much excitement in the spring garden

much to tell since my memorial day adventures...

got all the boxes planted, finally.  after the initial seedlings haul, i've been to two other nurseries to pick up "just a few more things".  oy.  it's like an addiction - just one more, i can fit it in.  but i think i'm done. i picked up a cool sweet bay plant along the way, and potted it for the patio.  i think i need one more pot of annuals or a potted fruit tree for the patio.  then i'll really be done.  really.

much excitement on the low-maintenance-ing of the garden front.  we (meaning hubs) forged 3 connected rain barrels from the 55 gallon drums i brought home a few weeks ago.  they are so cool!  why does free water make me so giddy?  we don't have the gutter diverter on yet, and they are already filled with just the rain we've had.  such a simple, cheap project that is so integral to the happiness of previously mentioned plant addict.  oddly, i loathe watering.  i love planting, weeding, staking, harvesting, but watering just sort of pisses me off.  and this video from the penn state cooperative extension office (shout out!), gave us the confidence to just do it.  easy peasy.

yeah, string of 3 barrels for 165 gallons of not-having-to-pull-the-effing-hose around happiness

connected at top and bottom

close up of strainer thingy on top

so the barrels, combined with this dope new drip irrigation system that the hubs designed, ordered and installed, has me so freakin happy.  all drip irrigation supplies ordered from fedco.  they are so helpful up in there.

inspiration for said drip irrigation system:  new portable speakers for the ipod, and the minutemen playing

drip irrigation checklist:  tape, hoses, fittings, coffee, blowtorch, cute hubs

and maybe the most exciting piece of news is that i have some baby broccoli growing!  i'm so proud (that i haven't killed it yet)!

variety = packman.  wocka, wocka, wocka, wocka, ...

my camera battery died after the broc pics, so i will have to take some pictures of the rocking patio garden for next post.  marigolds are coming up and are almost ready to be thinned and transplanted.  the borage is getting big and i'll probably move 3 of the 4 plants coming up.  the foliage is kind of prickly - not the best thing to have planted by the front door, perhaps?  [also, i saw some full-grown borage on a garden walk i took this past weekend, and i'm not a bit afeared of its size.  we'll see...]

scary-big borage plant - eeeeeeek!

my next tasks will be figuring out how i'm going to hold up the tomatoes.  cages?  trellis?  stakes?  i want something pretty and sturdy.  since this garden is front and center in our yard, i don't love the idea of the ugly cages, but i already have them, and i know they work.  i would love to design up something more rustic looking.  but i've read that some trellis systems take a lot of fussing.  something to obsess over for the next week or so.

and now for some inspiring pictures from the pocket garden tour i went on with my mom this weekend in portsmouth.  lots of fabulous ideas out there.  maybe for future revisions to our space.

cool idea for pathway = wood stumps on end 

love the way this rosemary is potted with another plant trellised over it

neat-o bench with tree/vine? up through middle.  nice and rustic-y

loved this dna-looking sculpture that housed a vigorous vine

um, hi, i'm a honeysuckle that blends oh so well with my neighbor the gorgeous rose.  what's your name?

friends are necessary in the garden

this flavor of osteospermum always attracts me.  they absolutely pop!

how great is this idea for garden sculpture?  i would have chosen different plants, but the idea is solid.

random ornate gate

mmmm, maple-licious!

i definitely want to work alliums into my perennial garden.  just love how they're so space-age looking

simple yet elegant staking for allium

hard to see but neat pairing of tree limb stakes - the farther one has a birdhouse on top

curved twigs as edging

this garden had a lot of "themed" beds:  tea, perfume, zoo animals, etc

"tea bed" complete with sun tea brewer

um, yeah, little person hang out idea or what?

grown-together hornbeam tree archway = drooooool

rustic archway = future entrance to the orchard?

a memorial weekend to remember

the hubs decided to take some major time off around the holiday weekend so that we could get this garden started.  we borrowed grampy's trusty ranger to get more lumber, and some 55 gallon barrels to collect rain with.  [borrowing the truck for the umpteenth time this spring prompted a major fight very important discussion between me and the hubs on getting our own truck.  that's in the works as i type.]

still life, with ranger

as i went out for the barrels, a local landscaper dropped 9 yards of rich, composty soil in our yard.  at least he charged us for 9 yards, but it's probably more like 11 or 12.

hard to tell scale, but there is a rake and a shovel on the right-most pile, and there are actually 3 piles.  sheesh.

hubs got to work building the one million raised beds.  we had hemmed and hawed about the material to use, but in the end chose to go with pressure treated.  especially since these are for edibles, we wanted to be cautious.  we got the kind with cqa, which has nothing on the epa action list, though there are no comprehensive studies on the long-term effects.  what a choice.  we couldn't really afford cedar, so we went ahead with it.  it's fairly simple construction - 2 2X6s on a side, corner posts of 4X4s, drilled and screwed.

