My Garden!
Jun. 8th, 2010 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amalnahurriyeh posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
gardeningI'm feeling particularly proud of my garden this week, and wanted to share pictures with the interwebs. ;)
I live in Brooklyn, New York, in a neighborhood with a little space; we have a first-floor apartment with a backyard, but our whole yard is paved, and lined with little evergreen trees in raised beds. We've also got good light only on one side of the yard, moreso now that our next door neighbors put up an eight-foot fence on their side. (I'm actually fine with this, since it keeps their pit bull out of my yard, which the previous fence did not.) So mostly I do container gardening, with a few plants in the raised beds where I can squeeze them in.
I'm also a food-gardener. Er, OK, I'm a foodie who gardens because that means I get easy fresh produce. I also compost because I'm a foodie and have enviro-fascist leanings. I have no inherent love of putting things in dirt and making them grow, but it's grown on me over time. And I don't reeeeealy do much research into my gardening; mostly I throw things at dirt and if they die, sulk and curse their departed spirits.
On to the photos.
Here are my two perennial herbs, which I've kept going since the first summer we were in this apartment, 2006. On the left are chives, complete with the remains of the chive blossoms I didn't manage to use up. On the right is plain thyme. Thyme is particularly nice to grow, I've found, because in the winter you can still use the dried-on leaves and stems to cook with. The chives die back completely in the winter, but come right up again first thing in spring. I also had some mint that kept reseeding itself, but last year it finally ran out of steam. I need more mint; my tea is severely lacking. These sit on my deck for easy cooking access.
Green strawberries! These plants are also 4 years old, and I transplanted them into one of the raised beds last year when they outgrew their pot. However, they're now in the shadow of the big fence, and I fear not getting enough light. I'm watering them daily and giving them lots of compost in the hopes that they'll keep going. Of course, the ants have a frustrating tendency to get to the berries first.
Around them, you can see the weed problem I'm dealing with. My garden is infected with a seriously invasive vine that I always thought was kudzu, but Googling is now telling me it's not; that's the pointy leaves. (It actually looks like morning glory, a little, but with white flowers.) There are also my violets (the heart-shaped). I'd transplanted three or four small wild white violets from my mother's front garden into the next bed over from this one when we moved up here, but it turns out they're pretty damn invasive too, and have filled up that bed and moved to this one around the tree. Much as it pains me to pull them up, they'd choke the strawberries, so I've been ruthlessly removing them. There are also the long skinny-leaved things in the lower left corner. I don't know what they are.
Sunny side of the garden! In the raised beds, you see three of the little evergreens; they took a ton of storm damage in the hard winter we had in the Northeast this year, which you can't really see here, and have also basically grown to fill in the gaps between them on the sunny side of the yard. (There used to be clearance in between them all the way up.) In between them, I have potato plants I planted from potato peelings in my kitchen. Whether or not I'll ever harvest edible potatoes is questionable, but potato vines are pretty.
In the foreground are one pot of green zebra tomatoes, one pot of brandywine tomatoes, and one long pot of green kale. And evidence of my garden assistant.
I don't know how to insert alt-text, but if anyone's using a screen reader, it's a shot of my toddler son running past holding an empty bucket. He's good at watering. Also at picking plants that were not meant to be picked.
Kale! This is my favorite plant so far. I bought these as four seedlings, and planted them in this long window-box thing for easy access. It's growing like gangbusters. I've already done one harvest from it, and did another tonight. My plan is just to keep giving it compost and water and picking the biggest leaves until it gives up the ghost. Kale is one of the staple veggies on our house, so this makes me very happy.
The plant all the way on the left has some yellowish leaves. It was originally on the right side, which gets the least light (our yard gets darker the deeper into it you go, due to tree and angle of house), so I flipped it, hoping that would fix the problem. It hasn't yet, but the plant still appears to be growing fine.
These are my brandywine tomatoes, bought as a seedling, planted in a goodsize pot. It's got little flowers, which makes me happy, because it means I Will Actually Have Tomatoes. I bought brandywines because, er, that was the only variety my food co-op had in stock as seedlings.
