Allium sativum 2014

Last winter's early arrival prompted me get our garlic planted two weeks earlier than usual.  Earlier in the week, I planted sixty cloves of garlic in half of the garden bed at my parent's house.  Forty cloves of Sicilian Silver, which is a silverskin variety, and twenty cloves of an artichoke variety called Chet's Italian.

This afternoon, eighty-four cloves of garlic were lovingly nestled into the soil of our garlic beds.  Sixty-four cloves of Spanish Benitee and twenty cloves of Ajo Rojo.  Both of these are creole varieties.  All but Chet's Italian are new to us, and we're excited to taste them all.  They smelled fantastic.

This will be plenty of garlic to store and save for seed next fall; share with family and friends; and to cook with and enjoy until next year's harvest.

Getting rows ready for cloves.

Covered with leaves and straw to protect them from frost;
keep moisture in the soil; and deter weed growth.

Who doesn't want to see a photo of a cat lounging in a pool of sunshine
with pumpkins in the background?  The pumpkins were grown in our garden, even!

Visit Wright Garden Chronicles, check out the useful links there, as well as the recipe section.  My own recipes are included there.  Weee!

Fresh and fruity with a side of mantid

The weather is perfect and everything is growing vigorously.  It seems like in the course of one week everything in the garden has doubled in size.  With the exception of the French green bean seeds and the soybean seeds, everything else that was planted in the garden has sprouted and is doing well.

The tomato plants each have numerous flowers, and even the okra plant is sporting a couple flowers.  Two handfuls of red raspberries have been pulled from the bush (the first handful on Sunday and the second today) and boy are they sweet!  A couple strawberries will be ripe and ready to eat before the end of the week, too.  Many of the red raspberries will be turned into jam.  In fact, our kitchen will be a part-time canning factory throughout the summer.  Whole fruit and vegetables, sauces, jams and pickles will be canned and stockpiled in the basement.

Sparkle strawberry

Burgundy Okra

Toro blueberries

Red raspberries

Jam-in-the-works

Spencer found the strawberry bed comfy.

Garden friend - Twelve-spotted skimmer

The butterfly bush started blooming late last week!  We're eagerly awaiting our first butterfly and hummingbird sightings.

Mantids are everywhere!  They're becoming easier to spot now as they've doubled in size.  They're still relatively small by comparison to how large they become but they're growing fast.  

I wish this blog had a zoom feature because the second mantid photo is crystal clear.
When zooming in on my laptop, you can see the mantid's details, including his pseudo-pupil!
It was very brave and patient while I moved the camera closer and closer to snap this photo.  I thanked it and then left it be.
We love these amazing creatures.

We hope you're enjoying this amazing weather, having great success with your gardens, and discovering wonders of your own.

Come see us!  http://wrightgardenchronicles.blogspot.com

Spring 2012 in full swing

June 6 will mark the third year John and I have called our home Home.  For many reasons spring is always an exciting time, but owning our own home makes this time of year all the more special.  Each fall we plant a variety of bulbs in the front flower beds.  Come springtime we have a more colorful and diverse bed of flowers.  It is wonderful to see what all the new additions look like.  We haven't quite achieved the ever-blooming flower beds that we've imagined for so many years, but we're nearly there.

This year we're able to focus our attention on the backyard, now that major improvements have been completed with the house itself.  The Master Plan is to turn a good portion of the lawn into raised beds where food can be grown.  Last week we planted three blueberry bushes.  Plans for three additional raised beds are in the works and will be built within the next couple weeks.  One bed will be for melons (watermelon and cantaloupe), another for squash (Butternut and pie pumpkins), and a third for strawberries.

The raspberry bush that we planted two years ago is doing great.  It produced a few dozen raspberries last year but now that the bush has quadrupled in size, we hope to have twice as many delicious ruby fruits to nosh on this year.  At the end of this month we will be adding two black raspberry plants to Wright Gardens.  Tasty.

The purple lightning tree we've been longing for will soon be delivered and planted in our yard!  We visited a local nursery earlier this week and selected the tree from six that were available.  It is in a 15 gallon container and roughly 7 feet tall.  I agree with John's assessment, it has good arms.  For those of you wondering what the heck a purple lightning tree looks like, the proper name for the tree is Eastern Redbud.

In the early spring, when the tree flowers, tiny magenta flowers cover the leafless zigzag branches.  The bark is dark brown, almost black, so the end result (to our eyes) looks like purple lightning.  After the tree has finished flowering the tree produces medium sized heart-shaped leaves.

