Violet Miracle

Since I wanted to grow all edible plants in the backyard, and am a huge fan of the color purple, I thought violets would be great to grow and naturalize in the shady areas from the fence. I looked all over on the web trying to find native violets, which surprisingly seemed difficult to do. It seemed like they were so common, hardly any nurseries but specialists wanted to carry them. Of course, keep in mind I still don't have a car- so I was limited to what I could find on the internet. With early spring quickly dissappearing, I resigned myself to being without violets for this season.

Then one day, low and behold- I see little purple flowers that looked an awful lot like violets pop out amongst the weeds! Would you believe, they were already growing by the fence! What luck, I couldn't believe my eyes! When my mom's friend the Master Gardener came overhe confirmed that they were indeed wild violets! Of course, the trick is going to be getting rid of the weeds without killing them. For now I've just left it as is, a project for another day. But we don't mow over in that area so they can grow. And boy oh boy, do they smell great! I love these violets, they are so pretty!

Wascally Wabbit Disaster!

Well, the lettuces were growing beautifully. I came home one evening to discover some unidentified animal got in and chomped them all right down to the dirt. I assume it was a rabbit, since I know there are a lot of them in this area. I also found a hole in the fence, which we patched upwith some extra fencing we found behind the shed. Two of the romaines seemed so eaten beyond repair I pulled them out and threw them in the dirt next to the bed. Miraculously, a week or two later the remaining 6 lettuces were growing back, up to about 2-3 inches tall, raising my hopes. I looked at the two thrown in the dirt and thought, hmm, could it be they might possibly grow back? So after a week or so of laying there in the dirt, I replanted them in the bed.

But then again! Disaster. More animals chomped the lettuces back down to the dirt a second time. I found a couple more holes in the fence so we patched those up too. Here is a close up of the poor romaine, chomped to the ground:The good news is, this was two weeks ago or so, and apparently our rabbit control measures have worked. The lettuces are growing like wildfire. Amazingly, one of the plants that sat out in the dirt for a week is even green and starting to grow back too! I'm sure I will be able to update the blog with a nice big picture of them soon.

What "Weed" Am I?

The backyard we bought was filled with weeds. So many of them are adorable- but I don't know what they are. I wish I did- anyone out there have a clue?

Here is one type. This picture was taken on April 17th, and now it is one month later but all of the little blue flowers are gone. I don't know if this is because we mowed it, or if that is the plants natural cycle.


And here is another, whose flowers have also dissappeared over the past month. Not that there aren't still weeds all over, they just don't look quite as cute as this anymore:

And then of course there is the ubiquitous dandelion. If there is any symbol of everything that is crazy about humanity today, it seems to me the common dandelion should be it. From what I understand, the leaves have more vitamins and nutrition than spinach. Sure, its a little bitter, but if you pick it while still young, then saute it with some garlic and sprinkle on some lemon juice, it is quite tasty. I will never understand why people put pesticides into the ground water and waste so much energy trying to kill these things! Sure, I guess they are invasive, yadda yadda, but in a world of skyrocketing food and gas prices with so many people that go hungry, hard to kill edible plants don't seem to be such a bad thing to me. Not to mention the fact, the yellow flowers are so pretty!

Compost Wuhoo!

I never thought I would be so excited about garbage, until the day I put up my new compost bin. Hubby and I got it at the free local Master Gardener workshop about compost for a discounted price of $25. Its called the "Earth Machine". We keep the little bucket it came with to hold kitchen waste in our freezer, so it doesn't get smelly, flies or mold if we don't dump it every day. This has been working out very well. The Master Gardeners said the compost heap shouldn't smell bad, although I did notice a little bit of odd smell coming off it so far. But nothing unbearable. We've been stirring it with a big stick at least once a week, (which you can see in the picture, up against the fence) so hopefully it will turn into rich compost faster. So far so good- I already see some dark crumbly stuff at the bottom of the bin.

The picture also shows the raspberry growing along beautifully. It was taken just a few weeks after planting. My mother's friend is a Master Gardener (not the one who did the compost workshop!) and he came over to check out my new house with her. Lucky he did, since he said I had planted the raspberry too low. He dug a bit around the roots and showed me how they were still green, and said that if I left it that way it would eventually rot. But this was only a week or so after I planted it, so he said it was fine to just carefully dig it up, put some more soil in the hole and raise it up. So that's exactly what I did, and the raspberry didn't seem to mind. It is really growing! My brother also came to visit a week or two later, and said he thinks I may even get berries this year at this rate! I hope so!! Come on, little flowers!!

Black Raspberry

My brother, who is four years older than me, already has an established garden. He grows these wonderful black rasperry bushes and was kind enough to give me a cane as a housewarming gift when we first moved in at the end of March.

I planted it about two weeks later, a few feet out from the fence because of all the shade that is thrown off the fence. I also put the cinder blocks around it to keep out the weeds, although this is probably only temporary until I can get something nicer looking. He told me it would require some support, so I put the black flower "mini trellises" there- these were actually the sides from an old spice rack that broke, which I couldn't bear to throw away because they were so cute.

The First Raised Bed

So I don't have a car yet, having just moved out of the city to the suburbs. But when I first moved in, my husband and I rented a car. Since we had the car, we tried to get as much house related stuff as we could, knowing we wouldn't have one again for a few months. In my excitement, I bought a couple cold weather plants, (this was in March) even though we did not yet have the bed set up. I got some mesclun greens, romaine lettuce, chives and a strawberry.

I decided to use cinder blocks as the most cost effective means to build raised beds. I figured the cinder blocks would also be good if I only used one layer, they could be moved next season if necessary. Being a beginning gardener, I knew this season would probably hold some lessons for me so I didn't want to do anything terribly permanent. We also picked up 10 40 lb bags of soil.

Two weeks later the plants were looking pretty unhappy in their containers, but I still hadn't any time to set up the bed. So after work on a Thursday hubby and I frantically dug up the weeds, arranged some of the cinder blocks and filled it with soil. I couldn't believe it took 8 full bags of soil just to fill this one tiny bed!!!! We realized at this point, we were going to need a better solution for getting soil then loading a million bags into a rental car.

To the right is a picture of the first finished raised bed. That's two mesclun in the front, with a chive in the corner on either side. Then 4 romaine in the middle and another 2 mesclun in the back.

I also put the strawberry in a self-watering pot that I was lucky to score on sale for $5.99. Here it is.

Before Shots

Here is a shot of the backyard when we first looked at the house in January 2008:


Its not very big. There is a little more to it than this, but unfortunately we didn't get any other good shots besides this one. Though it really does show most of it, so obnviously this will be a blog about gardening in a relatively small, semi-urban space. (yes, that is a train track in the background)

Here is one of the front right after we bought the house in the first week of April. It is already pretty cute but as you'll see later there is a little spot of grass below the tree that I am attempting to plant with a silver-blue theme xeriscape:

A Garden Grows in Zone 6b

Hello everyone. Welcome to my new blog about gardening in zone 6b! I am a first time homeowner hopefully turning a yard filled with weeds into an edible oasis. The last 12 or so years of apartment dwelling and city life have left me so hungry for a garden that my excitement about this project is uncontainable! So I figured I might as well channel it into this blog. Its already been a few weeks of work that I need to catch up on, so let's get straight to the details!