The long over-due garden post

I'll admit that I have been terrible about blogging this year. And since this had mostly been a garden blog I feel that I have dropped the ball on up-dates especially since my garden looks like this...

June 29

Compared to last year, I would say that the garden looks a lot neater with the raised beds and mulching around them. The mounds worked great and produced a lot of veggies. But, I lost some soil (erosion) and the mounds lost shape by fall.

May 18th

I started with three beds, one from last fall that I added after clearing the corn and green bean plants and two that I purchased this year. The beds are Greenes Fence 4'x8' cedar beds that I got from Home Depot. They were super easy to put build and install. I definitely recommend them for anyone who wants raised beds but doesn't want to put in too much though into how to build them.

June 16

This year, I planted tomatoes (Roma, yellow slicing, red cherry and yellow cherry tomatoes), basil, Thai hot peppers, spaghetti squash,  zucchini, cucumber, green beans, peas, butternut squash, radish, parsley, green onion, spinach, lettuce, and cilantro. It's a lot. No lie. But, I'm excited about the possibilities.

My garden, the best analogy to my life at the moment

Ok, it's been about two months since my last post. Life has been all sorts of crazy for me (which from some points of view is my normal speed). Mid-August I started another semester of graduate school, this time taking two classes instead of one, and I also started to teach another class at my school. Unlike the curriculum for the freshman, this one I or seniors and is a bit underdeveloped. My job is definitely harder this year than last year. In addition, I started volunteering for a political campaign. Technically, I am supposed to be an intern; however, I'm more like a canvassing pro. And on top of all that, I was also training (or trying to train) for Ragnar DC. So if being a teacher and student at the same time was not hard enough, I am also a long distance runner and volunteer. With so much  going on, I am surprised sometimes at the fact I can get some (but nowhere near all) things done.

One thing that has fallen to the way side was my vegetable garden. And though it looked quite haggard, it was productive! My messy little garden was very productive. Especially those tomato plants.

I hope that I am at least as productive as my garden, but my productivity and my garden's productivity are not really all that comparable. All i know is I've been crazy busy with life. And my garden has been going crazy producing tomatoes (I'm thinking some time to make a marinara sauce is in order).

P.S. Since I just finished running Ragnar this past weekend, that is one thing off the list. (I will post more about my post-Ragnar running plans later this week)

Success from the garden :-)

Tomato and Pepper Plants

Squash, beans, and corn plants

My first try at gardening has been going pretty well. The plants are full and lush and going pretty strong, in spite of the small battles with early blight, slugs, and other pests. I've been getting a decent little harvest - especially from my tomato plants.

Tomatoes, beens, and zucchini squash

Some of the tomatoes are half the size of my niece's head! And there's more to come.

While I haven't seen too many ears of corn on my plants, there are a couple almost ready to pick. Also, I have a bunch of plum tomatoes and heirlooms that just need to ripen. I'm going to have to get a bit creative with tomatoes. I've already used a few in a grilled chicken bruschetta and will be using some in a tomato tart. A fresh tomato salsa might have to be on the list too. I'll try to have the camera out to snap a few photos of my tomato creations.

Plum tomato plants surrounded by wild flowers.

The experimental garden in front of my sidewalk, where the azaleas used to be, has been successful for the plum tomatoes. There are a few green bean plants that have produced a handful of green beans. However, the squash has not done very well. I think it's because they are shaded and squash plants are fiends for sunlight.  Oh well. 

With the success of the garden, I'm already thinking of what I can do for a fall garden. Looking around the web, I think I'll soon start some beds with more green beans, carrots, lettuce, and maybe some kale.

