Connecting with my parents through the garden

Last weekend, I woke up feeling antsy, so I went to the Rochester Public Market. I love it there. Lots of vendors supply the city with fresh produce and goods. Right now it is also Flower Days, which means excellent deals on flowers and vegetables. Trying to find a parking place is a serious problem, though, and frustrates me to no end. I was ecstatic to finally find one right inside the market next to one of the coffee shops. It made it easier to spend way too much money.

I was on a mission to find someone who sold a variety of tomatoes. Last year, I remember seeing a group that had all kinds of varieties I had never seen before. I am a huge fan of the "nibbler" varieties that you can just pick right off of the plant and pop into your mouth. I have been known to have a full tomato lunch while sitting out in my yard. I do also like other varieties and want to try more. To my delight, there was a woman known as "The Tomato Lady" who easily had 50-60 different varieties. I started gathering every "nibbler" I could. She gave me a great deal since I was buying so many kinds. I ended up with 21 plants (all different, mind you) for $32. And the plants were beautiful. I picked up a few more from a couple of other vendors and then a couple more at the nursery after. Grand total of tomatoes to be potted: 34 - all different varieties.

I kept wandering around, looking for some good annuals. The nursery/farm market I go to has excellent prices on their flats. Unfortunately, most of the vendors at the Public Market were higher. I had passed someone who had flats for $13 apiece while I was collecting my tomatoes, but couldn't find that person again. I did eventually find someone who was selling flats at 2 for $25. I relieved him of his last two flats of lobelia. Those are one of my absolute favorites. Once those were loaded in my car, I headed to the farm market and spent more money on lots more flowers and veggies.

I spent the next 8 hours or so, sweating away in my yard. I cleaned out a couple of the beds and planted a whopping half-flat of annuals. I got all of the tomatoes potted, though!

Working on the tomatoes made me really miss my mom. She grew up on a farm and one of their major crops was tomatoes. It was tempting to try to call her and see if she would be able to talk to me about it. But the last time I tried, she could barely get out more than five words at once.

I also spent a lot of time working on the big bed on the side of the house. My father helped me put that together after I had dug it all up. I had reinjured an old break in my ankle the week before their visit, so I spent a lot of time scooting on my butt to place the rocks and plants. I exhausted myself shopping while hobbling on crutches. But we did it all together. I can feel him in the flowers when I am out there.

I still have so much work to be done. Unfortunately, this weekend I have been plagued with the stomach bug AGAIN from the little darlings at school. I hope to get out there in another day or two when I am feeling better!

Gardening A to Z: T is for Tickseed

Tickseed is another name for what I have always called coreopsis. I actually prefer the name coreopsis. Tickseed just sounds like it is crawling with bugs. Also, the golden retriever that was the school pet when I was a kid was named Coreopsis and we called her Corey for short. She was my first dog.

The kind that I have that does the best is of the larger yellow variety. It seems to be the hardiest of the ones available around here. Here is mine from last summer, poking up through my Japanese maple.

Photo copyright Andrea Coventry

There is a more delicate variety in a softer yellow, known as moonbeam. The leaves are also more threadlike. My father had a lot of it in his yard. I have also seen it in pink and ruby red. The ruby red is supposed to be the most delicate, I think. It needs more protection than I have been able to give it in our harsh Upstate winters.

Photo by Abigail Lockhart on SXC

Gardening from A to Z

There is a new blogging challenge for the month of April. Every day, except for Sundays, you are to write a blog post that revolves around one particular letter of the alphabet. I am definitely doing this for the Montessori Writer blog, but was also considering doing it here, to help me dream about spring and summer and my favorite outdoor activity.

This challenge is being sponsored by Tossing It Out. I have also signed up with my Montessori Writer's Thoughts blog, just in case I need an extra place to post, or feel particularly inspired. I considered doing Andi's Kids Books and Andi's Book Reviews, but I don't think I can organize those fast enough.

Would you care to join me?

A year later.....

Wow, it has been almost 13 months since I posted on here. I feel like I owe you an explanation. Last March 2010, I developed a medical condition, related to the female system, that was very painful and caused me a great deal of pain. I finally had to have minor surgery in August, to fully diagnose and relieve some of the discomfort. As a result, I was not permitted to do a lot of heavy lifting, nor did I have the patience to do so.

Finally, this fall, I was feeling better, and I did get out into the yard. I did a massive clean-up of my yard, and planted several hundred bulbs. I am so ready for spring to hit, I can't even tell you! I promise it is going to be a beautiful year, and there will be many more gardening stories to come. :-D

Fresh from the garden dinner!

The Rochester weather has been crappy and rainy lately, living little to no time for paying in the dirt. When it has been sunny, I'm usually engaged elsewhere.

Finally, yesterday, after spending numerous hours working for others in their yards, I came home and started wandering around my own. My produce has been taunting me, growing bigger and bigger, but not yielding anything. And finally last night, I hit the jackpot! Sort of.

