Garden Photos

our loot, originally uploaded by pmauro2001.

Kimberly and I have finally gotten around to uploading and renaming all the photos we've taken of our various garden projects.

The photo stream for our current garden, which we are now calling the Somerset Garden, starts at the original planning party and traces all the way through planting and the current state of affairs. It's fairly amazing to compare the old pictures to the current garden, especially the squash pictures - they have grown from seeds to gigantic plants bearing fruit in just over a month. I will always be amazed at how fast things grow.

The first garden we had, which was destroyed by the floods, as well as the plants in our front patio (sunflowers, potatoes, hot pepper), are documented here. Some of the post flood pictures are particularly sad. The sunflowers in the front yard are doing very well, so I'll try to take some new pictures and upload those.

"Too much is never enough"

This, I believe, is my husband's motto in life. Perhaps his farming ancestors are part of this but Peter firmly believes that one must always have more rather than just enough. He already has a family story about him. You see, while Dad was in the hospital during one of his operations, Peter kindly offered to bring us all dinner. He picked up some Chinese food and brought it to the weary group at the hospital. You could smell the Chinese food wafting down the hallway as Peter got off the elevator, and we were all blown away by the number of boxes that he unpacked. They just kept coming and coming. Kung pao and General Tso's mixed with some Happy Family and several boxes of potstickers with rice and veggies and more and more. All to feed three stressed out and scared women and one cancer patient. We took most of those boxes home.

I tell you this story to stress that Peter is WELL known for this behavior. But, it still came as a surprise to me when I showed up at THE GARDEN Tuesday morning. He told me it was big. He described the number and variety of plants. But, somehow, the true scale of the garden was lost on me.

We are so screwed.

The garden is really huge. Like crazy. There are at least 60 squash/cuke/melon mounds without an exaggeration and each mound has two or three plants. We'll be sneaking around the neighborhood and leaving squash presents on people's doorsteps in a month or two.
The white marks on the lower right aren't fungus, rather it's a melon variety called Moon and Stars. The Fruit are also supposed to have green with yellow dots.

There are 20 or so tomatoes putting out fruit. You can see them here tied to stakes.

You can start to see the scale of the garden in this picture. The lettuce, radish, carrots, basil, and weeds are in the foreground. Tomatoes and beans are in the middle and the squash are there in the back. We still have at least 100 radishes to pull, and I have two bunches in the fridge. The beans are going to go crazy any minute and the zukes are putting out babies fast. There's an entire "field" of basil. We harvested three zukes already as well a few different types of peppers. Our farming companions took home the few peas that managed to grow (it was past their season when they went in the ground). The beans have tiny beans growing (just thicker than a pencil lead) but by next weekend I'm sure they'll be huge. I'm hoping we get enough to can!

The farm project is intense and crazy, but incredibly enjoyable. Of the garden gang, I'm the only one with actual growing knowledge and it's great fun to watch them learn about plants and figure out who needs what. (Although they all need to learn to harden their hearts and THIN seedlings. By the time I got home it was too late and we have so many little two headed radishes).

And we're rather well known now. On Wednesday I went in to campus to lesson plan a bit and say hi to various profs. German prof asked how Peter was doing since his garden had flooded. I explained that he had a new garden project going and that it was a little ambitious. We talked for a while and then I mentioned that it was near PEter's old job. German Prof's jaw hit the ground as he exclaimed, "You mean that's YOUR garden?" He and his kids apparently have walked by regularly. We also get visitors from the gym and the restaurant and people drop off gifts as well (farming tools, hay etc).

I never would have wanted or planned a garden on this scale... but it sure is fun!

Peas, Beans, Peppers, and Squash Unite to Save My Summer

I have to say, when I first started the gigantic garden project with people from work, I thought there was no way we were getting anything from it. It would be a nice way to spend some time outdoors, but we were starting everything from seed, most of which we planted in the days just before the summer solstice. I was not optimistic.

