In My Alaska Garden — Trial and Error
Oriental Poppies
I attended Pride on Saturday and saw the gorgeous Oriental Poppies above. I saw them on the walk from the car near the Parkstrip. They are the huge poppies and they are on my list for the future in my yard.
We’ve been working outside all weekend and while I left to go grocery shopping, I learned what it means to be grateful for the help you get even though it may not be exactly what you want.
My husband weeded the perennial garden below:
What's Left Of My Perennial Garden
Gone are all of the weeds, the encroaching grass, and the Campanula Glomerata (which should be classified as invasive in Alaska, I swear). All of those were plants I wanted gone and I’m very thankful. However, he also pulled all of the Lavender, the Hens and Chicks and several other flowering varieties. I guess I know what I’m going to do with the flower seeds and the extra lily bulbs.
Josh also helped with the doors to the hoop house which failed in high winds…again. Note to the makers of Velcro…make the glue backing as tough as the Velcro itself. Now both doors have wood at the base (2x4s on the outside and plywood on the two triangle-shaped flaps that open:
…and close:
Interior
I haven’t used anything else to secure the plastic other than the wood at the bottom and it seems to be working well. The temperature definitely reflects the changes and I may not need to seal the plastic more until September or so. (Now, I must decide when I’m going to admit to my husband that he was r…rr…ri…right…)
Also, as you can see above, I got smart and started buying cement blocks and plywood for my plant benches. Sooooo much cheaper and I’ll get another eight-footer Friday.
Peas or Beans? You decide!
In my grand tradition of planting things and not marking them because I’m sure I’ll remember, I put peas in one side of a container and beans on the other side. One of them is growing and one is not. Anyone who can identify which plants are represented above will earn my gratitude.
Also, I planted two more containers with seeds:
Cabbage yes, Cucumbers maybe?
Like the caption says…I know the left one is cabbage and I think the right one is cucumbers…but I could be totally wrong about the cukes.
The lessons I’ve learned this week:
Transplanting: not always a good idea when it’s to thin out the plants in your bed. I tried it with my Kale and Pak Choi and it was about 50% successful, so I’m leaving the rest and will just eat the smaller plants early to get them out of the way.
The joys of Vermiculite: I never used it in my raised bed boxes, but I believe my experience with basil has now convinced me that it must be used in container gardening. The basil was starting to rot and I haven’t lost any more plants since I mixed the Vermiculite in.
You can never have too much seed: This week, as the hoop house is now warm all of the time, I’m trying to utilize the room I have. The first melon seeds I planted have not germinated, but it could be that it wasn’t warm enough before. I’m trying again. My oregano also failed before but now the second try is working.
How goes it in your garden?
Hi. I’ve been gone a couple of weeks–my dad passed on, I left suddenly and had to stay a couple of weeks to help close up the house. It’s going up for sale.
I come back to a new looking website. Any new rules or information? Are there still open threads?
Open threads have been scarce with all the Netroots stuff and trial and so on but still around. So sorry about your dad.
Welcome back.
Eat one of mikey’s spuds and settle in 🙂
Missed your voice.
Our gardens are all containers at this house. Limited sunlight, because of the woods. But, I have herbs in containers all over the place, and things are growing very well. We live in a small county, and the main industry is agriculture, and most of that is food grown for the groceries and restaurants in St. Louis. So, the produce markets are fantastic here, and I can buy lovely things in bulk and still put away for the winter.
I have many friends here that farm, and this is what I have seen so far this week:
The corn is already almost as tall as I am. 5’6″! Crazy weather. Early peas are finished, and the summer crop is about two weeks out, along with most of the beans. Tomatoes will be ready by July 4th, or earlier. New potatoes are harvested, early lettuces and greens are finished, and fall crops will wait till September. Hardier greens are shooting up hourly. One of my friends plants a lot of heirloom and other greens for salad mixes in StL. She plants rows and rows weekly, and will continue that through the season.
Root crops are going crazy. The soil warmed so very quickly this year that those things are just having a huge party.
Pumpkins are about the size of a softball already. Cantaloupe and other table melons are happily growing so far. Zuccs and cukes are being harvested. The little bitty pickling cukes are so sweet this year! Way early for them, but there they are. Berries. I am up to my eyeballs in berries right now. Making jams and freezing berries every day for the past week. Blackberries are wonderful. Raspberries are a bit off, but they are so picky and whine at the least thing at times. The weather isn’t the greatest around here for them. The grapes seem to be doing well.
