My first seed catalog came today!!!! I am so excited! Oddly enough there is a snowstorm going on outside right now and all I can see is warm, fertile soil. I need to start planning.

How 1 Month of growth makes a BIG difference!

Garden Sanctuary

You who walk,

Maybe with troubled thoughts,

Come, enter here and rest;

And may the sweet serenity of growing things,

And the heavenly,peace

Be mirrored in thy soul.

-Doxis M. Palmer

.

I really like this poem. It seems to explain everything that I feel about gardening and, as a result, life. I have a scrap of paper stuck in a picture frame in my house that says, "The World is Quiet Here." I try to live to this statement in every aspect of my life and pass on the quiet to others. Maybe my garden is for a catalyst for quiet and happiness?

.

anyway......
.

I would like to point out that this week I had help in the garden. Apparently a migrant worker stopped by and asked for a hoe. At first I was a little confused, but when I realized that it was my mom in a gardening hat asking for a garden tool...well, that cleared that up....and fast!!!! Whoosh!!!!

.

I have had to water twice the past week, but along with several quick and soaking rains that we have had, the garden has flourished. I am serious. The broccoli and cauliflower have just erupted. The tomatoes are taking over the edges of the garden and the beans have grown about 2 inches per day. (As you can see in pictures 1 and 2).

I am a bit disappointed in the peppers this year. They appear anemic and sluggish. I have added organic fertilizer, but they just seem to be stuck. They haven't died, but they haven't grown yet. The onions and the green beans are doing very nicely as you can see.


Until next week,

I wish for you quiet, dignity, and grace.

Dan

Ode to the Garden - Ms. Jones tells it like it is!

Who Loves a garden


finds within his soul


Life's whole;


He hears the anthem of the soil


While ingrates toil;


And sees beyond his little sphere


The waving fronds of heaven, clear.


-Louise Seymore Jones

Rainy Day (makes me Green, not Blue!)

"Let the rain kiss you.

Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.

Let the rain sing you a lullaby.

The rain makes still pools on the sidewalk.

The rain makes running pools in the gutter.

The rain plays a little spell-song on our roof at night-

And I love the rain."

-Langston Hughes

I LOVE the rain. There is nothing more relaxing than listening to the sound of rain peppered with the rumble of thunder. Totally delightful!

Even better than the relaxation is the effect that the rain is having on my garden. It seems as if one rainy day makes the plants shoot up in double time growth. The bamboo in my backyard isn't growing as fast as some of these vegetables. Marvelous!

The rain barrels are filled to capacity and this week I put in overflows near the tops of the barrels so that the water can be directed out of the garden rather than flooding my tomatoes and beans. The first picture is an excellent example of what the overflow is supposed to do. The pipe sticks outside the garden and allows the fastly cascading water to splash happily onto a water rock (in this case an old cider block! - gotta love poetic license!) Unless the rain comes down so hard and fast that the overflow cannot keep up with the water level, this is a fantastic way to make certain my grass is nicely watered!

Now....what happens when the gardener becomes lazy and says, "Gee....I don't have an extra pipe to add to this threaded overflow right now. Maybe I can wait and buy one the next time I am at the hardware store! What could possibly go wrong?" Well, folks....here is exactly what happens when said gardener sits on his lazy keester and forgets to get the extension pipe until the rain is pouring and overflowing.

Yep! That's right! The rain runs down the side of the barrel and begins to wash out the soil along the edge of the garden. This, in turn, undermines the beans that are planted along this side of the garden. I know that sloth is one of the seven deadly sins, but I think that this is going to qualify for the eighth deadly sin....stupidity! Ouch!

Now on a happier note....I transplanted a maple tree from another location on my property and the results are fabulous so far. I thought that I would share a pic of the tree in its new home. If you look hard enough, you can see a giant smile. Apparently, this tree is happy in its new home. The bucket is a drip bucket that I made out of a 5 gallon plastic bucket and a spigot. Slow, steady, life-bringing water right at the roots when the tree needs it the most....and very little evaporation. (and YES!, I know that it is crooked...the pole to point the tree straight up will come in a week or two.)

Until next week,
I wish for you quiet, dignity, and grace.
Dan

I don't know how I forgot this....

Look here and weep.......Muahahahahaha!!!!!!

Welcome additions....and a SURPRISE!!!

I have been meaning to add a bean-pole teepee to the garden since I planted it on Memorial Day, but it seems as if the more I try to do the less actually happens. Maybe I should try a summer resolution of "Slow Down!"