My lack of optimism was also partially based on this:That is what is left of the garden plot that Kimberly and I started before she left for Mexico. If you remember, it was under some water as part of the Great Iowa Floods of 2008. It looks even more depressing in real life. Obviously, people in other parts of the State have had it much worse than we have, but it's still sad.

I did go down there and deconstruct the fence and posts, which have been moved to the new plot - the lack of fence actually makes it less depressing, as the fence ended up being in pretty rough shape.
But I should have held out hope, because this was still in the plot:

That right there is a pepper. Still growing. After it has been submerged under 8 feet of water for at least a week. And on top of that, we have a patch of chives growing as well (at some point I want to go down to the plot and remove them from the ground and grow them in containers, but I'm going to let them rest for a little while - they've had a stressful summer). (Also, notice the dry, cracking soil, and remember, this was submerged under 8 feet of water, and has been inundated with rain for weeks - yet, it's already dry enough to crack. That's some hearty Midwest soil)

So anyways, back to my new, giant garden plot. Things are happening. And fast. As I said, we planted just before the summer solstice, which was less than 2 weeks ago. Within a few days, we had sprouts: mostly radishes and lettuce, but that was fine. But now, we have these things:

That's four rows of peas and beans, with their accompanying homemade climbing lattices. Can't see them that well, well check these out:

Those are purple peas - their stems are actually purple, which probably won't last, but is ridiculously cool. (I should have mentioned this earlier, but I didn't think of it: Almost all of the seeds in this garden (but not the starts) are from this place in Decorah, Iowa called Seed Savers - they are a seed-swapping and preservation collaborative, working to save and pass on heirloom seeds. They're pretty awesome. The Retro Librarian knew about them and bought a bunch of stuff. Anyways, if you're looking for cool heirloom tomatoes in the future, keep them in mind)

Those are beans of some variety, also with climbing lattice.


Those are bush beans. Kimberly asked for lots of beans for pickling purposes; I provided.

Lastly, there are these:
Those are Provence Squash. We have over 50 mounds designated solely for various squash, including watermelon, eggplant, cucumber, winter squash, zucchini, and 100-lb pumpkins. And all of them are now sticking out of the ground, with many of them having started with their secondary growth leaves (which you can see on some of the leaves above).

So in all, the garden is working out well. It's still ridiculously huge, and needs to be weeded on a daily basis (which is terrible, terrible work), but all of us are now optimistic that we might actually get some produce to eat from all the work we've put into this thing.

My, That's a Large Garden

Pretty much every day last week, I was out in my new garden plot, trying to get things in the ground before the summer solstice hit to try to give them a chance to actually sprout and produce some interesting goods. The garden plot is approximately 65' x 65' (4,225 s.f.), which is like 10 times larger than our old garden, that was under 8 feet of water.

Here's a picture of the full garden:
In the front are small mounds, planted with squashes, pumpkins, zucchini, cucumber, water melons, and other vine-type plants.

Beyond that is 2 rows of tomatoes, peas, and beans. Then a row of herbs, then root type veggies, like carrots and radishes. Here are the root veggies, under string rows:

As you can see, we haven't gotten a fence up yet, as we're not sure exactly how to fence such a large space without creating a huge eye sore in one of the higher-end neighborhoods in town. We need to figure it out this week, since we know for sure that there is a family of rabbits that live near-by and that there are definitely deer in the area.

We planted a majority of the new garden as seeds, which is why in the above pictures it looks like a giant dirt patch. But we do have some starts, including all the tomatoes, as well as some peppers, eggplants, and giant pumpkins. Also, we already have radishes poking up out of the ground, which is very exciting. As we were planting things last week, we were getting dispirited since it was so late in the season; but the radishes have given us hope that all this insane amount of work and money spent will at least yield us some small amount of produce.

