Hi There Hammy

So, I started an obsession with pickling things over this past winter. Something about trudging through three foot snow drifts made my brain start to crave books about canning. Luckily the library is well stocked and it was pretty easy to start researching whatever it was that caught my fancy (pickled grapes, anyone?). And, fortunately or otherwise (I’ll let you judge for yourself) seed catalogs started appearing in our mailbox. I always love poking through them and usually have no overarching planting schemes in mind… until this time. I flipped straight to the cucumber section and picked out a nice packet of pickling cucumbers and I even found a nice paste tomato that started a spaghetti sauce researching binge.

Now, several months later my cucumbers all died within three days of settling into real dirt outside. So, I trotted down the road to the Saturday Market and bought a flat of six for $1.50 (it was a flat of six containers but it turns out that each container actually held two plants… that’s TWELVE cucumber plants!). I didn’t want to plop them all back in the same place the last cucumbers met their untimely ends in, so I put half of them in an Ikea tupperware bin (the lids don’t lock onto the bins making them practically useless for cramming things into so I didn’t feel much of a twinge when I drilled drainage holes in the bottom) and crossed my fingers.

Here’s the mildly rag-tag “container garden” that’s camped out in the parkinglot. Basil on the far right, depressingly stunted cilantro next, tomatoes in the next container and the wee ones in front, and lastly, cucumbers climbing their way up a trellis in their cozy, useless-for-storage box!

The basil is doing just fine… so far.

Still achingly small tomatoes. I hope they do their tomatoey business before those snow drifts descend again!

And here’s the second half of the garden. Joe and I carved an area out of an old, overgrown vegetable garden on the other side of the parkinglot and planted the cherry tomato plant I bought from the Craftsbury Academy’s plant sale, two acorn squash ($1 for two at the Saturday Market!), three bell peppers (free from the Ag. Program at Sterling) and the other six cucumbers. Linus has been unwittingly indispensable, that blue bucket is full of bunny fertilizer just chillin until we need it! How exciting…

An acorn squash-to-be!

So that’s the garden. In other interesting news down at the lower dorms, Steve is keeping seven of the meat rabbits from the barn out on pasture to compare their weight to the ones still cooped up in the barn.

He refitted a chicken tractor with wheels and scoots them around next to the potato patch.

A California bunny with muddy-red paws… which are perfect foreshadowing. I was buttering my toast this morning and, glancing at the parking lot out the window, saw a delightful little white rabbit calmly meandering around. All seven bunnies had gotten out AGAIN. Between three people we caught six after about and hour of chasing and scrambling… the seventh is nowhere to be found but there’s a mysteriously large pile of white fur in the driveway. The rabbit above squeals like a wounded pig when you grab him. It’s an utterly terrifying sound.

What are these sweet wee green things? Basil!? Oh my!

And what are they roosting in? EGGS!? Whoa…

And you can just crush those egg shells a little bit and stick them right in the ground? Yeah… that IS pretty cool!

This one is going to be an up close and personal update because so many changes are happening on a small scale.

The beans are getting their pretty little pink flowers. They’re so delicate and nice…
And the peas! ALL THE PEAS! The ‘rents have been eating some in the week I’ve been gone, but there are still plenty out there.
The yellow summer squash I planted has these funny light blotches on their leaves. I think I even spotted a teeny tiny yellow squash forming!


The potato flowers that have already bloomed are now turning into funny little fruits… I swear I put potatoes in the ground. What’s going on!?

Remember that little baby rhubarb I was coaxing into life on the windowsill? Well, here it is! Impressive… I know.

Finally! Some edibles from all that raging greenery along the house! It’s a good day for peas. The snap peas are almost all ready and the shelling peas are getting there too… there are more shelling peas on the vines than there are snap peas… maybe next year I’ll augment the numbers so that I have more of both.

The snap peas in all of their glory.
Hey hey my my! Those are some nice lookin’ peas! They taste so good straight out of the pod. Who needs to cook them?! Seriously…

Well, it’s Wednesday again (there’s nothing like doing something on the same day every week to make you realize how quickly that week goes by!) so here’s a little snapshot of the garden.

The carrots are still doing their thing, you know… growing, greening, leafing, etc.

The peas are looking great, but peeking at the little pods makes me feel like I just stepped into a B grade horror film about aliens. When the sun is shining through them you can see all the babies lined up and the little plant veins feeding them… it’s a little like walking in on someone in the delivery room.
The strawberries are still trying to send out a massive number of runners and I keep clipping them back. I don’t want ten million strawberry plants competing for the same amount of sunshine next year.

The beans are all doing their thing and so are the squash. I need to push that grate off the squash to give them some more breathing room. The beans show no signs of flowering or beaning yet, so I guess we’ll have that to look forward to later.
Those darn potatoes are still going bananza in their box. I can’t believe how tall they are! That’ll be a harvest I can’t wait to photograph.

UPDATA time! Look out! I know I did a mini one on Monday so you’ll just have to suffer patiently, you saint, you!

The blubberies are doing quite well. Dad built them a little pen because we caught Willow licking all the bushes. Hopefully this will keep the robins, jays and Willow out long enough for some of them to get ripe enough.
Look at these babies do… something. They’re still way too tiny to let outside very often, hopefully it’ll happen before winter. The basil is on the right and sage is one the left.