Sunday mornings are typically reserved for working in the garden and communing with nature. I like to put on my headphones and listen to Old Time Radio Podcasts while I weed, feed, construct, and chat with my plants. Happily, this was the first Sunday of the summer that I actually got to do this! However, the rest of the world was not co-operating. Case-in-point, I received more telephone calls in that four hours than I receive during an entire average week. It makes my heart happy to know that people need me and like to talk with me, however, I would like them to NOT call during my zen-like gardening phase on Sunday mornings. Some good did come out of these calls, although....

The bean-pole teepee was the first thing to be created. I lashed together scrap wood around a central pole. I even got the Sugar-Peas planted around the base. I am not a "pea" eater, but I do like these Sugar-Peas in stirfry. Also, others in the family like to eat the blasted things. You may notice in the picture to the left that in front of the Bean-Pole Teepee is an antique cultivator. This was one of Gramps and has been hidden away in the barn for years. Let me tell you....it is an AMAZING piece of garden machinery! This takes the "ho" out of hoeing. (I guess that leaves only the word "eing," which isn't really a word....and doesn't make a bit of sense, but I wanted to find a way to put the word "ho" into my blog. And now I appear to have completed that...twice!) Anyway, this thing works like a ding-dong! Grab the handles and push it down between the rows of plantings. No more weeds. No more back-breaking work with the hoe. (this one doesn't count!) And the ground is beautifully tilled. LOVE IT! I don't know why these things aren't as readily available as they used to be. If people knew how amazing these things are, everyone would have one in their gardens.

I will list a few pictures to show how the gardens are coming along below, but I feel is is very important to tell you about my SURPRISE!! It is considered very lucky in some cultures to have the blessing of a garden gnome. When a garden gnome comes to visit and live in your garden, it is because they like the garden and find it beautiful and comfortable. I thought that I would bring a bit of credibility into this lecture with the URL of a website dedicated to everything gnomish. http://www.gnomeland.co.uk/HISTORY.htm

Well, to keep a short story long.....my garden was visited by a gnome. Isn't he cute? Apparently, my garden needs so much work that goggles are necessary.

**********************************************

This is the back garden (peppers, green beans, onions, gourds). This is the garden that I started last year. It is coming along nicely. Nothing extra-ordinary to tell.

I am simply amazed at how nicely the tomatoes and the cabbages are doing in the front garden. It has only been two weeks, but they have doubled in size!

I am pleased with the lima beans, they have about a 85% germination rate. The same with the beets, but the wax beans are only at about a 25% germination rate.....and I am not happy! I am going to call the seed company and discuss this one with them.

Until next week,
I wish for you quiet, dignity, and grace.
Dan

Rain Barrel Storage

Oh, how my garden does grow! I thought that I would begin by showing off my beautiful peonies. These peonies came from my Great-Grandmother and have been divided, transplanted, and moved many, many times. None-the-less they are beautiful!

I have 5 other colors and species of Peony, but these are by far my favorite. These remind me so much of Old-world roses or as we always called them, "cabbage roses." I would love to have some of those.
Last year I kept thinking about how I could save $$ and still water my garden when it needed it the most. I had looked at rain barrels in magazines and gardener supply catalogs for awhile, but they just seemed over priced. Dad came up with the idea of making my own out of a food-storage drum. I looked up plans on the Internet and found that it wasn't as difficult as I thought. With a little engineering and some planning, it wouldn't be difficult at all. Right...

Dad found an advertisement in the local Free Enterprise about food-grade barrels for sale. They were used, but only $10 each! However, these barrels were out in the the middle of nowhere. I am not kidding when I tell you that there are several places in Trumbull County that person's from Deliverance wouldn't go! That was were we went. Believe it or not there is a auto-wrecking haven 10 miles outside of nowhere. That is the place. The stack of barrels was 6 high (laid on their sides) and about 20 long. Each one held a different food stuff: Vinegar, Red Wine, Soy Sauce, etc. So the overall odor was impressive...and the bees loved it!

Each barrel was sealed and still clean inside so Dad bought two of them. When he got them back to my house we had to open them up for a several weeks to get the Red Wine Vinegar and the Cooking Sherry smell out. Let me tell you how wonderful my barn smells right now! Lucky for me I love the smell of both of those.

The barrels are solid molded plastic with two openings in the top about 3" in diameter. In order to get them to do what I want I needed to cut some access holes in the top. I wanted a spigot on the bottom of the barrel to access the water. In case of water emergency I can use a watering-can and individually water the plants. The other thing I needed was a connector to attach it to the guttering system of my barn. The results have exceeded my expectations.