Since we're right outside our work, we get a fair amount of razzing from our co-workers. But we also have gotten a fair amount of adoration, and have had several people come out during work to either help, inquire about what we're doing, or to bring us snacks, like iced tea and ice cream. We've also had several people from the neighborhood stop by to see what we're up to; apparently a lot of people who use the neighboring gym watch us as they run on their treadmills and are curious as to what we're up to. One guy even told us what a novel idea it was to start a garden. All I could thing was ' We're in Iowa, what else would we do with a big piece of vacant land?'
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On another note outside our front door, I planted a bunch of sunflowers, which have taken quite nicely. Here they are, including one that fell over, but has made a comeback and is growing strong again.


I'm thinking these guys will be 10 feet tall by the time all is said and done, with some giant sunflower heads.

The Rebirth of Garden

First, a quick note to all of those who have contacted me over the last couple days: we are not being flooded in my area of Iowa. Besides the garden plot that is down in the flood plain, and some other areas of the city which are built in the flood plains, the town is relatively dry. It certainly isn't anything like Cedar Rapids, Saylorville, Des Moines, or Iowa City, all of which are, respectively, being evacuated, having their reservoir overflow, having a levee break, or being flooded and the art museum being in danger of floating away. So we're pretty lucky here. Unfortunately, most of the eastern part of the State has been fairly well damaged. One guy I work with was supposed to move to Iowa City in August, but he thinks the restaurant he was going to might shut down. And another guy I work with has his parent's basement flood, thereby losing lots of his old stuff, including lots of old books.

Thanks for contacting me to check in.

Now back to the real news: I have a new garden plot. Hooray!

I think I mentioned in my last gardening update that a co-worker had secured the plot next to our restaurant. Well, we got a long enough break in the weather that we were able to till it. Four of us went out yesterday and dug up a 60 x 60 plot. It's freaking huge.

Tomorrow, me and one other guy are gonna go out and erect a fence, hopefully scavenging as much stuff as possible from our old plot.

Here's a few pictures from the planning session we had earlier tonight to figure some stuff out:

The main players are the two guys looking at the camera: the Retro Librarian and 'The Guy who looks like he's from Iowa'. The others are either significant others or co-workers who were just there to mock us. We'll see who's laughing come harvest season. Hopefully.

Our seeds and some light reading. Retro Librarian went a little overboard with the seed buying.

Iowa Guy being sad after being told that he can't smoke around the tomatoes because of Tobacco Mosaic virus. I have no idea if this can really happen, but he was sad.

While we were outside, we saw all these little baby rabbits running around. Then eventually, we saw their momma, and then we saw this:

Those are little baby bunnies feeding from their mom's teet.

Updates to follow.

Gardening/Weather Updates

A quick update on the gardening/weather situation:

• Our community garden plot is still under some water. I walked down to the plot, through ankle deep water, and found that there are actually still some plants standing, notably the pepper plants and some of the squash. And one of the sunflowers. The tomatoes were still standing, but they were black and didn't look like they were going to make it through. Additionally, the water that is flooding the field smells really, really foul. Up river, there must be lots of farms and hog farms, so all the fertilizers and other stuff has settled into our field.
• Two of my co-workers have also secured gardening plots, one in one of their back yards, the other on a vacant lot near the restaurant we all work at. Unfortunately, since the weather has been so terrible and rainy, we can't till the soil, so we can't plant anything. Although the growing season here does extend into October, it's getting a little late for planting.
  
• As for the weather, Iowa is experiencing one of its worst floods since 1993. Apparently, we've just been through one of the worst winters in recent memory and are now experiencing one of the worst springs/rain seasons in recent history. It's really amazing. We haven't had 2 consecutive days of non-rain for at least the past 3 weeks, and maybe longer. There are reservoirs and lakes and rivers and streams that are all about to burst and overflow their banks. The City of Des Moines closed all their bridges last night because they needed to open up the reservoirs to release water, and the water was almost to the tops of the bridges. It's actually really bad throughout the state.
  

Hopefully, things dry out and we can get some plants in the ground.