My red raspberry bushes finally had a bunch of ripened berries on them. There is nothing better than a raspberry eaten straight off of the bush! The ones that you get in the stores are simply picked too early and don't have that same ripe, sweet taste.

The original pea plants, which I had thought were finished yielding pods, are starting to flower again. There were two actual pods that were ready. The green bean plants also had a ton of beans that were over 6 inches long! So, I ended up with a nice bowl full of beans, peas, and berries to eat for dinner.



I steamed the peas and beans. I don't think I have ever had peas that were so sweet! And the beans were so tasty and sweet as well! I wish I had better adjectives, but I don't!

I have newer peas and beans starting to flower, and even more that I had planted later, so I should be getting crops all season long. I can't wait! The handful tonight was a little small, but I should have enough for tomorrow's dinner.

The other fun bit was, as I was harvesting the peas and beans, I checked out the corn. And the first set of corn stalks that I had planted are now almost as tall as I am and have corn silk!



So far there are four sporting silk on four of the plants. One is still a little dwarfed by the pea plants, and the sixth one looks like it is getting ready to sprout some silk. You can actually see the little cobs starting to form! I'm so excited!!

The other 24 corn plants I had purchased are slowly but surely growing, as well.

My smaller tomatoes are growing better than the larger varieties. I'm hoping to have some ripened cherry, grape, and pear varieties later this week!

Busting My Butt & The Bounty Begins

I have been talking about two of my gardening jobs lately, and today I hit them both. I had a hard time getting moving this morning because I was way too tired and didn't get enough sleep last night. But, I finally made it to the first job which is that pulling of the pachysandra.

Unfortunately, it rained a ton last night, so the grass, pachysandra, and dirt were all totally soaked. Normally that means that plants come up easier out of the dirt. Not so much with pachysandra. Those stupid roots were totally glued together in the mud, meaning I only could pull the plants. Finally after the sun dried the dirt out a bit, I was able to get the roots. I still filled two bins in two hours, so I guess it wasn't that bad after all.

Then, I moved on to the giant mulching job. I spent four hours trimming back more bushes, edging the beds, and hauling the mulch. I quit after four hours because I couldn't move anymore. Here is what the pile looks like now:



The rock in the bottom right shows you where the tarp was when I got there. You can see the stain on the ground from where the wet mulch was sitting. I'm only about a quarter of the way around the perimeter of the yard, not counting the two big beds.....I'm soooooo stiff right now!

When I came home, I decided to check out the garden. And there were finally some goodies for me to enjoy! I started with some peas, which I think I may want to freeze?



These came from the original plants that are between the original corn. More are coming, and the newer plants are starting to flower! I noticed that the beans are also starting to grow! Yay!

I also had two more black raspberries from that bush, and just one strawberry.



More strawberries are flowering and there's a ton of red raspberries starting to turn!



And, finally there are a bunch of tomatoes starting to show on the plants!



I have at least a dozen varieties that are in pots, and I'm trying to grow at least a dozen other varieties from seed. Only a few plants from the original wave of seeds are actually growing. I need to transplant the few that have started into a pot. I keep forgetting to use my writing friend Jaipi Sixbear's suggestion to put a raw egg in the container as a natural food.......read her suggestion here.

I get to take the next few days off, because of my tutoring schedule. Yay! My body is going to need to recup! Then again, I may feel more uncomfortable by not using those muscles......

Berries

I came home from working on a long, hard gardening job. (Have you ever tried to move TEN YARDS of mulch? It ain't easy!) I checked on the garden goodies and found that I had a whopping 3 black raspberries! WOOHOO!!



I just bought two black raspberry bushes a couple of weeks ago from Bauman's. Only one is going to produce berries this year. I also got two purple raspberry bushes, but they won't produce until next year. Alas, I have nowhere to plant them in my yard, so I have to keep them in pots. One would think that I wouldn't get a lot of berries that way, but the red raspberry bush that I bought and potted a few years ago is bursting all over the place with berries!

The key is putting them into huge pots so that they have room to grow new shoots. New shoots this year will produce berries next year. When the berry-producing branches have finished this year, cut them back to make room for the new. Once they produce berries, they are finished for good.

I almost didn't get these three black raspberries, though. I have this neighbor across the street. Her daughter is four, and is obsessed with Julio (my Shih-tzu). They asked if they could walk over and see the dog, and as I was sitting there, anyway, working on pots and seeds, I said yes.

I don't think the poor woman has any experience with plants, whatsoever. She starts asking me a hundred questions about everything I am planting. When I tell her that the one pot is black raspberries, she reaches out and squeezes one to see if I'm telling the truth! AAARRRGHH!!!

