Blight in the Garden

This blog started as a post about our first garden, so as we start prepping garden number 4, I thought it was time for an update.

For the last 2 years, we have struggled with blight in the garden.  As in, it has ruined everything. 

I have read a few methods of dealing with this.... Fire is one, but the garden is a weeeeeee bit too close to the house for me to light it on fire.  Another is to use a chemical that kills everything for a period of 1 year. We didn't want to miss out on a whole gardening year if we could help it though.  The last was to basically hot compost the garden til it reached a hot enough temperature to kill the blight, so we are trying that.

We bought some "construction grade plastic wrap" on amazon and covered the garden, leaving a little extra wrap to hang over the edges.  Yesterday, I soaked the garden down and rolled the plastic out. Then Jake came and helped me line the edges with wood to hold it down and hold the heat in.

The interwebs said that this process would take 1 week in summer, but 4-6 weeks in spring...

So in about a month, we will pull it up and plant. I think we're going to purchase plants instead of seed starting this year, and I hope this will take care of the blight!!

Garden, Year 3!

We got started on our garden a bit early this year, and it's going great! These seeds were all planted around the beginning of last month. (So early Feb) and we transplanted the peas and cucumbers into the bigger pots about 2 weeks ago.


We need to transplant those little ones probably this weekend. It's musclin (lettuce mix) and spinach (in the container where everything is falling over due to the last watering), two types of tomatoes that are coming up nicely, and Serrano and bell peppers - but for some reason the bell peppers haven't sprouted at all.

We also have a container with basil, oregano and thyme, but that's barely sprouted as well.

We're certainly getting a better feel for how to plant, how to water, what to do to care for them early - what we actually want to eat!

It's been a mild winter, so I'm not craving spring like I normally am, but boy I could go for some garden fresh produce!

Guest Post: Train Up a Cuke in the Way it Should Grow

As many of you know, Mary Beth and I began our foray into vegetable gardening last summer. It was an experience, indeed. We both brought a good deal of knowledge to the bed, the result of good parenting I guess. Nevertheless, we made a few blunders.

One in particular concerns the effective utilization of support when growing cucumbers. "Wait. Do you mean to tell me that a vine which produces, on average, 5 1-2lb fully mature cucumbers needs something to grow on?" Well, it wasn't quite like that.

Last year we were convinced that running a string from the fence to the deck, which had multiple strings running vertically, would suffice. Suffice it to say, it didn't. Before we were able to train the tendrils to grow up the hanging strings, they had already spread themselves out and started producing cucumbers. Ever try lifting 10lbs of cucumbers while untangling the vine from 5 other cucumber vines without destroying vine, leaf or cucumber? Had you happened to mosey on by the Diva household (I guess since I am guest blogging I must accept the terminology) on this occasion, you might have wondered if an anthropological explanation for the Diva and her man playing twister in their garden exists.

I digress. Much like a child we have learned that it is easier to beat the cucumber into submission early on...I mean carefully train... This enables each plant to soak up the sun, not crowd one another out, and produce lots of tasty treats.

I write this somewhat tongue in cheek. As the picture indicates to the observant gardener, we may have planted too many too close. But, in the case of my parents, sometimes it takes two attempts before the third turns out perfect.

Diva Garden Year 2

I haven't really blogged about the garden this year - mostly because it started out as an utter failure. All our seed pods rotted, we had to buy some plants at the farmer's market, and then the tornado hit, and it's been so hot that everything is dying... and yet...

The flower garden in the front yard looks great, and our butterfly bush is working. There were easily 20 butterflies on it this past weekend.

The garden is really starting to look good. It looks like we'll have potatoes, red onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, bell peppers, cayenne peppers and maybe a handful of bush beans. I'm really glad we decided to space the plants out this year. We're having a lot higher success rate.

My lettuce mixture is also doing nicely and i think I'll be able to start using the greens soon in salads, yum.

Even the composter that Jake and I designed and built is going really well. Look at all those worms and all that black gold! (I'm hoping Jake will write a guest post with our design plans for this compost along with what we learned.)

But most importantly are the blackberries. Now, you should know that blackberries, while being one of my favorite foods are a rare delicacy in the Domestic Diva household. They are just too darn expensive! But look at this gorgeous bush we planted last year. It is completely taking over. So please little birds and vermin, please do not eat my blackberries.

Season's Gleanings

My husband asked me "You're going to blog about the cucumbers and the bread together? What are you going to call it? 'Season's Gleanings'."

Well, now I am!!!

So. Cucumbers and bread.

I wasn't even going to blog about my sad looking loaf of Rosemary Garlic bread, but when I got home, my husband had demolished an entire loaf of it, so I thought that regardless of looks, it must taste yummy enough to be posted here. I purchased "Brenard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads" on half.com (for like $5, woohoo!) and attempted to make one last night. It turned out okay - I need to buy some wheat flour and next time I won't smoosh it after it's risen... and I'll probably try some fresh rosemary... but all in all, not a I was pretty pleased with how my first breadmaking attempt turned out.

