Raspberries and kale from the garden.

Hooray!  Things are growing.  Here is the kale I have harvested for my Eat-All Greens project. (More on that in a second.) Also, raspberries from my bushes.  I'm beginning to realize that you don't really grow raspberries, you instead host the plant and try to keep it from completely taking over.

I bought Carol Deppe's The Tao of Vegetable Gardening because I enjoyed her first book, The Resilient Gardener, I think she's an important gardening person in Oregon and also because she has a method to increase the amount of greens you grow and use.  I love greens.

Following (somewhat) her directions, I planted the kale seed I had collected last fall.  Kale emerged.  I harvested it, started water to boil and arranged my kale on a cutting board, ready to boil briefly, as instructed.  After the water boiled and I added the kale to the pot, I noticed a caterpillar hanging out on the cutting board.  He went into the compost bin.

I drained the kale and was shaking it around in the pot, getting the extra water out, when what did I see but a boiled caterpillar.  "Eek!" said I, and fished it out.  Suspicious, I shook the kale some more and "Eek!" another one.  At that point, I thought it best to carefully comb through the kale to ensure I found any little critters that might have been along for the ride.  I found many, which were collected in the sink, as pictured here.

My finished project, happily caterpillar-free.  

And now I know to check my greens carefully before boiling.

Not what it looks like (and a progress update).

I have never successfully grown carrots.  I've grown carrot (1) but not really multiples.  This year I'm trying something Steve Solomon recommended.  I boiled two cups of water, mixed in three tablespoons of cornstarch and put the whole thing in the fridge until it turned into a gel.  Then I let it sit around for a few days on the counter while I didn't garden. The sitting around part isn't proscribed by Mr. Solomon.

But today I mixed in some carrot seeds, cut down a plastic bag to make poor man's cake decorator bag and walked the whole thing out to the furrows I'd made. I then cut off the tip of the plastic bag--and, come to think about it, I think the scissors are still out there--and squeezed a line of gel/seeds into the furrow.  This was covered with regular dirt.

The idea, I think, is to suspend the carrot seeds in liquid until they can get a good start in the world.  Hopefully it works.  I love a good home-grown carrot.

This is my index card where I kept track of my gardening.  As you can see, I did not get 15 minutes in every day (but Wednesday) since the beginning of February, but I did keep getting back on the horse.  

I plan to continue this plan.

The plan.

Disparing of a repeat of last year's non-garden, I decided in late January that this year I would spend 15 minutes--and ONLY 15 MINUTES--every day working in the yard. (But not on Wednesdays. My dance card is full that day.)  I kept it up through all of February and everything has been weeded of this fall (and last summer's) weeds.  So I feel cautiously confident enough to make a plan for planting.  The Northwest Maritime Garden Guide put out by Seattle Tilth association, set me up with a nice crop rotation for my 10 beds in Leo's yard. 

Wish me luck.

Those are some large parsnips you have there.

Why thank you, I grew them myself.  And never actually pulled them out of the ground in the fall, so they've grown incredibly large.

More squirrel action

I put two more sunflower heads out for the squirrels.  It took them more than a week to discover them.  Which made the incredibly lazy naturalist in me to wonder if they have trouble finding food that is out of season, because they found the freshly harvested sunflower heads in about an hour.  But three weeks later, maybe their little squirrel noses are sniffing for something else?

At any rate, this fellow was happy to eat everything up.  And Antares did his best to melt that glass so he could eat the squirrel.  But he failed.

Sunflower Harvest

Those sunflowers just leaned right over the fence.  But I should probably pull them before the rains get them.
 

Here's a harvest:
 

Potato portioning

How many potatoes do I need, really? This year I decided to be proactive.  I counted the number of weeks between now and the end of February, when the remaining potatoes become too sprouty to use.  Then, I divided the potatoes up.  Each bag holds two pounds of potatoes and is clearly marked with the variety.  I have set aside my lot and the rest I can hand out to friends, my fellow potato grower and random passers-by.

Potato harvest

Potatoes were harvested at the satellite location today.  Here's the lineup:
 

And here's a closeup of Rose Finn Fingerlings.
 

Peppers

That poor pepper plant I got from Burpee actually persisted in growing and gave me some peppers.  It was the little pepper plant that could.

Making two triangles a rectangle.

All summer I've searched for a good way to water both halves of the back yard.  Over in Leo's realm, I have a good sprinkler set up.  On the side yard I have soaker hoses.  But the two backyards' odd triangle shapes flummoxed me.  None of my sprinklers worked in triangle form which meant I had to move them around.  This meant that I didn't really ever water.

But hark!  It occurred to me that I could take the fence dividing the two yards out of the equation and regain the rectangle.  And lo, I purchased a sprinkler and some bungee cords and so it came to pass.
 

Watering perfection.
 

Yes! I grew more than 1 carrot!

Don't they look delicious?

Antares and sunflower.

The sunflower is as high as the smaller of the two kitties' eye...

Carrot success! You might call it a "carrot" instead of a "stick"

Achievement unlocked!  After 5 years of gardening, I have finally successfully grown carrots!  Hallelujah!
 

Man, oh man, do I have turnips.

Who knew they were so easy to grow!
 

Look at this guy!
 

Peas!

Fresh peas are a very good reason to be a gardener.

Errant kiwi

If someone had finished wiring the supports, perhaps this Kiwi would behave itself.  But someone didn't.

Garden!

Turnips were harvested and carrots were thinned.
 

All these baby carrots make me think that I might actually be able to grow a carrot this year.  Imagine that!
 

Yard Intervention Day 7

Turnips!  So easy to grow!  And you get double duty:  turnip greens and the turnips themselves.
 

Every spring I try to get parsley to sprout out front in the whisky barrels.  And every spring it mostly does not work.  So why, on hard-packed dirt, where I certainly didn't plant any seed, did this little parsley plant decide to germinate and grow?  He's right in front of the trash can.
 

Side yard free of weeds!
 

But we are out of straw.
 

Glad to get all this part covered, though.
 

And even a little bit into Leo's yard.
 

In other exciting vegetable news, I have peas!  Most of these have not been tallied, because I pick them and eat them standing in the garden.
 

Yard intervention Day 5

It's been sunny alternating with heavy rain today, which is an odd thing for Portland. Usually we get grey skies (with rain or without) or sunny weather, but not the two in tandem and certainly not in a cycle as if someone stuck the CD player on repeat.  It was looking ominous, but I went for it.  Sure enough, it rained on me while I was weeding, but I persevered.  Then I went inside and put on dry clothing.  Go me!

 

 

Yard intervention Day 4

Didn't happen.  Because I was needed at fifth grade "graduation."  And then Friday Night Lights was calling to me.