I did a bit of research into painting plastic so that I could cover the electric blue color of the barrels. Amazingly enough I found a spray paint in Wal-mart that covers plastic (like those ridiculous plastic chairs that people use on their patios because they are too cheap to buy good furniture (Do I have them?....I plead the fifth!) I chose brown to mimic the appearance of an old fashioned wine barrel. I don't think that turned out too badly.

Now I don't remember how to figure out rain fall levels into gallons so that I could comment on how much rain I need to fill the barrels. Each side of the roof is 20'x12'. Apparently, we had enough rain this week (mon/tues/wed) to fill each barrel half-way. These are 55 gallon drums, so that is an impressive amount of water fall for just that small amount of time (considering how the rain was mostly a drizzle rather than a hard rain.

Until next week,
I wish for you quiet, dignity, and grace.
Dan

...and they're off!!!!

Look everyone! It hasn't even been a week and the plants have burst forth in wild abandon! This is too, too, too exciting for words!

The small leaves are arugula plants and the large one is a "walk-on" pumpkin from last years Halloween decorations. That compost is some wild stuff! Just for the record, these are inside the cold frame. However, they were planted at the same time as the remainder of the garden and the cold frame has had less water. But here it is!

Until next week,
I wish for you quiet, dignity, and grace.
Dan

Memorial Day

Man o'man....the crops are planted. It took us two days, but they are in. I am very happy with the result, but tired. Last night I dreamed that I was planting! Humorously, my bedroom overlooks the gardens and I am convinced that I could hear the plants growing! Now all I need is some rain!

The pictures that I uploaded are of the plantings, but I thought it would be nice to list out what we planted. You will notice the lines of cord going North/South. These are the individual rows of seeds.

So what did we plant? Here it is:

• Front Garden
• 52 Tomato Plants
• 12 Broccoli Plants
• 8 Cauliflower Plants
• 4 Eggplants
• 3 Zucchini Plants
• 1 Summer Squash
• 8 Green Cabbage
• 4 Red Cabbage
• 5 Hills of Cucumbers
• 3 Lines of Lima Beans
• 2 Lines of Wax Beans
• 1 Line of Peas
• 1 Line of Beets
• 1 Line of Spinach
• 2 Lines of Edamame
• 2 Teepee's of Sugar Snap Peas
• 1 Line of Cilantro and Dill
• 1 Line of Cosmos
• 1 Line of Bachelor Buttons
• 1 Line of Poppies

Is that enough? Ha...just wait!

• Back Garden
• 30 Feet of Green Pole Beans
• 24 Green Pepper Plants (sweet)
• 4 Yellow Pepper Plants (sweet)
• 8 Red Pepper Plants (sweet)
• 8 Purple Pepper Plants (sweet)
• 15 Feet of Onions
• 4 Hills of Gourds (assorted and bird house)

And if that still isn't enough...

• Cold Frames
• Lettuce (salad mix)
• Carrots
• Arugula
  
  

The front garden hasn't been mulched yet, but you can see that the back garden has been covered with straw. I use straw because it decomposes and doesn't let weeds grow. On the garden paths I lay the straw very thick (about 3 inches) and over the plants I lightly shake the straw to cover the ground. I have found, in times past, that the straw keeps in moisture and keeps the sun from baking the clay ground into pottery!

.

Every Fall I "acquire" bales of straw from family members that used the straw as Halloween displays for their pumpkins, scarecrows, etc. This year I stored 6 bales in my barn for use this summer. This one simple step saved me $$ and no doubt made an excellent home for several small creatures. I am a big proponent of Organic gardening (some modifications....I am not a total purist!) and the straw comes in handy for helping to save resources.

.

When Alex tilled the front garden, I had him extend the perimeter past the fence so that I could plant flowers and herbs for cooking. This is a fortuitous action, because of a lack of proper planning, I ran out of room inside the garden. I also put in a garden bench and I plan on mulching this area with traditional bark mulch for aesthetic reasons as well as weed control.

.

As you can see in the picture, my lack of planning caused me to run out of room inside the garden so I needed to plant the cucumbers on the outside of the fence. Let's just hope that rabbits don't like cucumbers!

.

The last thing that I need to do before declaring this garden "finished" is to build the garden gate for the front garden. At the moment I have it completely ghetto rigged with an old piece of

plywood, a small piece of fence, a 2x2 post to hold it together and set on top of old lumber. This looks awful and requires the use of a power screw driver to gain entrance into the garden. I am not going to show a pic of this because it is so embarrassing. However, when I finish building the permanent gate, I may slip in a small pic to show the before and after. Let me tell you....no matter what the new gate looks like, it can't look anywhere near as bad as what's there now!