Macro view of the garden

Tomato flower

Late in 2012, Aaron wanted to up-grade our camera equipment to the fancier  professional versions of the entry level DSLRs that we had. With the camera change, a change in the lenses also was in order. One lens that I have been eying for a while was a macro lens - which if you are a Nikon shooter, it's brand of macro lenes are labelled "micro." My wonderful husband spoiled me with getting one of these lenes. However, due to teaching, taking graduate school-level classes, races, and gardening, I haven't really had a chance to play with the new toy camera, much less with the fun our new lenses. That is until last night. With no grading or any other pressing paper work hanging over my head, I thought it was just as good as any to take a few shots. Since I've been blogging about the garden, I figured the plants would be the perfect test subjects. 

Young tomato

The tomato plants were among the first subjects. Not only did I get some shots of the flowers, it allowed me to be able to carefully inspect the plants for signs of fruits. The past few days weeks had me annoyed with the lack of tomato fruits. There had been plenty of flowers but not fruits. I thought that there could be a lack of pollinators, though I'm not outside very much to verify. I thought this was equally annoying since I had assumed that tomatoes were not picky when it comes to fruiting (I think I need to do more research about this). While shooting a flower on one of my store bought plants, I noticed a tiny little fruit!! I'm hoping that there will be a few more fruits that will begin to show up, and that I do not have to "replace" the pollinators in my yard.

Zucchini bud

This past weekend, I saw bright yellow flowers from my squash plants. I hope that I'll see it a bit more opened up to take some cool shots of it as well.

The corn, which were started from seed, have been growing nicely. One fun thing about the corn plants is the swirl pattern in the middle of their stocks where the new corn growth emerges. It looks like a green vortex.

Looking into the corn stalk

The couple of pictures below are from one of the hostas across the drive way from the vegetable garden. I thought it would be fun to play with Lightroom and see what effects I can apply to the photo, although I had not installed the program on to my computer until last night. Quick note, most of the pictures in this post were cropped and had the exposure adjusted on them to make sure they were not too dark. After playing with the tone, saturation, and vibrance of the photo (and cropping too) the shot on the right is what came out. Not too shabby (imho).

With school out and my main objectives being working on the garden, finishing my course work towards my teaching license, and working out a lot, I'm hoping that I'll have more time to pay around with the camera.  

Mission Creep... Garden Style

Garden at the beginning of May

Garden with all three beds as of last week

My goal for 2013 was to have a few garden beds in the part my yard between the driveway and my neighbor's property. The plan for the garden this year was to have three beds with corn, green beans, squash, and herbs. By the beginning of May, I had one bed with a handful of plants - mostly tomatos and pepper plants. I thought I was making good progress, but  another two weeks passed by before I was able to complete the latter two beds. Unlike the first bed that contains store bought plants, the second and third beds contain plants that were started from seed. The second bed contains squash plants that were started a few weeks earlier and some green beans from seed. The third bed contains corn and green beans. My parents have already threatened to steal corn and green beans from my garden. (Grrr...) In the first bed, I added some more tomato plants and a couple of basil plants. So the initial garden plan has been completed and I just have to tend the garden as the plants grow.

Starting seeds, part 2

I will not lie that the size of my garden has expanded beyond my initial plan. Part of this was due to the sad fact that the first set of seeds I started in late March/early April were no good to plant out because they had received too much light. The epicotyls of each of the seedlings were much too long and did not look healthy. This is part of the reason why I had bought plants for the first bed. That and I was impatient in having a fuller plant in the garden/  A few weeks before building the two latter beds, I had started some plants to plant in those beds. The result of the second try were a good number of seedlings; more seedlings that I had space to plant out, which left me with the problem of what to do with the extra seedlings.


The other reason why my garden plan expanded was the unplanned removal of the azalea bushes (wall) in front of our house. When we moved into the house I thought that they looked pretty, but after the blooms finished I didn't really like the way they looked. Also, the bushes were overgrown and I didn't want to work that much on them to trim them back and train them. So after talking with a coworker who offered to take them off my hands, the azaleas were gone. That left all of the bare spots in our yard to figure out what we were going to do.

