Mini Forest of Veggies!

Baby Brussels sprouts are so pretty and frilly!  They took longer than the cauliflower to come up, but they look quite similar.

The green onions came out today too!

The Walla Walla onions are leaving them in the dust!  They're like a sparse grass at this point.

And I have marigolds!  They look like half the things that pop up initially.  I guess all babies look similar.

And the pretty nasturtiums are coming up now!

The cauliflower is going nuts.  They don't seem to mind the Dixie Cups, and in fact the cups are starting to break down, so they may not have been as bad of a choice as I initially thought.

The buttercrunch and green salad bowl lettuce babes are looking strong, leaning toward the sun.

The broccoli is looking a little sad.  These are the only ones growing so far.  Might have to move them to a sunnier location.

What I'm really excited about, what makes me totally giddy, is the zucchini.  I don't know why.  Maybe it's because store-bought zucchini sucks and has a terrible aftertaste.  Maybe it's because I so desperately want some zucchini bread.  Maybe it's because *someone* gave away a handful of my zucchinis from last year to neighbors who didn't even know what it was or what to do with it and I had none to store for winter.  Maybe it's because they look so darn awesome!

They're fuzzy!!!

Look at this little guy who got shoved over into the corner!  NOBODY PUTS BABY IN THE CORNER! 

And this one is wearing its seedpod as a hat.  Heh.  It must be hard to adjust to being in the light after a year in a seedpod.  I'd need a visor, too. 

And those are my babies today.  My hand is healing okay and I was able to move furniture around and set up the third greenhouse to start the herbs and the San Marzano tomatoes.  Speaking of tomatoes, none of my tomatoes or the hot peppers are sprouting yet.  Sadness.  I need tomatoes and peppers.  I even found out last year mine had blight, and there's something organic you can use to keep them from getting blight, so I'm ready for them this year.  C'mon, guys.  You can do it!

Potatoes?  Yea or nay?  I can't decide.  They're so cheap at the store, and someone once said not to waste time growing things that are cheap and easily available at the stores, but the idea of it intrigues me.  I keep watching YouTube videos and they seem simple enough.  So, just in case, I've kept some of my potatoes that started to sprout.  Oh, the possibilities!

Step-by-Step: Building Raised Beds

Step 1: Largely ignore your extensive, well-thought-out schematic with exact numbers, and also largely ignore the choice of boards you picked out for the beds.  Schematics are for nerds.  You need 18 boards and some semblance of stakes, so just wing it.

Step 2: Go to Menard's and shop for lumber driving your tiny car, accompanied by carpenter-brother and his miter saw.  Squish everything and everyone inside without securing anything (except brother into seatbelt) so that wood rubs loudly up against itself every time you speed up, slow down, or turn.  Also, some wood avalanche action makes it a much more exciting drive home.

Step 3: Set up all the tools, extension cords, large containers of pop, and lumber on the brick patio and watch brother do all the cutting, because miter saws are dangerous and you need all your digits and limbs.  Sit back and enjoy the smell of cut pine.  Feeling useless is optional -- I wouldn't recommend it.  Enjoy the break.

Step 4: With a drill, let your brother screw the stakes and the short edges of the beds together and then you can toss them blindly about the yard.  They are not boomerangs.  Heave far and hard.

Step 5: With a drill, let your brother attempt to screw the long boards to the short boards, attaching at the stake, despite the fact that they are ridiculously bowed and cannot make a right angle or a rectangle no matter how much you manhandle them.  Marvel at his strength and how quickly he beats the wood into submission.  Also, galvanized screws are the exact same color as March grass in northern Illinois, so don't set them on the ground as you go or you will never see them again until you're wandering around barefoot on a nice summer day.  You can help by holding the screws and handing them to carpenter-brother as he goes along and makes it look effortless.

Step 6: Don't forget to charge the drill battery, otherwise you will run out of drill juice after three of six beds are assembled and your carpenter-brother will go home for the day, leaving you alone with the pieces of raised beds lying on the lawn, taunting you mercilessly.

Step 7: Charge the drill battery and run some errands.

Step 8: Decide that assembly is not that difficult, grab charged drill battery and tackle the remaining boxes yourself.  Remember, there's no crying in carpentry, but you can swear, throw tantrums, and the semi-frozen dog turds still sitting all around the yard make excellent targets for your angry foot should you need something to kick.  (Wash shoes later.)  (Make sure they're still semi-frozen first, because eww.)

