Plantings

An updated shot of the vegetable garden..including my new tomatoes from Seed Savers Exchange!

The broccoli is starting to grow like crazy..every day it's bigger and prettier!
The onions and garlic are also doing well, and I've harvested some of my lettuce already. Very tender..great flavor.

Tomato alley!
The two larger plants were given to me and have been in the ground for a couple weeks now. All the smaller plants (eight, to be exact) came from Seed Savers Exchange on a recent trip to Decorah. Lots of varieties, lots of colors :)

The last few days have also been busy planting around the house.
I bought several Korean boxwood at Home Depot a while back because they were good sized and marked down like crazy. I thought I could keep them alive for a while until after I had painted the trim and finished the front stoop.
..turns out I was wrong.

So, once we started planting a few, we had to plant A LOT. We planted the boxwood and that bushy willow you see in the corner here....then we went to my grandma's and dug hostas....then we went to the grocery store and bought a few more....then mom went to Wal-Mart and bought a few more!

Including this one - I think it's called Mouse Ears..it's supposed to stay small like this while spreading out.
I've already got about a dozen varieties of hosta in the ground..and I didn't know I wanted to plant anything just yet ;)

Let the hippie gardening begin!

Spring has sprung in Iowa! Actually, from what I’m reading, spring has sprung a little early everywhere this year. Temperatures have already been in the 90s, which – for us – is pretty unusual. But, combined with the mild winter, we’ve had it pretty easy so far in 2012.

That said, the farmers are worried about the lack of moisture we’ve had (no snow is not always a good thing) and people are waiting to see what the rest of the spring and summer hold. All I know is: if a warmer winter means a warmer summer, I’m toast. Humidity and I don’t get along.

Anyway, I’ve talked for quite a while about turning the enclosed front porch into my greenhouse and I’ve finally done it. For real. I ordered my seeds through a company called Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (www.rareseeds.com), bought some trays so I at least look like I know what I’m doing, and raked up some soil from the backyard to get everything started. I sprinkled a little bone meal into the soil mixture to assist the plants in establishing strong roots and I check for proper moisture every morning before work. The soil should be moist but not water logged.. check it with your finger to see. If it feels dry, water it; if not, no worries. It’s also important that your trays/pots have proper drainage because the plants will rot if allowed to sit in sopping wet soil.

My greenhouse :)

So I’ve been watching these seeds like I’m going to see something. Standing there waiting for something to pop up out of the dirt. Obviously I haven’t seen anything. However, over the weekend while we were building and painting kitchen cabinets..BOOM!



I borrowed a pair of grow lights from a friend at work who isn't starting her garden from seed this year.

Nearly all of my tomato seeds have sprouted! I’m still waiting on a couple herbs to show signs of progress, but so far I’ve got all kinds of tomatoes (about 6 different varieties, actually. Would you like any tomato plants? J) carrots, basil, thyme, oregano, and a bunch of different medicinal type herbs that I’m going to play around with. I bought a book quite a while ago that talks a lot about holistic remedies for stomach aches, sore throats, acne, you name it and I’m going to give it a shot. Of course, the backyard might be so thick with tomatoes that it chokes everything else out.

A Grappoli D'Inverno - an Italian varietal cherry tomato. I chose to grow mostly cherry tomatoes in the garden because - in my experience - larger tomatoes are more prone to rot, disease, pests, etc.

I was in Des Moines yesterday for an appointment when I remembered I had a Lowe’s gift card saved back from Christmas (it’s been so long, it was like getting a new gift!) After my appointment ended, I had lunch at a little French place and stopped off at Lowe’s to see what I needed to spend free money on. I couldn’t think of anything hardware-wise that I needed immediately, so I wandered around the landscaping side for a while. I ended up with a giganto bag of mulch, a blueberry bush, and a stick that promises to one day be a Concord grape vine.

A little mulch cleaned up this corner by the side door. I pulled out some of the old daylillies and planted them elsewhere. Otherwise, I've got a couple hostas, some oregano and pineapple mint for ground cover (and kitchen use) a mystery plant, and a peony that has yet to decide if it wants to live. With the exception of the daylilly, all of these were gifts from a friend - thanks!

So while dad finished up spraying panels for the kitchen cabinets, I mulched, dug in some new plants, and used up a pile of bricks left over from the old west chimney.

There's no reason my composter can't look good on the back of the garage!

This is my backyard - all staked out and ready for planting once the seeds have gotten a little bigger. I plan to mulch the middle row and every other plot with straw so I've got room to move around in here once the tomatoes have taken over. :)

Hodge-podge

This is one of those ‘catch-all’ blogs I do that pertain to everything and nothing all at once.

The first part of that is me being a creeper and taking random pictures of random people’s property J I went on a little farm visit late last week for work – I had to take pictures of the houses and outbuildings on the property to satisfy my underwriters, and ended up deciding I might like to be a farmer if I could be a farmer on this particular farm.

Maybe I'm just too big a city-boy, but I don't know many of you who have cool little 100-year-old water towers in your yard. Or playhouses.. these are cool grandparents :)

This spring has really gotten to me for some reason. It’s unseasonably warm, everything is in bloom, the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing just enough to mess your hair and it’s amazing. Something about this old farm – and Iowa in general – just struck me as being the coolest place in the world at that particular moment. It has been in operation by the same family for over a hundred years and it has just the right amount of character that comes from 50 layers of paint and thousands of feet shuffling across the front porch. Luckily, the owner was happy to show it off J

I didn't know what this bush was? Fire engine red blooms. Like I said, this spring is getting to me.

Back on my homestead..

The baseboard project has gone really well! I have designated myself as the outside corner master. Inside corners..not so much, but we’ve decided “That’s why God made wood putty.” When it’s all painted and sanded, it looks really great..just like it’s been there forever J Pictures to come!

After a long Saturday of crawling around on the floor with the baseboard project, I decided to walk up the block to the brewery to take in the music. I hadn’t shown you the brewery yet, so I snapped a picture. Good beer, good music, no manual labor. It was a great night!

The Brewery in all its live music glory.

Dad and I worked most of the morning yesterday leveling out the backyard and making the back of the neighboring apartment building’s garage look less like a bomb had gone off near it. The latter of which turned into kind of a neighborhood effort: we raked the brush and pulled some old wood out away from the building, the neighbors came by to help haul stuff away, and a friend brought by some hosta splits from her garden. I watered them in last night and again this morning..we’ll see how they do!

My backyard was less a neighborhood effort, and more sweat on Dad and my part. Since my concrete man laid my driveway and the footings/slab for the garage, we’ve had these piles of dirt/gravel lying around. He offered to level everything out for us, but we borrowed our neighbors tiller and got after it. It looks much nicer than before, and it should be ready for homegrown produce whenever I am. …which could be a while, but it’s a nice thought.

Today, I’m back to work, but Dad has the day off and decided to build a prototype cabinet for the kitchen. We’ve got the materials and many of the tools..now if we could prove our measurements are correct we’ll be off and running!

It looks like a cabinet, right? Actually, shortly after I took this, Dad put its feet on and it looked much more convincing. We'll work on drawer slides soon and after a few more boxes come together we'll cut out a face frame..and it will be glorious.

More cabinets tonight, I imagine..and more pictures to follow!