And cucumbers!! Tonight we picked our first cucumber and a couple of lettuce leaves (for our burgers.) Oh my my my. If I can ever get everything growing, I have lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, jalepenos and celery - that would be the best salad EVER! Oh and if my carrots ever grow....

So tonight, we nomed on our bread and cucumbers :) cheap and DELICIOUS.

Compost Fail

Today, after what we shall refer to as a "worm ordering fail" (ladies and gentlemen, please check that an internet company hasn't gone under before trying to order products from them.), I FINALLY got my pound of red wiggler worms in today.

As my compost was beginning to outgrow its existing (closed but aerated) bin, I decided to put it in a bigger (open) bin for the worms to get to work to. Remember how I explained the "good smelling microorganisms" before? Well, we didn't get any of those, because I have the compost of A THOUSAND POOPY DIAPERS! (Actually, I might prefer the diapers...)

We've learned a few more things about composting tonight via the interwebs, and I thought I'd share. Balance the compost - people refer to this as "wet/dry", "green/brown" or "nitrogen/carbon". Too much fruit and grass makes you have a wet, green, smelly, nitrogen-y compost. Apparently, instead of recycling those Sunday papers we should be composting them.

We added a lot of "dry" material to the compost tonight and put a lid mostly covering the compost, and we're just going to pray that the worms eat and the carbon decomposes faster than our neighbors can report us for an "unregistered landfill". (Apparently you can get fined for this.) If it still smells tomorrow night, we may have to take more drastic action.

Gardening in 1975

Last night Jake and I went up to a local college. After visiting a comic book store, a used bookstore and my second ever Bubble Tea (much tastier than the first time I tried it.), I came home with a book on vegetable gardening. First of all, there are not very many books on vegetable gardening... Hundreds and hundreds of books about flowers, but if you wanna grow some food, you are on your own.

I started reading mine in bed last night. The author keeps talking about how vegetable gardening is gaining popularity due to the energy crisis and the high cost of food, not to mention the economic downturn... this book was written in 1975.

So I spent a little time on wikipedia this morning: 1975 - Watergate had just happened, and the Vietnam War, which had started almost 15 years previously, would FINALLY end that year in April. There was of course the ongoing Cold War, and they started Daylight Savings time in February because of an energy crisis. Wheel of Fortune started that year, which I thought was kinda fun. The world population was only 4 billion (we're at 6.8 billion now.) Apple Computer would be founded the next year and they're about to land on Mars.

And apparently, people liked to grow their own food.

I've already learned a lot from this book, but mostly, it's kinda fun to be connected to the gardening divas from 35 years ago.

Oh, and I have several sprouting cucumbers and romaine lettuces inside already!!!! :-)

Worms...

Currently Playing: The Bird and the Worm - Owl City

I just bought a half pound of worms. Red Wrigglers, they're called. Ew. So why, exactly, would I have done that? Because Jacob and I have been composting for awhile now... but there are two types of composting. Worm kind and microorganism kind. We were trying for the microorganism kind, but there are 2 key elements:

• warmth (you only need about 50 degrees)
• and air

We tried to get air by drilling holes in our composting container and shaking it every day so that it flipped around and got air in there... but we have learned that:

• Time + Warmth + Not Enough Air = SMELLY microorganisms...
  

(apparently if we had gotten enough air, the nice smelling microorganisms will compost your food for you. Seriously.)

However, worm composting is faster... worms can compost half their body weight a day... sooo... my 1/2 pound of worms can compost 1/4 pound of food a day. And make baby worms. Yay!

So while this may be more than you ever wanted to learn about my garbage (and smelly composting bin)... well, that's just too bad for you, I guess. :)

A Garden Girl

Currently Playing: Grapevine Fires by Death Cab For Cutie

Ever since I was a little girl and I read the American Girl Doll books about Molly and her Victory Garden... I have wanted to grow my own vegetables. My mother in law gave me some seeds so I went ahead and seeded them today (in the middle of my living room, haha.) I'm so excited! I've got (if they all come in)

• 7 Yellow Bell Pepper plants
• 10 Jalepeno Pepper plants
• 3 Watermelon plants
  
• 3 Early Girl Tomato plants
  
• 3 Big Boy Tomato plants
  
• 4 Sweet 100 Tomato plants
  
• 9 Cucumber plants
  
• 10 Celery plants
• 8 Spinach plants
  
• 12 Romaine Lettuce plants
  
• 3 Cilantro plants

I am really nervous that I'll kill everything, but hopefully some of these will grow up to be yummy food. I just can't imagine how proud I'll be to know that the cucumber on the table was grown by me!! I can't wait to move into our new house and get these little seedlings planted. It meets all of my goals of being frugal, healthy and enjoying a new fun hobby!


Cost: Seeds = free (from my Mother in law who had extras); Jiffy Profession Greenhouse =$5.50. Water can = $2.00. Total: $7.50

How To: http://urbanext.illinois.edu/veggies/directory.html <-- my vegetable bible... -Domestic Diva