.

Now its time to sit back and listen to the garden grow!

Until next week,
I wish for you quiet, dignity, and grace.
Dan

Major Expansion (an act...not a person!)

This year I decided to expand (the garden...not my butt/gut, that just happened without consultation! LOL)

Mom & Dad were very quiet about the subject because that meant that they would be helping with my new undertaking (parents aren't always given choices). But they were all for it when I reminded them of all the wonderful produce that we 'produced' last year. The small back garden was unexpandable, so some preparations to a new area were necessary before I could "dig in." The front of my barn had a large enough area, but the ginormous pine tree with its deadly tentacles (I mean roots!) needed to go! The fence that Gram had was rotten, so it needed to go, and the plants were in desperate need of therapy and a new home. Picture 1 shows the before situation.


I then had Alex use the tractor driven rototiller to break up the soil and treasure hunt for pine tree roots! It is amazing how quickly the tiller can find pine tree roots the size of my leg! But the power of the tiller was so great that it made match sticks out of the roots with little problem. Dad had a friend come over and drill the post holes for the fence posts (13 post holes in 40 mins). Let me tell you...that was amazing! If I had a place to store a tractor like that...you better believe that I would have one!


Eric came over and helped Dad and I put the fence up last week. Eric is 12 and is very much a gardener. He is helping me with the gardening this year while he works on his gardening merit badge for Boy Scouts. It is a shame that there isn't a house cleaning merit badge or else I would certainly be helping him (read: watching him) earn that one in my house! LOL

Because the rabbits are a major force in my little, but magnificent, Garden of Earthly Delight, Dad and I added footer boards to discourage digging. We also added header boards to keep the fence from sagging. All that is left to do is build the gate and plant the crops.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day and that is traditionally the day that Grandpa always planted his gardens. As a big proponent of tradition and the idea that "pretty much anything that Gramps did is good enough for me!", I will be out there in the fields after the Memorial Day Parade tomorrow. I am resting up my green thumb tonight, because tomorrow it will be working its magic.

BTW - In case anyone thinks that I am exaggerating about the killer rabbits, check out pic 4. I circled the two culprits that are laying, sneakily in wait for my tender, fragile plants to be left untended, unguarded, and unmolested......these rabbits are ~EVIL~!!!

Until next week,
I wish for you quiet, dignity, and grace.
Dan

Beginning with Last Year

Last year I asked for a plot of earth large enough to create a vegetable garden. The result was a beautiful spot that took on the characteristics of the majestic hanging gardens of Babylon (or at the very least the vegetable patch on the lower back 40 of the hanging gardens of Babylon.) The endeavor started out as a place to plant a few tomatoes and some basil. Well....never one to do anything half-way, I decided not to battle the hordes of rabbits that were waiting patiently to gobble up my fresh planted produce and fence in the plot. But, the plot of land was sloping and the soil was poor, so I had to make improvements. (Notice that for a few stinky vegetables I am practically going into the poor house trying to make them grow!)

SO, I fixed the slope, fenced it in, improved the soil and planted my crops (mom & dad helped!) Here is the result:
The area is 20'x16'. You can see the pole beans climbing up the fence to the right. The green peppers in the foreground and the tomatoes toward the rear. We decided to do everything organic and so the result was a bit more work....but, so worth it! I think we ended up with about 40 quarts of green beans just from a 20' row of pole beans. The cucumbers, eggplant, zucchini, acorn squash, and banana peppers are not visible.

In addition to the garden is a cold frame built of of my bedroom windows (I had all the windows in the house replaced and these were a great size for a cold frame!!) The cold frames held the lettuce, spring onions, and spinach. I also, decided to plant a few flowers and I ended up with a nice vase of zinnias and I absolutely fell in love with cosmos!

My friend Renee loaned me her composter and all of the materials from the garden and the kitchen go into that giant green rotating barrel. It is truly a miracle worker! You will also notice that Dad took the time to cut some small branches, strip them of leaves, and create a bent-twig fence to hold back the beans. It also kept the straw from the path from crowding out the plants.

I think that the only big problem was Japanese Beetles!! Yikes!! I found an old book with natural remedies. Sometime soon I will tell you all about that adventure! Ug!

In the bottom of the second picture you can just see the garlic bed under construction. A friend of mine from church assured me that I could grow garlic with no problems. Plant it in November....pick it in July! I am going to dedicate a post to that in the near future! The results so far are extraordinary!!

Until next week,
I wish for you quiet, dignity, and grace.
Dan