At least she didn't eat it this time! Last year, I had a bunch of tomato plants in pots, that weren't doing quite as well as they are doing this year. In the one pot were yellow pear tomatoes. The darn plant only produced one tomato last year. They literally look like little yellow pears, but are the size of grape tomatoes. She asked me what it was, I told her, she picked it off, popped it in her mouth, then proceeded to talk about how horrible it was and how much she hates tomatoes. SERIOUSLY?!?!?!?!

I have so many more stories about this neighbor, but I won't put them here.......

Anyway, now I'm just trying to remember to check the berries daily. I also have four pots of strawberries, and I realized that I've missed several by not checking, so they've rotted. At least they are everbearing and will continue to produce throughout the summer!

Broccoli....the bane of my existence

Ok, broccoli isn't really the bane of my existance, but I give up on it! Two years ago, when I was home and contemplating starting a veggie garden, my trusted gardening experts in BG told me that I could grow broccoli in a pot. So, I bought a six-pack, put each one in its own large pot, and hoped for the best.

I got one floret.

And it very quickly turned into flowers.

So, I tried one plant again last year, and this time put it in a bigger pot. Same thing.

And the same story again this year. I finally put the stupid plant into the pot about two weeks ago, and already it's on the verge of flowering after barely having a floret.

Because I am a glutton for punishment, I picked up another six-pack on clearance when I went to Bauman's the other day. So, I put them in the ground on the newly dug-up portion of the veggie bed, well-spaced out, and am hoping for the best.

But I'll tell ya, if they don't work this time around, I'M DONE!

Gardening with Kids

Today I was out working on a couple of my gardening jobs. At the first one, I was strictly weeding and mulching, trying to finish up this yard. The family came home early, as their middle child had just graduated from kindergarten. She's a sweet kid who used to attend my school. I'll call her "Beth".

Beth and I always got along quite well when she was at our school. Every year when I come to work in her yard, she is always trying to help me. She is very good at following directions, so I can usually set her up with a simple task while I do what I need to do. But every time, as soon as she says, "I'll help!" her mom freaks out and tells her to play somewhere else or just stay out of my way.

Maybe I am just used to little kids helping me out because I teach young children. Maybe I am just flashing back to when I was a kid and how badly I always wanted to help my father out in the yard. And I remember how crushed I was when he would tell me that I couldn't help with a particular project. (Though I was/am stubborn and persisted until he found some kind of task for me.) But usually I can find some sort of task for a young child to do, that keeps her out of my way yet is helpful in some sense. And believe me, Beth is much less of a pain to handle than some other children I've had to deal with!

So, anyway, as I was going around mulching the remaining little areas, I set Beth up way ahead of me, showing her which weeds or grass to pull, and allowed her to use my little trowel. She was content to be working alongside me and was proud of the contribution she was making. And she did get a lot of those weeds dug up! She wasn't a problem in the slightest.

Even on Sunday, her barely-turned-three-year-old brother was out digging away trying to help. I just set him up in a corner that he couldn't hurt, gave him my little trowel, and let him go!

Last year, another little girl named "Erica" wanted to help me plant flowers. I showed her how to push the impatiens up from the bottom of the six-pack and let her start laying them out. After her mom freaked, I simply popped them out for her, laid them out, dug the holes, then let her put them in and fill in the hole. I adjusted any that needed help after she went in to eat her dinner.

So, there are lots of ways that your children can learn by helping you out in the yard. Take advantage of these teaching moments, because they are receptive to listening to what you have to share. Consider how much they will absorb simply by observing you in action. I think I learned more by watching my dad than any reading or research I have done on my own, just as he learned from his grandmother.

For some other tips on gardening with kids, read some of these articles:

Simple Ways to Include Your Young Child in Gardening Activities

Grow a Salad Garden with Your Children

How to Include Your Young Child in Gardening Activities

How to Grow a Salad Garden with Your Children

About Me

Growing up, I always felt like I was in a gardening wonderland. My father had created this tiered area in the side yard with stone steps and paths. I remember the dogwood tree and lots of ferns in the back. Apparently, I used to call this area my "basement" (because we didn't have a basement when I was a kid, so I created my own?). I remember walking up and down the path, touching all of the plants. There are pictures of me sitting with my "bankie" on the steps, happy as a lark.

I also remember watching Daddy planting flower in the front beds in front of our store. He is very particular about what goes where and I used to have to beg to help, but he would let me plant what he had placed. I formed strong opinions then about what I liked and what I didn't like.

My mother, on the other hand, was raised on a farm. Her expertise was in growing produce. I also used to help her out in the garden. Again, she would place, and I could plant. We grew all kinds of fresh vegetables in the yard, and I would watch her can the yearly bounty.

As an adult, I have used their wisdom to help me learn how to do my own style of gardening. I even help others do it throughout the planting season, and yeah, can make a little money doing it.

And I am honored that my father told me the other day that he thinks I have more talent than he did. That meant a lot to me!

So, keep coming back here for stories of trial and error, links to worthy advice I have found, and to share some of your own wisdom!