Rain, Rain (go away)...

Today's my day off. It's been raining and cloudy and cool for several days now, and the ground is too wet to plant anything. Really all I can do is pull weeds. That's not necessarily a bad thing--the sand burs are unfortunately alive and well. They don't seem to be as thick as last year, but the fact that they're here at all is disheartening.

I'm hoping to get grass planted this fall. The thing holding us up right now is deciding where there will be flower beds and where the patio will be. We could have made a mad dash and planted some of the yard with grass, but I keep hearing that it's better (less work, easier to establish strong growth) to plant grass in the fall.

My peas are kicking ass. All this rain means that I can go out and almost watch them grow. And I even have pictures now. They're growing here:
That's my favorite one. We'll see how it looks when there are vines growing all over it. I'm betting it will be awesome, though. For now, that's the only picture I'm going to post. The other two spots aren't as neat-looking, and won't be until the vines have really gone to town.

So that's the extent of the outside vegetables right now. I had hoped that the ground would be dry enough to get some of the bigger tomato transplants into the ground, but... yeah. And yes, I realize it's still a little early to have them outside. But I was going to try a package of those "Wall-o-Water" things. A little gimmicky, perhaps, but I've heard good things, and some of those tomatoes are too tall for me to even try putting them under the lights anymore. I just don't want them to die. Not after all the money I've spent on lights and heat mats and soil medium and peat pots... Nevermind the time.

One of the things I don't have to worry about this year is my chocolate mint. Last year I only got to pinch it back twice, and I was afraid it wouldn't live to see this year. This year, though, the patch on the west end of the house is kicking ass. Today I'm making my first batch of candy out of it. In a few weeks I'm going to try the ice cream recipe I have.

But for now, the weather's crappy and cool, and I need to do something productive. Perhaps I'll re-pot some houseplants.

:)

More plan(t)s.

Yesterday I wandered my yard and planted the sugar snap peas I presprouted. I know it's a little late, but I had planted quite a few without presprouting them, and I hadn't seen any come up. When I was planting, though, I saw that a few survivors are, in fact, coming up. I think the squirrels got to a lot of them, and I'm sure my lack of watering didn't help anything.

So, with any luck at all, I'll have more peas than I will be able to eat alone. I planted them basically anywhere there is sunshine and something for them to climb. (Pictures soon, I promise.)

I got all the everbearing strawberries (Quinoa, I believe, is the actual name of these) planted on the day of my last post. They aren't really doing anything, but we'll see. The roots didn't seem dead--they weren't crackly or brittle or anything when I took them out of their bag. I'm keeping my fingers crossed and hoping that even if I don't have berries this year, the plants might straggle along well enough to see next year. There are two live June-bearing plants on my porch that need to be planted, and also the bare-rooted ones. I wanted to get them all into the ground on the same day, but to be honest there are a few things slowing me down:

• The large quantity of newspaper I saved all winter is gone. I think we used a lot of it when we were painting the kitchen cabinets, and BoyWonder may or may not have recycled some, too.
  
• I'm out of shape. I mean, I was pretty lazy this winter and never really got around to working out like I used to. So tilling by hand wears me out really fast. So does vigorous weeding. Mowing... hah. The last few days I only did minor yard work (some weeding, some mowing, a little tilling, and a very small bit of digging) and my shoulders and upper back are killing me.
  
• I don't know where I want everything to go. I have general ideas, sure. But I'm constantly in a situation where I have talked it through with BoyWonder, planned, talked more, and then when I finally plant something, he has a negative opinion or just looks at me all disappointed and irritated. It really hinders my creativity and my drive sometimes. For now I'm trying to make things as pretty as possible, just to prove that my love of growing food can be productive and pretty.

Big things are coming up for my plants, though. I'm excited and terrified, actually. Since it's now just two weeks until the last frost date, and the tomatoes are outgrowing their indoor setup, I think it's time to start hardening them off. On the next fairly calm day, I'm going to put them outside, just for maybe an hour or two, and we'll continue like that for probably about three weeks, depending of course on the weather and well-being of these plant's I've put a lot of time and money and effort into. This is the terrifying part. Really.

I'm wondering if I shouldn't try to build some type of small, portable (or easy to assemble and then dismantle) greenhouse or coldframe. It won't be in time for these seedlings, though. It would be a late-fall or early-spring venture--the truth here is that I've spent enough money on seed-starting equipment this year. If everything holds up through the next few seasons, I'll know it was money well spent. If I can occasionally do one thing or another during the winter (like build a better setup for the lights, which is on the agenda for... well... soon), it'll be better. I can't do it all at once, and I'm okay with that. It gives me time to think about what I really need, where it will go when it's in use, where it will be stored when it's not, and if BoyWonder will help or hinder... You never know about him. My hope is that he'll enjoy the garden food this summer and maybe start to think about liking gardening someday.

It's a longshot, I know. But a girl can dream, right?

The Plan(ts)

Today I work a half day. It's a rare occasion, and the fact that the high for today is seventy makes the day even better. I'm hoping the ground will be dry enough by the time I get back home that I can plant my strawberries. I hope there is still some life in them--I bought them at the Wichita garden show at the beginning of March and they've been sitting on a shelf in my kitchen ever since. So this morning, I pulled them out of their paper bag and put them into some water, in hopes of reviving any life they may have left.

We shall see.