Front walk way before and after

Beets, radishes, lettuce, and herb

Since I had extra seedlings, I figured, why not plant them in the front of the house. As Aaron would remind me, this decision was a classic case of mission creep. And the mission creep did not end there as I had also started a bunch of container gardens full of veggies and herbs too.

I'm really hoping to get some tasty produce out of my suburban experiment.

My thoughts on Cooked

Pollan giving a TedTalk (From Wikipedia)

One of my "intellectual idols" would have to be Michael Pollan. I've been interested in his work after watching Botany of Desire, Food, Inc., and the Ted Talk he gave from the plants' perspective. I agree with many of his ideas on food and enjoy hearing him speak on them. I admire the work he has done to provide some clarity of what is going on with the modern day food system.

Cooked is Pollan's latest book that takes a look at the history of four cooking methods, barbecue, braise, bake, and ferment. The narrative is Pollan's journey to learn about these methods from masters of each of these crafts that tangentially bounces to the historic, psychological, and scientific stories related to each technique*. I am completely envious of this experience because it involves two things that love to do, cook and learn; to have been able to take the time to learn from masters of these cooking techniques is just awesome and something that hardly anyone could afford to do. However, his writing gives the impression that learning each techniques is within reach and cooking school is not a must.  For each method, I kept thinking to myself, "I could do that." While currently do not have lots of time to try each of these cooking methods at the moment (kind of hard at the moment being a student and a new teacher), I definitely want to try each technique. Oh, and I want to make the note that I do cook at home right now, but not with the type of cooking styles Pollan uses. I'll admit that I'm hoping this summer could be a time that I can try my hand at making a loaf of bread, braise a nice cut of meat, or even try my hand at barbecue this summer. I greatly recommend this book who enjoys good food and wants to be voyeuristic about learning how to cook.

*I wanted to also note that I read this as an audiobook, which helped out a lot. In the past, I tried to read In Defense of Food and Omnivore's Dilema, but I had gotten so caught up in the tangental narratives that I would ge frustrated and not finished. This time, it went so much smoother and I really enjoyed the fact that Pollan reads the book himself. It helps provide clarity to the narrative. I would definitely recommend this book as an audio book, and now plan on using this format to complete the other Pollan books on my shelf.

Ready to garden?

I'm armed with seeds, seed starting mix, starting pots, grow lights, and a couple "how to garden" books. The last frost is supposedly going to end in about a month, so this is the perfect time start some seeds indoors.

The outside still needs work, I have to clear a few bushes and prep the area where I will put the raised beds. I'll start that this weekend. :-)

If you want to know what I have to grow, I've got seeds for corn, tomatoes (two varieties), green beans, acorn squash, butternut squash, basil, and zucchini. I'll start the tomatoes, zucchini, and basil indoors. The winter squashes will start closer to when the beds will be ready, and I'll sow the beans and corn directly.

Hooray for getting closer to starting another goal for 2013!!

In search of my own dynamic equilibrium

I am a person with a lot of interests. I enjoy science, politics, food, and learning. I want to complete an Olympic distance triathlon, start a vegetable garden, travel to various countries, improve my photographic skills, and scuba dive. Some of my interests can be related to careers that I have pursued or want to pursue. Others are hobbies that I have tried or need to make time (and money) for. Like many people, I’m just trying to figure out my goal(s) and how I am going to get there.

One of the things I have had a lot of difficulty with is managing all of these interests. Some of have fallen to the wayside to be picked up at a later date, while the rest have been haphazardly juggled the last few months of 2012. While I accomplished a number of things, I also did not feel balanced among all aspects in life. I realize in the past I set out these weekly plans that, if I can only train myself to get used to them, I would be able to have a “balanced” life. However, I realize that those plans were often static and would not be able to accommodate the disruptions that typically occur. So I guess this year, I’m hoping that I can find some sort of equilibrium but also remain somewhat flexible to whatever comes up in life.