Beets

These babies are doing well.
Notice my calendula bouquet.

Ready for winter

Mitch and I cleared out the spent plants.
I've got beets going for my late fall crop.
The burlap is preventing weeds until I am ready to cover crop.

Lavendar

I love lavendar....

Sunflower...

and me.

Cabbages

Close-up

Lemongrass, horseradish, cabbage, pepper, eggplant

Garden Poem (7.20.08)

Ripped out
Bolting Revolting
lettuce

Pruned Tomatoes
(Saw how to do
that on Wikihow)

left some Calendula
that has come back
Calendula always
returning

2 blooms on EggPlant
lots of mater blossoms

lavender buds

transplanted strawberries
from Mitch's roof

Mulch Mulch Mulch

& Mitch to take
photographs

and white butterflies

Green Beans

My First Sunflower

From the seeds Myra brought back from Lisa Marie's wedding.

Pulled the lettuce

What should I plant next?

Another Garden Portrait

Like watching a child grow up.
I posted this so you could see the sunflowers sticking up out of all that Clarkia.
(The seeds came as favors from Lisa Marie's wedding.)
Photo by Mitch.

Clarkia in Bloom

Photo by Mitch
This is a detail shot. Look for a splash of pink in the last post (to see how it sits in the garden).

The State of the Patch II

Everything is filling out nicely.
Photo by Mitch.

The State of the Patch

Working in my p patch.
Photo by Mitch

Sunflower

Photography by Mitch Bartee.

Poppies!

Photography by Mitch Bartee.

Coming along nicely....

Photography by Mitch Bartee.

The tomatoes have blossoms and/or fruit.
Peppers and egg plant have buds.

Clarkia has buds and some blooms!
It is the new love of my life.

The lavender has a few blooms, too!

Flowers

These grow in the shared community beds of our P-Patch.
Photography by Mitchell Bartee

Flowers

These are flowers in the shared/community beds of our P-Patch.
Photography by Mitch Bartee

Garden Portrait

Photography by Mitch Bartee

Portrait

Photography by Mitchell Bartee

The State of the Patch

The first days of Summer.
Things seem to be coming along.
The tomatoes have flowers.
The horseradish is huge,
and the early onions.
Mitch picked 2 more strawberries (12 and 13).

Strawberries

There have been exactly 11 so far....

Lettuce is easy

But the critters love it.

Tomatoes

Well, I can think of a couple of things I will do differently next year.
We'll see how these guys do.
I'm remain guardedly optimistic.

My first edibles

I picked them, right after this photo, and Myra and I ate them.
They were super sweet and delish!

Guest Garden

My friend Mitch has a conifer garden on his roof-top deck. It's really fun.
He's also let me put some veggies in pots to see what will grow.
I'm featuring a couple of photos here as my first guest garden.

A Strawberry's Tale

The renegade strawberries are turning.

The Patch in June

Lettuce looks good (it's up from seeds), tomatoes are having a tough time, horseradish looks good. Added cabbage and beans.

Transplanting

Here's hoping for the best! A Columbine (a longtime personal favorite), some English Thyme and New York Early Onions all went in today. Never done onions. We'll see how that goes. Also planted Sunflower seeds from Lisa and LJ's wedding (Myra brought them back, party favor). Lettuce is coming up. Need to weed. Strawberries have more blooms!

My Purchases

Eggplant
Rare Asian Cucumber
Sweet Chocolate Bell Pepper
Gourmet Orange Bell Pepper
Black Krim Tomato
Green Zebra Tomato
Black Cherry Tomato
New York Early Onion
Sweet Italian Basil
Peter's Pink Lavender
English Thyme
Horseradish
Lemongrass
(It's going to be quite the P-Patch!)

Seattle Tilth Edible Plant Sale

This is the plant sale in the Seattle. As you can see it was a total madhouse. Still, all organic plant starts, how can you go wrong.

The Renegade Strawberry Blossom

I will be tickled pink if I get a strawberry out of this!

Work Party

Lots of gardeners came out for the first garden gathering/work party of the season. I weeded the long, outer bed (by the sidewalk) and thinned out the lemon balm. We collected a good bit of brown material (mostly dried leaves) to layer into new compost. Other gardeners mulched (using our sifted compost) and repaired the fence.

The Other Side of the Overview

You've seen the view from both sides, now.

Overview of my day

Here you can see the rows of seeds I planted today. Two rows of lettuces and a row of Greek Oregano and Flat Leaf Italian Parsley.

The burlap is keeping weeds down while my under-turned cover crop decays into the soil. The plant sales are coming up. This is the area of my garden waiting patiently for my future purchases.

And notice the tiny strawberry mound; several survived the transplanting.

Sunny Day in the Garden

Several other Gardeners took advantage of a beautiful day. I was pleased with what I accomplished in my morning. Here's a long view of the garden.

Purple Flower

Early spring blooms. No idea what this is. It grows by the gate at the entrance to the garden.

Bug!

A sleeping grub, overturned while I was working the soil. Isn't he cute?

Renegade Strawberries

The strawberries in my P-Patch weren't planted by me or the gardener before me. That is, until this weekend, when I dug them up and transplanted them back. They were rescued, the poor clover was turned into the soil to decay and nourish the new plantings. But that is the clover's karma.

No my strawberries are renegades from the P-Patches nearby. I don't know if they will survive the transplant or produce fruit. But they are the last of the "found fruit and vegetables" that were in my P-Patch when I took it over. (I was sick of the lettuce and chard, so into the compost they went.)

The little strawberry plants all had new spring growth, so I'm hoping they are hardy and healthy and ready to flourish.

We'll see. I'll keep you posted. Ugh, was that a pun?

The Patch is Back!

It was a long grey winter and I was sick of posting pictures of clover and lettuce and chard! Here's what the Patch looks like now that my winter cover crop (crimson clover) has been turned into the soil to decay (Martha calls this green fertilizer).

You'll notice a small clump of strawberries (upper right quadrant of the photo). More about these in the next post.

ACTION ITEMS:

I resolve to go to my P-Patch twice a week.

Nathan Hale High School Horticultural Sale, first weekend in May. This is where I'll buy my organic starts. Sorry Dad, I need to minimize my work on this end. Some seeds (herbs, lettuce) but mostly starts.

Speaking of seeds, get those in the ground next weekend.

Salad tonight!

Today's harvest: some lettuce and whatever that spiky, spicy, lettuce-y stuff is. Also some Calendula flowers, which I have floating in water on the table. A present for Myra.

The Other Parts of the Garden

One spends a certain amount of time picking up litter in the urban garden. It's just a fact of life. That's what I did most of my garden time today, in fact. But it brought me into parts of the communal space I don't always visit, which was nice. Fruit trees line the east and north borders. In between them, many things thrive. Here is a Euphorbia (my favorite here in the Pacific North West) with its early, yellow green blossoms. It's probably 4 feet tall and 5 across. It's everywhere. I'm sure people find it common as the day is long, but I am in love.
And this ancient Rosemary caught my attention; its sprigs crowned with delicate, cornflower blue blossoms. Also maybe 4 feet tall.

Crocus?

I know, right? But do you see the tender shoots reaching for the new day? I think, I'm not sure, but I think: These are the first Crocus of the new year. This photo was taken today, just this afternoon, at my P-Patch in Greg's Garden in Ballard, right behind the Safeway. It was a beautiful day to garden. Beautiful, but cold.