We are missing the honeybees around here a lot.
Vic, I’ll report the issue to the web guy.
First sunny day in about a week today, but I’m working on a report. The seedlings in the hoop house are going to catch up to the ones in the raised beds due to the chilly weather outside!
Oh, and both the peas AND the beans are doing well and ready for a ladder to climb on! Do they need to have access to bees once they flower?
peas and beans self-pollinate before flowers show up,which prevents cross-pollination due to insects and wind. on the other hand,if you have bees consider yourself lucky. haven’t seen a honeybee in mikey land in several years.
decided the future of the world can’t wait. dug two dark red norland spuds about an hour ago. beautiful red skin and firm white flesh. Largest spud was nearly half-piund and smallest were just about golf ball size. everything in between. they are firmly ensconced in my oven with some chicken and should be ready to eat in about an hour-cst. pulled some green onions,tioo. yum-yum. hungry i am,julia childs i ain’t.
Yum!
I’ll be picking my first kale this weekend! Kale soup…it’s what’s for dinner!
So I am getting slower and slower when it comes to getting to your ‘Sunday’ posts:-)) With today as Wednesday and me just getting to this….oh boy!!
Love hearing what all are doing. I have been away from my plants for more than 4 days and am SO excited to get home and see what all has popped up!!
My travels having me out in the bush learning about tundra farming. I have so much to try once I get home.
It is thrilling to see your hoop house working so well!! I will forgo talking about the taking of notes, or marking things, since I have the best of intentions and starts with BIG fizzles in the middle 🙂
No garden in my tenement apartment, all I can do is sprout. The Creative Little Garden, of which I’m a happy member, won Best Community Garden from NY Daily News. It’s known as an oasis of tranquility, but being a shade garden, does not grow edibles (apart from mint). Still, it’s beautiful.
zyx-as soon as i win the lottery and build my dream house you and all ‘pups’ are welcime to come and stay and eat your way through my garden. i plan to garden year ’round and give much of the bounty away to whoever will take it. please matk your calendar as that will force me to get off my duf and go win the lottery. bring a good appetite and some friends too. i’m not much of a conversationalist.
Linda, I believe those are probably peas coming up, but I could be wrong. It’ll be pretty obvious by the time they get their first true leaves.
My garden’s doing good. The tomato plants are a little yellow, but I think it’s because it’s been cold. The little tomatoes are setting anyway, so they must be okay. Basil, not so much, and I lost most of my cucumbers to stem rot (temperature again), but I planted seeds in their place, so hopefully they’ll be more comfortable growing up in one environment. (I have a little unheated greenhouse for these three things.)
The stuff in the outside garden is going gangbusters. I didn’t lose any of the starts I bought at Mill & Feed and all the seeds I planted are coming up, the beans and squash just in the past couple of days. Lettuce is about ready to start eating. The peas are about eight inches tall. I’m happy for all this rain, but wish we’d get a steady period of warmth for a few days. I think we could probably sit and watch things grow then. Amazingly, I had some Swiss chard that wintered over and came up on its own, like a perennial since I didn’t pull up the root last fall. I’ve never had that happen before. I also had some carrots come up that I didn’t get dug up last fall. They’re big already. The potatoes I planted are coming up, too.
My flowers are doing great, and since we transplanted our 8-year-old lilac bush from the back of the house to the front we FINALLY got some blossoms. Woo-hoo. After cutting down our Mayday tree without our permission, Chugach Electric/Carlos Tree Service has planted four Japanese lilacs ($110 a piece) for us in its place, and they are doing fine. I miss my old tree, but these should be really beautiful in a few years.
I know — you didn’t ask for a book, right? LOL Oh, by the way, give me a shout about when we can get that patio umbrella over to you.
Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and basil are doing well and starting to grow now that they’ve settled in. The lettuce, carrot, dill, parsley and spinach seeds are sprouting, which means I’ll have to fix the fence so the bunnies don’t come for lunch at the salad bar. The fluctuating temperatures this past winter caused all sorts of heaving in my yard, and the edging and fencing around my veggie patch is a mess. So far nothing has bothered my transplants but the tender leaf lettuce usually proves too much for even the most polite ‘raggit’ to resist so the fence must be repaired.