Step 9: Don't ever buy bowed wood again.  Curse wood.  Curse pine trees.  Curse Menard's.  Curse everything.  Realize how strong you have to be to hold bowed 8-foot board square against the stake that's attached to a bowed 4-foot board, and somehow make your hand into a vice grip while trying to drill with the other. Skills develop, mistakes are made, missions are accomplished, plus a few extra screw holes are made, but they go together when you throw your whole body into it.  (Advil.  Four at a time.  Every 4 hours.  You'll be fine.)

Step 10: When everything is assembled and you begin driving in stakes along the sides of the beds with a mallet, don't underestimate the danger of a rubber tool.  Also, yes, if you hit the stake harder, you need to hit it fewer times, but be careful.

Step 11: When you accidentally crush the webbing between your thumb and index finger between the stake and an extra-hard whack with the mallet, and the tiny hole begins gushing blood everywhere while your whole hand floods with the still-internal blood, ignore it.  Let the adrenaline do what it was intended to do and numb you to the agony of your crushed flesh.  Just keep swimming.  Just keep swimming.

Step 12: Screw all remaining stakes at the sides of the beds to the walls and drip blood all over.  You are a badass.  Leave evidence of your badassery.

Step 13: Stand back and admire the six massive raised beds you made and breathe in the air of accomplishment.  Or is that blood?  It's kind of metallicy.  Blood and accomplishment: breathe it in!

Step 14: Clean up the yard, get the tools inside, and attend to your bloody hand, which is now starting to coagulate and things are sticking together in places where they shouldn't.  Now you can cry while washing the hole in your hand.  Admire your wound.  Blood blisters look like leeches, bruises are pretty, and Neosporin exists for a reason.  Above all else, always, always, always use the non-stick bandages.  You don't want to lose the nice, healthy clot that forms because the bandage fabric becomes a part of it.  (Remember cutting off the tip of your finger and having to tear that bandage off over a garbage container at work, fighting tears, almost throwing up from the pain?  Yeah, don't do that again.)  Take pictures and put them on Facebook so you get lots of sympathy from your friends who are still intact and safely indoors on a cold spring day.

You are done.  Go drink that bottle of wine you got for your birthday and eat some steak.  You're a freakin' builder now.  Enjoy.

Life and Sacrifice

It's a veritable field of onions!

It doesn't matter that they're only 3 inches tall, it's a field of them!

(You know, if fields grew in vertical toilet paper rolls, corralled in an aluminum roasting pan.)

Do you know what newborn cauliflower looks like?  THIS!

 

And here's the seedling sweet bell pepper reaching victoriously from the dirt to the sky, heathen sun-worshippers that they are.

There was one broccoli seedling today as well, but it looks identical to the cauliflower.  Which reminds me, we grew up pronouncing it COLLIE-flower, and I'm uncomfortably aware that most pronounce it COLLA-flower, which sounds somewhat more refined, but I prefer COLLIE-flower due to my love of animals.

Here's another potential problem: Sky.

That's one smug, plant-loving kitty.  Don't let her sweetness fool you.

She's already tried to get under the plastic covering of the greenhouse and gave up before she broke through the plastic.  She's petrified of the outdoors, doesn't even like to sit in the window, but the greenhouse draws her, beckons to her.  I come home from work and find her sleeping on the floor up against the side of it.  I'm a little frightened about what she's going to do if she figures out how to get in.  The very idea that the life I created could be killed in its infancy by my Godzilla-like cat keeps me awake at night, listening to what she's doing, trying to determine if the noises I'm hearing are paws and fangs on the greenhouse or something else.  If she eats my nasturtiums, I'm going to move her to the attic.  On the one hand, I'm aware of the irony that I'm just letting the babies grow up so I can eat them later, protective that she not eat them too soon.  On the other hand, I'm slightly proud of her prowess, watching her try to figure out how to get in there, almost daring her to keep trying.  Ahh, to chose allegiance to feline or plantae, so difficult!  Maybe I'll give her one or two when they're older, more mature, able to entertain her a bit more than tiny little nubbins of leaves.  Is that wrong?  Sacrifice some of my children to entertain the cat?  Am I taking all of this too seriously?  Yeah, okay, I'll go do some laundry and stop contemplating cat vs. vegetables.