Tomatoes are the one thing I really want out of my garden, because I tend to put up in-season heirloom tomatoes as puree in the freezer and then use them all year, and buying ten pounds of tomatoes is expensive. Last year I didn't manage to get any to grow. The year before that, I didn't plant any, but the compost bin into which I'd put the seeds of the ones from the year before turned into an impromptu tomato bed.
I also have some green zebra seedlings, which I grew up from seeds. I don't really like tomatoes raw, but green zebras are the tastiest variety I've ever encountered, and I'll definitely eat them raw. I also think they make an interesting salsa verde. I didn't take pictures of them (sadface), but they're the pot on the left in the first picture. There are four seedlings in there, that I transferred when my helper knocked over their seedling pots. Should I take a few out and move them somewhere else? I don't know if that's enough soil for four tomato plants.
These are my other two green zebra seedlings, freshly watered. (There's a third in there, but I don't think it'll make it.) I planted these in a raised bed that I'd pulled all of weeds out of, which made me feel all accomplished. However, these are struggling because...
Of the freakin' cat. This is the stray we feed, who we love very much, but who has decided that this newly dug-up bed is a perfect litter box. Even when I yell at her from the deck to stop it, she keeps right on digging. There used to be eight seedlings in there. Now, two, and they're not growing very quickly.
You can also see what crap my soil is. The soil in the beds was originally four inches of bagged topsoil over crappy, clayey and rock-hard dirt. Over the five years we've lived here, the topsoil is gone, leaving mostly just the clayey grossness. I mixed in a ton of my compost to this bed before I planted anything, but it's still pretty crappy soil.
I could, possible, transplant most of the seedlings from the pot of green zebras into here, and add a ton more compost, and try to make it a less hospitable place for cat pee. But I'm wary that, if I did that, I'd end up with no tomato plants at all. Advice?
I'd feel very accomplished, if it weren't for the fact that a lot of the Bangladeshi immigrants in my neighborhood actually garden so hard-core that their front yards are full of carefully arranged furrows of okra and peppers and eggplants. I am a rank amateur compared to my neighbors.
I live in Brooklyn, New York, in a neighborhood with a little space; we have a first-floor apartment with a backyard, but our whole yard is paved, and lined with little evergreen trees in raised beds. We've also got good light only on one side of the yard, moreso now that our next door neighbors put up an eight-foot fence on their side. (I'm actually fine with this, since it keeps their pit bull out of my yard, which the previous fence did not.) So mostly I do container gardening, with a few plants in the raised beds where I can squeeze them in.
I'm also a food-gardener. Er, OK, I'm a foodie who gardens because that means I get easy fresh produce. I also compost because I'm a foodie and have enviro-fascist leanings. I have no inherent love of putting things in dirt and making them grow, but it's grown on me over time. And I don't reeeeealy do much research into my gardening; mostly I throw things at dirt and if they die, sulk and curse their departed spirits.
On to the photos.
 |
| From my garden |
Here are my two perennial herbs, which I've kept going since the first summer we were in this apartment, 2006. On the left are chives, complete with the remains of the chive blossoms I didn't manage to use up. On the right is plain thyme. Thyme is particularly nice to grow, I've found, because in the winter you can still use the dried-on leaves and stems to cook with. The chives die back completely in the winter, but come right up again first thing in spring. I also had some mint that kept reseeding itself, but last year it finally ran out of steam. I need more mint; my tea is severely lacking. These sit on my deck for easy cooking access.
 |
| From my garden |
Green strawberries! These plants are also 4 years old, and I transplanted them into one of the raised beds last year when they outgrew their pot. However, they're now in the shadow of the big fence, and I fear not getting enough light. I'm watering them daily and giving them lots of compost in the hopes that they'll keep going. Of course, the ants have a frustrating tendency to get to the berries first.