I’ll also have to drag the barrel of rose prunings across the yard to lay on top of the bean seedlings as they come up. Last year three different plantings got no further than three inches before some rude critter reduced them to skeletons. I suspect it was the bunnies or chipmunks but, whomever the culprit, the rose canes I used 2 years ago were enough to discourage foraging. Of course, cleaning the garden at the end of the season was an exercise in punctures for me, but I DID get some tasty beans along the way!
Crazy week at school (two field trips and Field Day) so I know I won’t have the energy to do anything after work but the year is coming to an end so I can turn my attention to my garden after June 22.
(Good thing I read this thread from the bottom up…had I not, I’d not have tweeked to your chuckle-making use of “raggit”, leenie17. beth.)
–Yes, this is a shameless plea (and ‘bubbing’) to AKM to please get all comments displayed, again, in chronological order from oldest to newest. ‘flatters obviously have a marvelous sense of humor and the good-natured ‘rigging’ and joshing that goes on between all the ‘pups, I find a delight…that playful sense of mischief, though, doesn’t translate very well into comments displayed in ‘newest to oldest’ format. Leastwise, not that I can see. b.–
wuz given a pound of sweetcorn seed and planted seven rows nearly a month ago. about half the 95% germinating seeds germinated. i planted four more rows a week ago and less than half germinated. my spuds have some disease-i’ve never had a problem in thirty plus years. raggits ate two of my three rows of green beans so i whacked six bunnies and the landlord got one. stuff in my raised beds are thriving quite nicely. had a half inch of rain last night and some ninety degree heat. onoins should get some decent size for once. lettuce and carrots are doing well and the seven russet spuds are about done blooming. i also chased deer away from garden twice. they ate the tips of my gooseberry jungle. asparagus is done for the year.
In June your spuds are done blooming??!! Mine are just coming up. Eek.
should start eating spuds in a week or two. yummy. erased one more bunny last night. btw-i am on strike against capital letters and commas for the near term. as to falling for r paul you have my permission to draw and quarter mikey if i ever get that stoopid. i highly value your opinions as well as everyone’s.
Oh man! Spuds in a week! I only have spinach and lettuces and the like ready for eating.
As this is Linda’s garden post, I promise to compost you post haste re the Paul dealie.
Caps are overrated but I love commas- they should be sprinkled around liberally.
We have rain for the next two days and I am thrilled! It’s been horribly dry here for about 3 weeks. The last rain we had was only .01 of an inch. Maybe I can get some house work done this week. 🙂 tomatoes are growing, peppers are appearing, onions are closer to ready, still have lettuce, even after all that dry heat! The red potato plants have started their die off and I’m excited about my future harvest. I have more red potatoes and some yellow banana potatoes ready to go in. My corn is almost hip high and I’ve been pretty vigilant about pests this year so maybe I will git an ear or two.
Posted this video on Facebook yesterday, but it fits here too, also. Hope it works.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFzXaFbxDcM&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Of course it didn’t work! Try this.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DOFzXaFbxDcM%26feature%3Dyoutube_gdata_player&feature=youtube_gdata_player&v=OFzXaFbxDcM&gl=US
Can we just delete that second post?
Oh- you made me laugh this morning Linda!
I thought I was the only one who didn’t mark things with the silly notion I would remember 🙂
Can’t see in pic well enough but peas have shiny smooth leaves, beans have light furry,fuzzy leaves- easy to tell when 2nd set of leaves emerge.
I always, always thin when things are edible size- beet greens, turnip greens , and all are yummy in salads and stuff is not wasted.
Somebody throw a plum at benlomond! Stinker.
not the plums !!! I’m trying to grow enough to make plum jam AND Plum wine this year… about 10 gallons worth…. I want a MERRY Xmas this year !
hmmm.
well.
hmmm.
better not then.
dang.
Just get so jealous of your early and wide ranging bounty there.
I miss many big and important things about our pre 911 country but this time of year I really really miss the small things too
Like getting peaches and tomatoes and the like gold streaked here from family/friends’ gardens and orchards…
After my failure last year to mark my tomato seedlings( I had 5 different heirloom varieties), I swore this year it would be different. It was. Didn’t mark the different type of peppers and don’t know which ones are the white or orange pumpkins.
I do have 3 small roma tomatoes already!!! Planted them Mother’s day!