Comittment

Thus far, I have started the following seeds:

Walla Walla onions (sowed 3/10) -- sprouting like crazy

Corno de Toro Giallo sweet pepper (sowed 3/10) -- just starting to sprout

Snowball Y Improved cauliflower (sowed 3/18) -- just starting to sprout

Hot pepperoncini (sowed 3/18)

Hot poblano/ancho pepper (sowed 3/18)

Wild Galapagos tomatoes (sowed 3/18)

Nutribud broccoli (sowed 3/18)

Emerald Beauty Hybrid squash (sowed 3/22)

Golden Zucchini squash (sowed 3/22)

Catskill Brussels sprout (sowed 3/22)

Garlic chives (sowed 3/22)

Parade onion (sowed 3/22)

Green Salad Bowl lettuce (sowed 3/22)

Buttercrunch lettuce (sowed 3/22)

Petite French Dwarf Mix marigolds (sowed 3/22)

Empress of India nasturtium (sowed 3/22)

Jewel Mix nasturtium (sowed 3/22)

National Pickling cucumber (sowed 3/22)

To go, I still have the following veggies:

Galeux d'Eysines pumpkin

Jarrahdale pumpkin

I also have the following beneficial flowers:

Teddy Bear sunflower

Royal Carpet alyssum

Maritimum Tall Sweet alyssum

Clarke's Heavenly Blue morning glory (American Seed)

Giant Cactus Mixed Colors zinnia (American Seed)

Lilliput Mixed Color zinnia

Hummingbird & Butterfly Mix

Beneficial Insects Wildflower Mix

Van Gogh Sunflower Mix

And I have not yet begun the following herbs:

Sweet marjoram

Sweet basil

Mediterranean oregano (Burpee)

Rosemary

Curled chervil

Long Island Mammoth dill

On a morning when I couldn't sit still waiting to build my raised beds and measure my yard, I measured, then created a schematic (to scale) graph of the yard.  It's roughly 40 x 40', but there are sporadic trees, a debris area in the back where yard waste is kept (used to be a shed there, the ground is depressed and icky), the brick patio off the back of the house, and a shaded area from the decrepit 6-foot fence belonging to my neighbor (assuming that's coming down when the house is sold).  Plus, I stuck a pole with a bird feeder on top, buried it 2 feet into the earth, and it seems to be the happy home to many earwigs and not a single bird.  That may have to go.  

In this schematic, each box in the graph is 10".

If I make my raised beds 4 x 8' (debating whether to go with cheap pine for non-permanent structures or cedar for more permanent beds), there should be room for 6 in the areas of the yard that receive all-day sun.  I haven't completely decided upon which grouping will go in what box, but this is an estimate.

Group 1: Tomatoes, rosemary, chives, onions, garlic, peppers, basil, marigolds, nasturtiums

Group 2: Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, onions, cauliflower, garlic, dill, rosemary, marigolds, nasturtiums

Group 3: Lettuce, cucumbers, onions, dill, sunflowers, garlic, marigolds, nasturtiums

Group 4 (Not pictured, on a hill along the chain-link fence lining the depth of the house): Zucchini, pumpkins, nasturtium

The cukes could and probably should go with the gourds along the fence, which would give me three beds for each of Group 1 and 2, and that would probably be the best situation.  We shall see.

I practically need to be an architect, in addition to a carpenter, just to maintain this garden.  My skills are expanding.

On the lower right of the grid, to the right of the patio, in the semi-shaded area, I grew zucchinis last year and they did okay.  I'd rather put a lilac bush there, and am seriously considering lining that entire side of the fence area in lilacs or something pretty and fragrant, possibly wisteria.  It's the perennials I struggle with because it's such a commitment.  I can commit for the season, but it's hard to commit beyond that.  This is so universally true of me.  I'll give things my all for the very near future, put more effort into them than a normal person might, but beyond that I get scared and reserve the right to change my mind.  How I bought a house, I'll never know.

I am a God!

This week the sweet peppers and cauliflowers are starting to come up, and the onions are over 2 inches tall already.  I feel as if I have created life, created my own environment, and it's wildly addictive.

The greenhouses I have in the house are filling up quickly, but the trouble is I really wanted to use all toilet paper rolls and newspapers as my seed starters, but I'm finding that there are not enough butts to wipe in my circle of friends to provide enough TP rolls, and making the newspaper cups is a lot of work when you need as many as I do.

So, here's the breakdown.  I have three greenhouses.  Each greenhouse has 4 shelves.  Each shelf holds two black seed trays.  Each seed tray holds 55 newspaper cups.  That's 880 newspaper cups (with one to three seeds in each, depending) in each greenhouse.  I think I did a couple hundred and then gave up.  It's exhausting and filthy.  Also, they are about the same size as TP rolls, so it would require the same amount of TP rolls to fill my space.

I broke down and started using Dixie cups out of exhaustion.  This is going to be a problem, I can already tell, because the waxy coating is preventing drainage.  I should poke holes in the bottoms, but OHMYGOD, I've already filled a greenhouse with them.  Despite my tenacity, I'm starting to grow tired.  So much work is already involved and I'm not even sprouting half of them yet, not to mention all the seeds that still need to go in.  And my back hurts from sitting there rolling newspapers into cups or filling them with dirt mixtures, or planting teeny seeds the same color as the dirt.  I know it will pay off, but right now I'm tired.