Around them, you can see the weed problem I'm dealing with. My garden is infected with a seriously invasive vine that I always thought was kudzu, but Googling is now telling me it's not; that's the pointy leaves. (It actually looks like morning glory, a little, but with white flowers.) There are also my violets (the heart-shaped). I'd transplanted three or four small wild white violets from my mother's front garden into the next bed over from this one when we moved up here, but it turns out they're pretty damn invasive too, and have filled up that bed and moved to this one around the tree. Much as it pains me to pull them up, they'd choke the strawberries, so I've been ruthlessly removing them. There are also the long skinny-leaved things in the lower left corner. I don't know what they are.
 |
| From my garden |
Sunny side of the garden! In the raised beds, you see three of the little evergreens; they took a ton of storm damage in the hard winter we had in the Northeast this year, which you can't really see here, and have also basically grown to fill in the gaps between them on the sunny side of the yard. (There used to be clearance in between them all the way up.) In between them, I have potato plants I planted from potato peelings in my kitchen. Whether or not I'll ever harvest edible potatoes is questionable, but potato vines are pretty.
In the foreground are one pot of green zebra tomatoes, one pot of brandywine tomatoes, and one long pot of green kale. And evidence of my garden assistant.
 |
| From my garden |
I don't know how to insert alt-text, but if anyone's using a screen reader, it's a shot of my toddler son running past holding an empty bucket. He's good at watering. Also at picking plants that were not meant to be picked.
 |
| From my garden |
Kale! This is my favorite plant so far. I bought these as four seedlings, and planted them in this long window-box thing for easy access. It's growing like gangbusters. I've already done one harvest from it, and did another tonight. My plan is just to keep giving it compost and water and picking the biggest leaves until it gives up the ghost. Kale is one of the staple veggies on our house, so this makes me very happy.
The plant all the way on the left has some yellowish leaves. It was originally on the right side, which gets the least light (our yard gets darker the deeper into it you go, due to tree and angle of house), so I flipped it, hoping that would fix the problem. It hasn't yet, but the plant still appears to be growing fine.
 |
| From my garden |
These are my brandywine tomatoes, bought as a seedling, planted in a goodsize pot. It's got little flowers, which makes me happy, because it means I Will Actually Have Tomatoes. I bought brandywines because, er, that was the only variety my food co-op had in stock as seedlings.
Tomatoes are the one thing I really want out of my garden, because I tend to put up in-season heirloom tomatoes as puree in the freezer and then use them all year, and buying ten pounds of tomatoes is expensive. Last year I didn't manage to get any to grow. The year before that, I didn't plant any, but the compost bin into which I'd put the seeds of the ones from the year before turned into an impromptu tomato bed.
I also have some green zebra seedlings, which I grew up from seeds. I don't really like tomatoes raw, but green zebras are the tastiest variety I've ever encountered, and I'll definitely eat them raw. I also think they make an interesting salsa verde. I didn't take pictures of them (sadface), but they're the pot on the left in the first picture. There are four seedlings in there, that I transferred when my helper knocked over their seedling pots. Should I take a few out and move them somewhere else? I don't know if that's enough soil for four tomato plants.
 |
| From my garden |
These are my other two green zebra seedlings, freshly watered. (There's a third in there, but I don't think it'll make it.) I planted these in a raised bed that I'd pulled all of weeds out of, which made me feel all accomplished. However, these are struggling because...
 |
| From my garden |
Of the freakin' cat. This is the stray we feed, who we love very much, but who has decided that this newly dug-up bed is a perfect litter box. Even when I yell at her from the deck to stop it, she keeps right on digging. There used to be eight seedlings in there. Now, two, and they're not growing very quickly.
You can also see what crap my soil is. The soil in the beds was originally four inches of bagged topsoil over crappy, clayey and rock-hard dirt. Over the five years we've lived here, the topsoil is gone, leaving mostly just the clayey grossness. I mixed in a ton of my compost to this bed before I planted anything, but it's still pretty crappy soil.
I could, possible, transplant most of the seedlings from the pot of green zebras into here, and add a ton more compost, and try to make it a less hospitable place for cat pee. But I'm wary that, if I did that, I'd end up with no tomato plants at all. Advice?
I'd feel very accomplished, if it weren't for the fact that a lot of the Bangladeshi immigrants in my neighborhood actually garden so hard-core that their front yards are full of carefully arranged furrows of okra and peppers and eggplants. I am a rank amateur compared to my neighbors.