the work room - hubs is particularly proud of his cord hanging innovations

boxes were made at a break-neck pace.  then set in their spot and leveled in all directions.

hubs leveling each one meticulously upon my command that they "not look wonky"

we put down landscape fabric across the bottom to slow the progress of rocks up through the boxes.  then i filled with the brown goodness.  i almost counted the number of shovelfuls for each wheelbarrow, and then wheelbarrow trips to fill each box, but didn't.  even i am not that big of a geek.  but trust me, it was a lot.

and shoveling, and shoveling, and shoveling...

the original plan had all the boxes lined right up, all pretty like.  of course that ain't real life.  there's a huge rock in the way, so the boxes closest to the house had to be shifted over.  of course those were the boxes that i had pegged for the strawberries, and those puppies were more than ready to be planted, having sat in our fridge since the fedco tree sale a month ago.  so we adjusted our plan, but had to move a ton of soil just to be able to fit in the other strawberry box in its new spot.  in retrospect, i should have just let the strawberries go in different boxes.  i'm so stupidly stubborn like that.

cute, neat "plan".  note:  straight lines, orderly boxes, humor

yummy variety of strawberry that we are now the proud parents of...yup, 50 plants

our blueberry box dimensions and position changed about 5 times

to the boy: "do you want to help?"
boy:  "no, i want to be the director"
i kid you not.

in maine, there's this half-joked about rule that you have to get your garden in by memorial day or else you're screwed, vegetably speaking.  the growing season is so short that you absolutely have to maximize the time those suckers are pushing out their spawn.  so i was actually a bit stressed about getting them in the ground.  tuesday, the day after the full-court press at all nurseries in the area, i loaded up on starts.  it felt amazing.  two kinds of broccoli, two kinds of cabbage, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, bush cukes, sweet peppers, swiss chard, and tomatoes, including 10 roma, 8 slicers, and 2 kinds of cherry.  whew!

there's my girls!

teaching the boy how to plant a tomato - tool box required

before aerial

after aerial

tornado warnings (!!) prevented me from completing the last of the boxes today.  but i feel great that i pretty much made that memorial day garden deadline.  now hubs just has to remember to water them.

and a partridge in a pear tree

sadly, no partridges.  but pear trees?  yes!  hubs worked hard to plant our first four pear sticks that will eventually be espaliered into a fence of sorts on our west property line.

we plotted the first tree ten feet from the road.  which sounds like a large distance, and lots of potentially wasted space.  but due to the level of geek i am, i had hauled out the measuring tape in the thick of winter and measured the distance from the road that it took the snow bank to peter out.  granted, this past winter was probably the definition of the ten-year-storm, but i don't want our little tree-fence to be crushed by the snow plow.  they are planted on ten foot centers, which to me sounded too big, but i was assured by the proper authorities that i have to imagine the little branches many years down the road when they will indeed fill in the space.  many, many, many years.

my man knows how to plant a tree; and oh yeah, rockin the white sneaks

with sprinkles of azomite, humic acid, and lime, hubs patiently set each stick into her place.  i'm really grateful that he loves trees so much.  he takes such care with each one.  i'm glad to be planter of annuals and hardy perennials that don't mind my abuse.  i can get away with my slapdash approach, and if my methods cause some plants to fail, oh well.  but trees need a steady hand, and they get that here at good fortune orchard.

hubs getting help from the boy and his pink elephant watering can

starting at the one closest the road, the varieties are:  bosc, anjou, aurora, seckel.  all purchased from fedco trees (an amazing source of all garden goodness).

it feels a bit weird to have delineated the space between our yard and our neighbors so cleanly.  ours.  yours.  the two yards have always flowed together.  decades ago the land was one big farm.  it especially feels kinda goofy due to the odd shape of our lots.  don't know why the deed took our yard from the drain hole through their well out diagonally to a big tree.  but that's how it works here in new england.  there was probably a stubborn cow in the way when they drew up the line.  my dream has always been to acquire their lot after they move on, and make their cool old barn into a studio for me and the hubs.  but that barn is now collapsing in disrepair.  so maybe we'll just get the land...

i also thought it might be fun to record how our kitchen garden is coming along.  not much quite yet.  got seeds planted two weeks ago, and some have started to sprout.

itty bitty cilantro and marigold; basil is that small, too

borage fairly bursting - i'm impressed

more marigolds on this side.  also split and transplanted the lavender, one on each side of the steps

the seeds would probably be doing better if it hadn't been raining and hovering around 50 degrees for the last ten days.  this past weekend, in the window of sunshine along with the pear planting, hubs got half our veggie boxes constructed.

this week will bring a big delivery of soil for the boxes which couldn't be screened with all the wet weather as well as (hopefully) a stump pulled out to straighten the driveway.  i'm trying not to look at the forecast which claims another wet week ahead.