However, finding my sprouted sweet peppers and cauliflower today really gave me a boost, so I planted the nasturtiums and Brussels sprouts.  What the heck am I going to do with 200 Brussels sprout plants?  This is going to be a bigger dilemma later on.

Yesterday it was finally warm enough that most of the snow has melted on my property and what isn't melted is giving me a clear indication of the lack of sunlight these areas get, so I went out and was able to plan where the raised beds will go.  Of the plants I have planned, there are three distinct groupings of companion plants that will go in each bed, and a hill of zucchini and pumpkins.  One single bed for each group is highly insufficient, so I believe I made room for six 4x8' beds in the backyard, where ample sunlight should keep things healthy.  So, two beds of each group.  With the help of my brother, we planned out the bed shapes and sizes, and we went to Home Depot to price the lumber.  Menard's was cheaper, by far, and now we're starting to wonder if we should just go with pine instead of cedar, since I don't need these beds there forever.  We shall see.  I don't need them for another month or so, probably longer.

The task after this will be to figure out my watering game.  My sump pump well (which I believe is filling constantly with a bad seal on water well from when the house relied on well water) has so much excess water in it that isn't dirty, and I'd like to route that water outside to use to irrigate the veggies, possibly through a soaker hose system.

The inside of my house is so neglected right now.  Laundry is piling up, dishes, I haven't mopped in far too long.  All I can think about is my veggies.  This is going to be a very short spring, I can tell.  There's simply not enough time in the day to do all the things I need to do.

The Onions are Alive!

The Walla Walla onions have sprouted!  The toilet paper rolls are the perfect gauge for how wet the soil is, and I'm thoroughly enjoying watching them spring up quickly.

It may be helping a lot that I put the green house over the heat vent in the dining room, keeping the structure extra warm.  (I know it's changed the temperature in the rest of the house.)  I placed the second greenhouse over the heat vent in my bedroom, though I haven't put seeds in it yet.  When I can find a home for the table in the back foyer, I'll put the third greenhouse there.  For the time being, it may need to be in the front room window.  Fingers are crossed that soon the peppers I planted at the same time will start sprouting.

In the Beginning...

For as far back as I can trace, my family has farmed.  My father lived and worked on the family farm in Kentucky until he was about 12, and then he moved with his parents to Chicago and lived the rest of his life in and around the city.  The remaining farming family members soon left Kentucky for more opportunities in urban areas as well, and though the land stayed in the family name, maintained by my great aunt and uncle, the taxes to keep the land became too great a burden and it was sold.  Hundreds of years of Watsons living and farming this land on the hills in Caney, Kentucky had come to an end.

I am the first generation never to have farmed.  Last year I bought a house in April, my first home, and grew a few vegetables: tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and zucchini.  It was highly successful and I enjoyed the concept of making and caring for my food.  I've been plagued with rare illnesses in my lifetime, and due to my odd health history, I have tried to regulate what goes into my body by limiting my intake of processed and chemically-rife foods.  Most of my meat comes from local, organic farmers, I make all my own bread and bread products, sauces, baked goods, and often my own ice cream (from raw milk).  Each summer I go to pick-your-own farms and stock up on organic pumpkins, strawberries and cherries, which I store in a chest freezer for year-long enjoyment.  It's amazing how easy it is throw together a delicious cherry pie or phenomenal pumpkin cookies from scratch, made from fruit I myself picked, cleaned and stored months earlier.  Being in control of my own food brings much gratification.

This year I'm much more ambitious.  This year, I'm starting a mini-farm with the hopes of not only growing all the produce I will need for a year, but I'd also like to have enough to share with friends and coworkers, as well as the local food pantry.  It took all winter, pouring over my favorite seed catalog, and I finally chose all the varieties of heirloom vegetables I wanted to grow.  The seeds arrived in February, and I am now sorting through them to decide what needs to go into dirt first.  Among the vegetables will be beneficial flowers and some herbs, things to attract bees, birds, and hummingbirds, some edible themselves.  I'm working on designing the raised beds, organizing where everything will go within the beds, and how to align the beds in my yard.  My notebook is filling quickly with research on natural pest repellents, companion planting, and kitchen counter composting.  This project, this lifestyle, has not only filled most of my time, but it is quickly filling most of my house, and an unexpected filling of my heart.

Maybe I was meant for farming.  Maybe it's genetic.  Maybe this is the healing activity I need to do for myself, inside and out.  This is the start of documenting this process.  Growing.