November 2012 Garden

The November garden. Was out of town when it snowed the first time and started to kill off some plants. 

Main garden with the herbs cut back, the carrots, beets and leeks still to take out. The tall plant on the left is the fennel. It still has some seed heads to mature so I’ll keep them in as long as possible.

Oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme, and the heaping big pile of French tarragon on the right. The bowl has dried fennel seeds. I’ll dry them in the basement in brown grocery bags. After all the dead twigs and leaves from the neighbor’s aspen tree are cleaned out from the herbs, I’ll tie up the branches and slip them into the bags upside down. Then hang them from the basement rafters. In a few weeks they will be crispy and I can easily strip the precious leaves from the woody stems inside the bag and then store them in air tight containers for use this winter.

Beets and Swiss chard. Kale, celery, and parsley left.

gm

Welcome 2013!

Happy New Year! I've been pouring over the interweb and a few seed catalogs to try and pick out what I want this year. I still have some seeds left over from last year that I'll use but I do want to pick up a few new items to add to the collection.

I've tried to post previous blog entries but I think that the pictures I've included are too big and, consequently, the post didn't get posted. Frustrating.

So today I'm not including any pictures. I know...boooorrrring! I have a new camera from my Honey and apparently still don't know how to take pics for the blog.  I'll sort that out soon.

We haven't had very much snow here in the Denver area at all. The weather today was so nice I took  walk wearing no jacket over my cotton shirt. Tomorrow I'll play golf. Golf in January in Denver???? Well, I'm taking advantage of the good weather.

Of course I could be working in the garden. Nah. I'll golf instead. Maybe this week I can get some pictures posted.

Toodles.
gm

Just Before Christmas in Denver

Just before Christmas and all thru the Garden...No one is stirring! Not even me.

But I've been inside looking for new ideas for next year's garden. I came across this one and it sounds great. They are called Worm Tubes. Stick the end in the ground with the holes, put your kitchen scraps in the tubes, put a cover on (this one is a clay pot with a screen covering the hole to keep out the flies) and the worms will enter, eat up the scraps and return to the garden. Genius! See the blog I stole this from: http://www.garden.org/regional/report/arch/inmygarden/3430

I'm thinking that if you have some tubes with open ends you don't even need to make the holes at the bottom. Just insert, fill up and cap off. Voila! I'll put this on my list of things to do in the Spring.

  

Worm Tubes

Monkey Brains

Fall Cleanup - It Begins

Even though it’s a balmy 78° in Denver today, the good ole’ weather man says it’s going to snow next Thursday.  So, time to clean up out in the garden. Since I was out of town the last time it snowed, I still came home to some dead plants.

Garden area. Next year... MORE!

Today I pulled out the cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, cantaloupe, string beans, and the basil. Crispy, they were, so into the compost pile they went. Took out all the tomato cages and trellis supports and stowed them away.

Herb Haul

Oregano, rosemary, sage, thyme, and the heaping big pile of French tarragon on the right. The bowl has dried fennel seeds. After all the dead twigs and leaves from the neighbor’s aspen tree are cleaned out from the herbs, I’ll tie up the branches and slip them into brown grocery bags and hang them from the basement rafters. In a few weeks they will be crispy and I can easily strip the precious leaves from the woody stems inside the bag and then store them in air tight containers for use this winter. Save the woody stems to throw on the BBQ coals!

Beets and Swiss Chard

Kale, Celery and Parsley

I plan on making leek and potato soup and putting the batch in quart jars to process in the pressure caner. I’ll pickle the beets. Still have to figure out the carrots but I found a good recipe for pickled carrots, too. The kale and Swiss chard will withstand some snow and we can add the chopped up leaves to our soups and stews. 

GM

WYSIWYG

It's the 20th of September and Summer is starting to wind down. So is the garden. Looking back I can clearly see the results of my successes and failures. But a failure is only so if you don't learn from it. Right? As promised, I will be documenting the good, the bad and the ugly or What You See Is What You Get.

These three raised beds held so much promise. First, I started about 95% of the plants from seed and saved a lot of money. The list of different vegetables I tried reads like a seed catalog but I consider it an experiment to see what would grow in Denver for this transplanted Cali girl. Some lived up to the promise and some, well, just didn't. The two on the left are 4x4 raised beds that were an addition this year. The one on the far right is the original bed that I revived last year. It's 9x9 that I sectioned into four 4x4 beds.

Since zucchini took over nearly half of the 9x9 bed last year, I decided it needed it's own space. That would be the pot on the left. The two in the middle are cantaloupe while the one on the right is Early Girl tomato. Sad aren't they. So I've been in Denver for 10 years and last year I finally grew decent zucchini. This year's was again a failure. The cantaloupe were a surprise. I can grow melons and I can grow them vertically. Note to self: don't use tomato cages next year as they keep falling over. I need something really strong. I have ideas but the jury is still out. Tomato was the best of the year and even it didn't do well. Why? Water. It needed more and consistent water. All the pots did. I'll have to improve my drip system in 2013.

Ah, mint. This barrel had seen nary a plant in over 10 years. I put in some mint I bought at Home Depot, watered well every day and it's happy. So, that is the extent of my veggie garden. Yup, next year I'll be expanding again. More on that later. Oh, and about the grass. That is not my domain. But next year I may have some ideas on how to improve it a bit. More rain would really help. Mother Nature, you listening?

Since my blog is just a baby, and since winter is coming and the garden will be frozen, I will be writing about what I did in the garden this summer in future postings. May help me beat the doldrums.  I've already circled the heck out of the Burpee Catalog. Are you as obsessed as I am?

\GM

Fall Garden

It's the middle of October already! Seems like just yesterday that I set out my little seedlings and now I'm already planning next year's garden. I added two 4x4 ft gardens this year and will be adding a 9x4 for next spring. Then I'll have 128 sq ft of planting area, 32 sq ft more than this year.

This year my garden gave me very few tomatoes, a couple of zucchini (I know, really?!), lots of cucumbers, carrots, beets, kale, Swiss chard, cantaloupes (although they are still on the vine and it's the first I'm time growing them), peppers (although I lost half of them), bush beans (even though most of them never germinated due to the early heat we had), parsley, tarragon like crazy, basil, some thyme, sage, tons of mint, onions, leeks, and radishes. Not successful were the peas, scallions, cilantro, all but one tomato plant, and the spinach. I blame the month-early Spring we had this year.

Never the less, I've made notes of everything and will be making some changes next year. One experiment will be the companion planting technique. We'll see if it works.

Another change will be installing the drip irrigation system earlier in Spring. This year we waited until August. I had noticed some of the veggies drooping a bit because of lack of consistent water.
After the installation, the garden became very lush. Note to self: don't procrastinate quite so long next Spring.

GM