A new gardening helper is our landscaping cart.  John isn't as thrilled about the cart as I am but I'm so happy to have it.  The cart can carry up to 550 pounds and is easily steered around the yard.  The sides of the cart can fold down for easier loading/unloading, and came with a snap-on liner so smaller media such as gravel, soil and mulch can be transported as well.  I even plan to use this cart when there is a large haul of groceries to bring inside, or those times when I bring home two or three 40 pound bags of cat liter.  Wheels!  What a nifty invention.

Chet is curious about the cart.

Finally, we finally have a clothesline!  The posts were permanently put in the ground on Tuesday and, after giving the concrete ample time to set, I installed the cross-bars and strung them with line this afternoon.  I have wanted one of these old school heavy-duty clotheslines for many years and now, just like my Great-Grandma Anna, we do.  Two loads of laundry hung on the line to dry this afternoon with ample room to spare.  Ah, it's the little things in life...

Hello, radish!

A falcon flying over the house

What'cha doing, Mama?

Garlic Row

Red Parrot tulip

Yellow Parrot tulip

Everything is coming up irises!

Last year our irises were busy establishing themselves so only a couple of the plants actually produced a flower or two.  The plants weren't very big or strong but this year is a different story.  The plants are large and producing several flowers per stalk. We're pretty pleased with how our flower beds are transforming and how lush everything is looking.

This is our Root Beer Iris.  It smells like root beer!  No joke.

The garden is under going an upgrade this year.   8 yards of soil was delivered Friday afternoon and a frame for a raised bed was built today (Memorial Day).  I wish that more could have been accomplished but Mother Nature put the kibosh on using power tools Saturday and Sunday.  Saturday was spent shopping for the lumber to build the raised bed frame as well as to purchase a new circular saw.  Yes!  The saw is my first power tool purchase.  It's completely geeky but I was giddy driving home in Hank (my F150 pick-up truck) with the bed full of lumber, a new wheelbarrow and a circular saw.

Originally, the plan was to rent a mini bobcat to move the mound of soil from the driveway to the garden bed, but with the rainy weather it was uncertain whether the soil was going to be delivered on Friday.  With the materials being wet, less than 8 yards would have been delivered.  We'd have been paying for water weight.  In any event, with the soil delivery up in the air I didn't want to rent the mini bobcat, and once I knew the delivery was a go, I learned that the rental store didn't have a mini-cat to rent.  It was being used by some other lucky person.  I've been moving soil with the wheelbarrow and have scarcely made a dent in the pile.  Depending on the price, this weekend there may be a mini bobcat helping me to move the soil to the garden.  The soil can be moved in a fraction of the time and save my lower back from strain.  Plus, the mini-cat would be so cool to operate!

Here's the progress thus far...



Chet really wants to join me outside.
Both cats peek out the back door regularly when I'm outside.

Mama Robin.
She was very patient with all of the noise and activity today.

Mr. Spencer.  He enjoys supervised time outside in his collar and leash.

It was a beautiful day today and as much as I worked my butt off, I enjoyed the day and the work that got done.  Hopefully your weekend was relaxing and a safe one.

L&J

Full sun

A nifty tip in Crockett's Victory Garden suggests planting garden rows that run N/S.  The logic here is that all of the plants will receive the benefit of full sun.  Before I ventured outside Sunday afternoon to consider the location and size of the garden, I armed myself with a compass. 

First, I established due south and due north and marked the locations with a stake.  The blue string in the image marks the N/S direction.  As of right now, the overall garden size is 15' deep by 24' wide.  Between each bed will be a path that is 36" wide, making the individual beds 5' x 7'.  The benefit of four individual beds is that they can be accessed from all four sides more easily than one large bed, especially in John's case.   Hmm, now I'm wondering if the beds themselves shouldn't be set up in a N/S direction as well?  Long angled beds ( \ \ \ \ \ ) instead of four rectangular beds ( = = ).  Hmmm.

It felt so nice to be in the yard contemplating where to establish the garden as well as other flower beds.  No snow, just grass under foot, the warm bright sun, and the scent of the warming Earth.  Before we know it, we'll be slicing into our first homegrown tomato and eating it with a few leaves of freshly picked basil.

The garlic continues to grow rapidly and there are several seeds that have sprouted in the seed flats!  So far, all six hollyhock seeds have sprouted, Brussels sprouts, and broccoli. 

Now, the biggest task that remains is to determine how much soil to have delivered and what to use as the border for the raised garden beds.  Fun, fun, fun!