So, the strawberries are one thing on my list for today. Another thing is to pull all the leaves out of the front flowerbeds, and the bed on the back of the house. It's time. Winter be damned. The leaves will go into the strawberry bed and I just have to hope there aren't too many maple seeds in the mix.

I need to fertilize today, also.

I'm excited about this year. I've expanded my plans several times now, and with each adventure I just keep coming up with more plants. A woman who works with my mother has a yard full of stuff that she doesn't know what to do with. We went there last Wednesday to help her identify and assess the yard. She had a raised bed full of weeds, which were hiding the fact that there were raspberry canes everywhere. They're going to be putting a pool in that spot, and they were nice enough to let my mother and I dig all the canes we wanted. I made the mistake of leaving the roots bare overnight. They're in the ground now, but it's really hard to tell if they're alive or not. Time will tell, I suppose.

But things like free raspberries are what I love about gardening. Once people learn that you get all geeky about plants, they offer you things. Irises or lilies or hyacinths or crocuses (hyacinths and crocuses being the other things we're going back to that yard for)... Anything that makes my favorite pastime, my therapy, cheaper is awesome in my book. Because you could spend a fortune buying plants, if people weren't kind enough to share. To be truthful, I never would have bought raspberry canes. But for free... yeah.

Also on the list for today is altering the soil in a few parts of my yard. Nothing major, just mixing some bagged garden soil in with the rocky, dry, sandy stuff that exists by the fence. I want to grow peas there but so far have had no luck, and I'm sure it's the horribly mistreated soil.

So what have I said so far?

Strawberries...
Fertilizer for the raspberries...
Pulling mulch...
Amending soil...
Oh! I have to measure my front flowerbeds, so we can buy some new border (BoyWonder hates the natural rocks in the front yard. He wants brick instead.)

So, that's what's happening in the yard today.

I'm a few weeks away from taking "one year later" pictures of my yard, which should be an adventure in and of itself.

So for now...

Sprung.

It's finally starting to be spring in Kansas.

Actually, it's taking much longer than I'd hoped. We had almost two solid weeks of beautiful warm weather immediately followed by a nasty winter storm. Brian and I had just cleared the yard of debris and were planning a trip to the yard waste facility, and now our backyard looks like a disaster area and there are limbs everywhere.

Today I have to make my way outside to set aside the limbs I'll be using as plant supports, and what will be used as firewood for camping trips. The rest will have to be turned into mulch.

Now I'm afraid to fully clear my flowerbeds of their protective leaf mulch, in case Winter decides to have one more tantrum. I had wanted to get pictures of the beds now that there are a few things blooming and other things finally poking up. Leaf mulch doesn't really make for great pictures, though. More importantly, I had wanted to put out my columbine seed, but don't think it will germinate well if the leaves are still down.

This is my first year starting plants from seed indoors. I was intimidated at the beginning, when I had to shell out money for heat mats and grow lights and seed starting medium (note to self--next year, use Jiffy pellets instead). Now we're almost three weeks into the process, and I have five kinds of heirloom tomatoes (Reisenstraube, Carbon, Hawaiian Pineapple, Black Krim, and Brandywine) and three kinds of heirloom peppers (Tam jalepeno, mini red bell, and yellow star hot)... Well, I planted three kinds of peppers, the yellow star peppers didn't germinate, even after two tries. But I'm not really upset, they were a freebie packet that came with my Baker Creek order. I had some trouble at first with the Hawaiian Pineapples, too, but I just dropped another seed in each empty cell, and now have six of nine going well. I was actually quite impressed at how many seeds germinated.

Almost all the seedlings in the veggie flat have developed a set of true leaves. Hooray!

On the 25th I started another flat--nine cells each of coleus, calendula, chives, cilantro, lavender, oregano, parsley, and sage. So far, each cell of calendula is up, and there are probably a hundred sprouts of oregano (oregano seeds are ridiculously small and difficult to sow by hand. You can't see where they're going). I'm going to have to have patience, though, because some of those plants take up to three weeks to germinate, and some of them have a very low germination rate.

But I'm learning. I actually may be a little obsessed. Obsessed enough that I'm considering changing my degree to horticulture and still getting a social work degree on top of that. I've been imagining a job where I can teach gardening to either children (garden therapy) or to struggling families. Or even just families in general.

So here I am. It's the last day of March. 48 degrees outside, and windy. Out like a lion, I suppose.

I've been dying for people to talk about plants with. Aaron, who I was friends with in middle school, but had fallen out of touch with, is giving it a go and, like me, is eager to talk about it all. It's funny to me. And Jordi. My best male friend's older sister, which really means that I consider her part of the large family I simply claim. I'm excited. I like having people to talk to about it. BoyWonder's eyes glaze over when I start talking about succession planting and trellises (I had to define 'trellis' a couple of days ago. jeesh.) and good places to get poop. (On that note, I found out a few days ago that a co-worker has over fifty rabbits. Hell yes.) Yes, I said poop. You know, from cows or chickens or horses. It's fertilizer. It needs to live in my compost bin.

So there is all that.

I know this has been random and rambling. But that's what it says, right up on the lefthand side of this screen, right? And like I said, I don't have anywhere else to dump my random, rambling ADHD-affected gardening thoughts. This is a good place for them. And no, I probably won't try to organize them or make them eloquent or even overly intelligent. I could, I suppose, but I need somewhere for disorganized thought.

And with that, I'm off.