Our days of rain have ended and we went swimming yesterday.
All the flowers seem to be 2 weeks early .
I love this time of year!!!
After a long, dry spell, we’ve had 3 solid days of rain with more in the forecast. It’ll take a herd of goats or a bush-hog to mow when the sun returns (Tuesday? Wednesday?), but we’ve got a bumper crop of frogs! 🙂
I’ve tackled some indoor chores (really, no kidding…the bathroom is spotless, I can see floor in the bedroom, and the kitchen and living rooms are works in progress…) and I’ve read 3 books. Didn’t really like any of them, but my students do, so I suffered through them. Enough with gritty realism; please pass some dragons. (I prefer mystery/fantasy/sci-fi/historical fiction over gritty realism or romance any day, but that’s just me.)
Thunder rumbling again, so heading offline for a date with a dragon (Eon by Alison Goodman, with the sequel Eona next on the pile). It’s cool enough to do some baking, too, so I’m thinking a double batch of brownies. Maybe challah, too, since I can freeze it and have it ready for the rest of the summer. Sounds like a plan for a rainy Monday, eh?
L’Shalom,
thatcrowwoman
I tried to make challah a few months ago. It was a miserable failure. I need a better recipe if I’m going to try it again.
I also love stories with dragons! Have a wonderful read!
I will try to post my receipe for Whole wheat Challah—-don’t know if it will get posted–but here it goes.
Whole Wheat Challah
3 pkg dry yeast
2 teas sugar
1/3 cup honey
8-9 cups flour
( of this 8-9 cups of flour–use
4 cups whole wheat flour)
Note: (one may use up to 6 cups of whole wheat flour if a heavier bread is desired)
2 1/4 cups water ( temp 105–150 deg)
3/4 cups veg oil
1 TBS salt
3 eggs
1 cup rasins (golden-opt)
Poppy Or sesame seeds
Makes 2 large loaves (braid)
Place yeast, sugar, 2 tb flour (white) in tall glass & stir in 3/4 cup water. Let rise until liquid reaches top.
Note: I put yeast in last. the stirring of water, sugar & flour brings temp down so it doesn’t kill the yeast.
Mix–1 1/2 cup water
4 cups flour (I use white here)
oil, honey, salt & rasins, and 2 eggs
Note: I beat (with electric mixer) 1 1/2 cups water, 3 cups flour, oil, honey and salt. then I add 2 eggs (temp is down now & won’t cook the eggs). Now add yeast mixture & beat again, and another cup flour (the 4th). beat again. Now add rasins & mix evenly with wooden spoon.
gradually add 4-5 cups flour (this will be whole wheat)
enough to make soft dough.
Knead until smooth & elastic (about 8 min.)
Place in oiled bowl–cover–let rise 2-3 hrs.
then punch down & knead 2 min–replace in bowl-cover and let rise again ( 1 1/2 to 2 hrs)
Then punch down and knead a minute & divide dough in 6 equal parts. Braid. Brush with egg & sprinkle with sesame seeds
Bake @ 350 deg for 30 min.
May take longer if more whole wheat four is used.
Oooh…thank you for the whole wheat challah recipe! I’ll try it next week!
TCW.. have you read the Dragon Riders of Pern ??? I have all of them, except for the mapbook.. and have reread them all at least 5 times… great yarn!
on my return from SoCal, I passed thru the fields in Salinas, where I noted on the hoop houses there, that they had on the tops of the hoops, a pr of linescoming down from the top of hoops to an interior anchor stake in the center. there were high winds that day.
Plum tree branches breaking- too much fruit ! Tomatoes are beginning to ripen !
So I am getting slower and slower when it comes to getting to your ‘Sunday’ posts:-)) With today as Wednesday and me just getting to this….oh boy!!
Love hearing what all are doing. I have been away from my plants for more than 4 days and am SO excited to get home and see what all has popped up!!
My travels having me out in the bush learning about tundra farming. I have so much to try once I get home.
It is thrilling to see your hoop house working so well!! I will forgo talking about the taking of notes, or marking things, since I have the best of intentions and starts with BIG fizzles in the middle 🙂
(OK, I do not seem to be able to post- keep getting a Pop-Up asking if I want to save or open a file to do these comments. GOing to try doing a ‘reply’ and see if that works! Hmmmm!