will definitely be a large component of our garden again next year. Plus Doodle now knows how to spot squash bugs, Japanese beetles, potato beetles and striped cucumber beetles, and will squish them on the spot. That's my girl.

Quick garden update: 13 June

The garden is looking lush, green and awesome. The potato beetles have found our lone ground cherry plant, so every time we go I squash a couple egg masses and 2-6 potato beetle larvae on that plant. They're avoiding the peppers, and have only shown up on one of the potato-leaf tomato plants so far. I'm hoping it stays that way.

The onions are getting bigger and we've started thinning them, using the picked ones in dinners.

We also had our first ripe strawberry, tiny though it was.

It's nice to be bringing things home from the garden, feeling like it's starting to produce more.

Weekly garden update: 26 May

Garden in a rainstorm, 23 May.

The garden is coming along nicely. The onions are looking great, and the tomatoes and peppers are all in their spots. (Well, all except the one additional tomato plant I just *had* to pick up at the farmer's market this week. It goes in tonight. THEN we're done adding tomatoes. Really.)

Behold: the tomatoes. 15 plants. Next to them: the peppers. 15 plants.

Just so you don't think our garden is all beauty and serenity, I present the carnage:

The stems on the left were once chard. I'm not sure what munched it, but the critter was quite thorough. On the left you'll see our current leafy green nemesis, the flea beetle. Darn buggers are munching small holes all throughout our radish and bok choy leaves. It seems the bok choy and spinach will be coming out of the garden soon, while there's still enough leaf for us to eat.

Hmm, perhaps their absence would free up enough room for oh, I don't know, maybe another tomato plant?

Wildflower walk

This Thursday we went on a wildflower walk with J's lab group. It was great to get out and enjoy the verdant PA spring, and to learn some of the plants around here.

The group. A parasitic plant (Conopholis americana). J's boss using Doodle's magnifying glass.

Botanizing papa. Yellow lady's slipper orchid (Cypripedium parviflorum).
Pink lady's slipper orchid (Cypripedium acaule).

Bunch of lady's slippers. Tiger beetle eating an ant. Fringed milkwort (Polygala paucifolia).

Little violet. Another orchid (Galearis spectabilis).

It was a nice afternoon full of good company, cool plants, and even a few bees.

Garden: week 1

Greetings from the cutest garden gnomes ever.

Garden progress has been made! Thursday the kids and I went out to the garden for a little weeding and onion planting in the late afternoon. J met us there after work and helped while we ate a picnic dinner and I finished getting 6 (short) rows of yellow Stuttegarter onions planted.

Today (Saturday) we went back for a 4-hour stint. J finished turning the soil and getting compost mixed in, so now the whole plot is ready for plants! YAY! I planted more rows of the yellow onions (14.25 total), 3 rows of red onions, and 1.75 rows of shallots. That leaves one small section on that half of the garden for perennial herbs, strawberries, and Doodle's fairy house.

On the other half we started planting some starts I bought (spinach, chard and bok choy) plus pea seeds. These we caged with a little wire enclosure as the garden-wide fence will not be up until May 14th and we want to keep the rabbits and groundhogs out. If our camera were not acting up I would have taken a photo of our lovely garden today (and of my first farmer's burn/tan of the season). Alas, no photos. Instead, here's one of the garden from last weekend, photoshopped with our current garden layout plan.

When we return from Utah we'll be just a week away from the average last frost day. One more week after that and we're getting tomatoes!!!! and peppers... which I just realized I forgot to put on the diagram. Drat. Next week.

Haleakala

Subalpine zone, Haleakala National Park

One of our last days in Hawaii J and I took a daytrip with the kiddos up to Haleakala National Park, the big crater in the middle of Maui. We wanted to see a wild Sandalwood tree (J's Master's thesis study organism), some Silverswords (plants native to Hawaii, some of which are endangered), and some Nene (Hawaiian Geese). We struck out on the Nene, but found some introduced Chukar near the top of the crater. I grumbled a little about the chukar, as a guy had pointed us to the trail saying "There's some Nene right over there!" Oh well.

The sandalwood was everything J had hoped, and even had some bracken fern (his PhD study organism) growing up and out of it. We stopped and botanized in the subalpine zone, where I would definitely spend more time given the opportunity. We saw some Vaccinium (Hawaiian huckleberries), a bunch of neat leguminous shrubs, and even found a cute yellow-faced solitary bee!

cute little male solitary bee!

The silverswords were beautiful, especially in the near-barren alpine zone where they grow. The visitor center at the top is just short of 10,000 feet elevation, and you can see everything from up there. We could see the ocean all around the island, and some of the nearby islands. It was beautiful. I'm glad we decided to head up country because we got to see some beautiful areas and explore some ecosystems that are very different from the beach.

On the long, winding drive up the mountain we saw some hitchhikers with longboards and helmet-cams, and realized they had just done something like this:



We totally would have picked up the guys just to hear their story, but with the carseats and kiddos we didn't have room for them. Bummer.

A little farther up the mountain we saw another pair of guys coming down on their longboards. Looked a little scary, but definitely a rush. The road is perfect for this; it's nice and smooth, long, well maintained, and low traffic. I'm under orders from my mom to not tell my brother about this.



Pretty amazing, don't you think?

First

Our first dusting of snow in State College. The holly looks so festive, so perfect for the season. (Note the oaks, still with a bunch of lower leaves, in the background. I wonder when they'll finally drop.)

Today we made a paper chain to countdown the days until Doodle's birthday and Christmas. This year she has declared that we should start decorating for Christmas before her bday, so we're putting wires on our stuffed birds (to perch them in our tree, once we have it) and glitter-gluing our assortment of collected cones (also for the tree). I'm enjoying the holiday crafting with Doodle, plus sneakily sewing some surprises for her after she goes to bed.

Here's to embracing the magic and the fun of December!

Nympheaceae (water lilies)

Some photos of water lilies from a pond at CalTech.

Same photo stylized with Photoshop.

Same photo stylized with Photoshop.

Seedlings

The gardening is going great. But just as my excitement is peaking, what does the weather do today? It snows. Off and on, most of the day. Frick.

We got some good gardening done yesterday with the neighbors. We planted all of our onion starts (Walla Walla sweets and candy onions), plus replanted all of the volunteer onions and garlic that we dug from the garden before tilling. We now have just over three 30-foot rows of onions! YAYYYY! We also got peas, lettuce, chard and spinach in the ground last night. Neighbor J worked at digging the rows and planting seeds while partner J and I planted onions. Neighbor L watched the kiddos, which was great. It's so much easier to garden when you can do cooperative labor and child care. I love it!

Today I bought more seeds. Yep, more. We needed more lettuce, spinach, carrots and beets. Plus we've decided to till up the back part of the gardenable area too, so I got some pumpkin, butternut and acorn squash seeds since we'll have the space. Have I mentioned how excited I am about growing all of this food? I only hope that the deer will leave it alone. That said, I need to get some nasturtium and marigold seed...those are good repellant plants for pests, and they're pretty.

Since we'll definitely hit below freezing tonight we've obviously not planted all of our starts out. Well, J has been eager, so we have two tiny tomato plants out in the pots next to the front porch, but we'll cover those and hope they live. Other than that, all the warmer weather plants are living inside. Here are our little photosynthetic prides and joy.

Mmm, basil.

Little tomato

Maximizing space use, even in the terrarium.

Tomatoes and venus fly traps?