gardening

Raise the Bed

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Happy Solstice!  To my friends in the Northern Hemisphere, let’s play into the wee hours and celebrate the longest day of the year!  To the Southern Hemisphere, rejoice!  The darkness is dwindling and your Spring will come.

This Solstice marks the start of my third Summer in Central Virginia.   We had a wet and cool Spring, mostly a welcome respite from the melting heat that can land in May and stay until October.  Yesterday Tate said “we’ve only had one day so far that was close to 100*!”, I quickly reminded him that it wasn’t even Summer yet!

The weather has been awesome for the garden.  I’m not counting my chickens tomatoes yet but I do believe it’s going to be the best growing season I’ve had.

Between the weather and the raised beds it’s looking like a bumper crop!

This is also our third growing season in our house.  We’ve had raised beds since our first fall but we really expanded this year.

The two furthest skinny beds were added this year for tomatoes.  We had beds there last year but not raised.  The soil was lacking and they were tricky to mow around so they got elevated.

The real excitement though are these two awesome BIG raised beds.

The best part? There’s NO WAY that damn groundhog is eating my green beans!  These beds are three feet tall, two feet wide, and eight feet long each.  The height is a little excessive but that was the size of the tin and it makes it really easy to pick and weed.

Tate built these beds in an afternoon out of tin and lumber from Lowes’s.  I’ve been seeing designs similar to this around town and he took the idea as a springboard and ran with it.  I love them! And they are right outside our kitchen window so I can watch the beans, squash, cucumbers, and tomato grow as I cook.

Again, Happy Solstice!

 

 

Fall Gardening

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In gardens, beauty is a by-product.  The main business is sex and death.  ~Sam Llewelyn

I’m a pretty lazy low-key gardener, especially this time of year when darkness sets in early and the soil is so cold.

Luckily some plants respond pretty well to my ways, like garlic.

Last year was the first time I grew garlic and I enjoyed the whole process.  The scapes were tasty and novel and the garlic itself was outstanding in flavor, a whole different ball game from those mass produced Chinese cloves I’d been eating.

This year I put about two dozen cloves in the ground and wished I had space for twice that many.

I love fall gardening because I rarely need to water, there are less bugs eating the goods, and it is downright exciting to me to pick fresh greens when everything else is brown and dreary.

We’ve had a few frosts so far this month.

The cosmos finally bit the dust…

And the peppers are done.

But the sugar snap peas are holding on!  They have a few flowers but I’d be shocked if they actually make a pea (I planted them too late) so I’ve been snipping the tendrils and eating them in salads.

The greens, arugula and lettuce mostly, grow pretty slow in these temperatures so I tried to grow a lot of them.

I can’t believe the strawberries are still producing!

Are you growing anything this fall/winter?

In case you are wondering Charlottesville is in zone 7a on the USDA’s Plant Hardiness Zone Map.