Helping Friends I Don't Know and Other Updates

The other day, Caela helped me make a connection between my self proclaimed "friend supported agriculture" and my most recent efforts to organize people here to help others. She is doing her anthropology field work in St. Lucia where Hurricane Tomas recently caused significant damage to the island. People there are currently searching for water and working to figure out when they will have sources of income again.

One of the supplies they expressed a need for was seeds. This way they can plant gardens to feed their families in the upcoming months as they get back on their feet, replant farms, and excavate their houses after landslides.

In response, I went down to a and asked for their help. Not only were their seed packets marked down to half off but they generously offered to help me find any seeds I needed. To say the least, I was happy to see my many hours and dollars spent there result in their willingness to help me help others. And as a gardener, I feel very strongly in empowering and enabling otheres to grow their own. That's why I started this blog after all!



As an update on my garden, it is now put "to bed" for the winter. Based on my observations this morning, it looks like last night was the first killing frost of the year. Considering that it's late November, that is pretty remarkable. Luckily I pulled out the rest of my tomato and basil plants yesterday so nothing went to waste. Now I just need to do something with the green tomatoes and basil on my counter...

Fall is for planting (from October)

Or at least the botanical garden likes to tell people that the fall is the best time to plant native wildflowers and other plants. So, as my summer vegetables are limping along and still producing a little bit, I'm working today on the flower garden. I've been gradually turning the "grass" in our front yard into a native plant area to attract pollinators and to just plain look pretty. Today, while David is at work (I'm working this weekend so I'm off during the week) I can work on messing up his grass mowing patterns :)




There are many methods out there for making this transition. One of the easiest is to cover the grass and kill it and then plant things on top of it (keeps the nutrients there from the grass). But that takes a while and I want to get plants in the ground today. The solution is that I'm stripping off the layer of grass, digging out the yummy Carolina clay, putting in topsoil/compost and then adding the plants and mulch. There is something strangely satisfying about swinging a pickaxe at the ridiculous clay that is my yard.






Then the hard part of digging holes in a clay and gravel soil begins. After a day's worth of labor (or at least a few hours), I had a hole about a foot deep covering the ground I wanted for this part of the garden addition. I even found the remains of an old pipe or culvert that was made out of clay.


In case you're wondering, all of the grass and clay stay here at the Cranford casa. I use the grass to try and establish grass in other parts of the yard and the dirt goes to even out other spots in the yard. We try to not throw "away" anything- that whole sustainability, low impact thing. Unfortunately we don't produce enough mulch and compost here to keep up with the growing garden so I have to bring that in to supplement the home grown stuff.

At the moment, my garden is mostly successful. The tomatoes are coming off a few a day, eggplants are producing really well, the cucumbers are small but plentiful, and we're having trouble keeping up with okra. And the melons continue to slowly produce yummy fruits. I even have 1 pot of lettuce still producing.






Today's harvest and the largest of my watermelons.























I need to plant my fall crops sooner than later so that they'll be ready "on time". So far I think that I'll be growing acorn squash, pie pumpkins, broccoli, and kale. And of course I'll be putting in garlic again.
In the meantime I've turned some of my focus to my wildflowers that I sprouted this spring. They've become super root bound so I'm putting them into larger pots so that they can get a bit more established before I put them in the ground this fall. I'll have extras I'm sure so let me know if you'd like to trade native wildflowers for anything else.
Growing up, my Mom never put up any fruit or vegetables that I remember. So I've been working the whole canning thing with a healthy dose of apprehension about doing everything the right way. The most recent achievement in my kitchen was canning tomatoes.

Berrytastic Times

As the summer draws on, the challenges are high temperatures and figuring out what to do with the produce. For me, the latter gets accelerated when I make trips over to David's parents' house.


For blueberries (from the in-laws), I've been making sorbet for a few years. My newest experiment is these blueberry cupcakes. Both turned out great and are disappearing fast!

Give me a shout if you want hot peppers!

A bloomin' good time

I've had quite a few questions lately about the various flowers of vegetables (and fruits) in my garden. So you can either guess which plants the flowers below belong to or just scroll down the page to see a list of answers.

You choice are:
eggplant
tomato
tomatillo
cucumber
canteloupe
watermelon
bean


a-

b-

c-

d-

e-

f-









And the answers are:
a- cucumber, b- tomatillo, c-cantaloupe, d-eggplant, e-watermelon, f-tomato

Early Summer Transitions

The main garden area.




I also have some pretty flowers blooming. It's really nice to have the different flowers take turns making the garden pretty.















At this point in the growing season, some things are ending and others are ready to take off. The garlic came out a couple of weeks ago, the snap peas are done, and the kale will be ending soon. And the asparagus is long over. I've also had some lettuce fizzle out on me but since I staggered my lettuce planting, I still have plenty.

On the upswing are tomatoes (they're as big around as quarters now), we have kiwi sized melons (full size will be grapefruit size), and the okra, beans, watermelons, cucumbers, and eggplant are looking good. I'm also still thinking about starting more tomatillos.




Eggplants & Tomatillos on the left, melons/watermelons in the middle.

And if any of you remember my fridge with a whole shelf dedicated to wildflower seeds, those have worked out too. I have quite a few different types of native wildflower seedlings that I need to transition into the ground. The really good news there is that I will start getting flowers on most of the next year and I didn't buy any new flowering plants this spring! David- did you read that- I didn't buy any vegetable seedlings either for that matter. They've all come from seed. (Disclaimer: I did spend a good amount of money on seeds and soil- but not nearly as much as if I'd bought plants).

If any local folks reading this need any seeds or eggplant seedlings, let me know. I have leftovers of both. And we're already getting veggies from the Cranfords' (David's folks) garden so we'll be sharing that around soon as well. On a similar note, have I forgotten anything? Omission of squash and peppers was intentional in case you were wondering.

May Progress

Gardening this spring has been sporadic for me with hopes of things doing OK in between work days. But this weekend, the extra day (along with not working this weekend) is helping me feel on top of things. And David is around to help out, which is nice.

General updates:
The snap peas have been producing for about a week.
The tomato plants are starting to flower.
My kale is happy (I've been eating a lot of kale chips lately).
I have 3 different kinds of lettuce that I've been eating.
We harvested garlic this weekend (pictures below) and will hopefully not need to buy any for the next year.

David's love for things unplanned won out over my need for order and we have 2 volunteer melon plants in the garden. They look like the midget melon plants we had in that area last year- so we'll see what happens. They're flowering and have some female flowers now so it should only be a matter of time before we get some fruit.

Trees growing outside have reduced the amount of sun coming in my windows over the last month or so. This is great for keeping the house cool but doesn't give seedlings much light. So I have now given up on starting any more seeds inside and am only planting things directly outside. In the list of failed starts are tomatillos, okra, watermelons, and melons (sorry- I'm not posting pictures of the evidence). One of my goals for this weekend has been to plant more of these things outside so that I don't miss out on their yumminess.

Because it's already kinda hot and humid since it rained a ton on Friday, I have to take breaks and cool off inside. One of my distractions this weekend was making whoopie pies. If you haven't experienced these lovely treats, think cupcake tops with icing in the middle. They have them up in the northeast and my recent trip to Maine inspired me to try my hand at making them. So with some of the last strawberries of the season, I made fresh strawberry whoopie pies. They turned out pretty good. The next challenge will be making pumpkin ones, which were requested by Caela.