Look at all these bush beans! Mummy got four Indian Runner beans which are climbing up the poles in the midst of all their bushy cousins. There’s tons of squash coming up on the other side of the boxes. Most of them are seeds I saved when I went through my squash baking faze in the winter (note, the squash in the recipe pictures isn’t the one whose seeds now reside in the yard).
Holy POTATO! Check these out! They’re up to my waist now in all of their potato glory.

The yukon potatoes have their first flower! And surprise surprise, it’s a much lighter color than the blue potato flowers I took pictures of on Monday.Those is some carrots. They sure are purty. I’m still not convinced that they’ll be worth it, but since they’re already here I’m going to let them do their thing and see what happens.
The parsnips are getting bigger! They even have some real leaves.
Look how big and happy those peas are! They’re making lots of pods but we’ll have to wait a little longer before they’ve filled out properly.

We have more tomatoes stashed in the garden (two beefsteaks, one cherry and something else) besides the two plants on the deck.

This bush is producing ‘maters like mad! They’re getting bigger and bigger every day! Dad was suggesting some fried green tomatoes, we’ll see if that happens. I’ve never tried so it’ll be a fun experiment, no?

It’s time for a mini update. I was gone for a week and so much happened in the garden that I thought I’d give you a preview before our usual Wednesday debriefing. Enjoy!

WOW. I know. He’s pretty cool. I found him when he hit the sliding door and then took a mini-vacation on the deck. So sparkly.
The ‘taters are a-bloomin’! Just the blue ones though. I’m curious to see whether the yukon potato flowers will be purple like these. I noticed that the blue potato’s stalks are a dark purple/brown compared to the yukons, so perhaps the flowers will be a different color as well.

The snap peas have mysteriously appeared. No one saw them yesterday and yet they’re covering the snap pea bushes, peeping from behind leaves with a bit of shyness. Soon the shelling peas will do their thing and we’ll be up to our ears! I can’t wait for the invasion to begin.

Artichoke, youtachoke, what-achoke! The ARTICHOKES ARE HERE! While I was on the road our plants started to have their babies. Right now there’s one three inch Arti on each plant.

Hey hey! It’s ‘mato time again!

One of the tomato plants is producing tomatoes like there’s no tomorrow while the other ones seem content to keep growing upwards and outwards.

We’ve been having some unfortunate strawberry casualties in the garden. Ants have been gnawing them to pieces before they become ripe. Mummy put some ant traps out there, we’ll see if those work.

Oh man, the first yellow squash has poked its adorable leafy-greenness up! I’m so excited!

The sage is doing it’s thing quite nicely without any help. The basil is a bit on the developmentally challenged side, it seems happy enough to stay the same size that it has for the last month. I’m going to not post about it until it decides to join the big kids at the grown up table.

Those potatoes are still growing with some freakish determination. I literally watched them grow 1/4 inch in three hours. INSANE. I really should find some more dirt to cover them up with. Then we’ll have lotsa potatoes.

The peas are still climbing upwards and onwards as peas tend to do.

But now they’re accompanied by flowers! Pea flowers mean pea fruit which means peas in my tummy!

Oh man oh man the parsnips have ARRIVED! At last.

Those carrots continue to be lame. Only half of them germinated and they germinated right next to each other! Soon I’ll have to thin the suckers out (and yes mom, you DO need to thin carrots. I’ll just do it when you’re not looking anyway.).

Blubbery blobbery blooberries!

The beans are still kickin’ it in the fast lane. They’ve got their first set of adult leaves to compliment their enormous baby leaves.
I feel like I just posted about all of this stuff. Has it already been a week? Sheesh…

I went for a little walk with Mummy and Willow this evening and found this sweet little plant growing by the road. Now the question is, WHAT IS IT!? It’s so cool! I’ve been through my Pojar and I couldn’t find it in there (it looks a little wee bit like One-Sided Wintergreen, but that’s not it). It might not be a native plant, but I can’t figure out how else to go about identifying it. Can you help? It’s too cool not to investigate just a little.

Sorry I didn’t grab any foliage, maybe next time.

I’ve wanted to keep bees since I took a beekeeping class at Evergreen last year. The proble, however, is that bee hives take a while to get going, are large, and I want to be around for a few years when I do it so that they have time to really get established. That’s for honey bees though.

I’ve been hearing rumblings about mason bees for a while and I decided to do some research. Mason bees are solitary little creatures. The female lays her eggs in existing wood holes and pollinates your garden. Apparently two or three mason bees can pollinate the equivalent of a mature apple tree each spring. Neither male or female bee is able to sting. While they don’t make honey they do pollinate your garden. Plus mason bee houses are super easy to build. All you have to do is find a thick block of untreated wood (between 4-6 inches) and drill 5/16″ holes as far into the wood as you can without drilling through the other side. Space the holes 3/4″ apart. Block should be erected in early spring and placed at least three feet above the ground.
Position block to face southeast, allowing it to get morning sun. That’s the basic house.
I found this sweet one over at Free Range Living where there’s a great explanation about mites and how to clean out your bee house. You can buy all manner of mason bee houses if you don’t want to spend time constructing one yourself.

This has a very sweet exterior… I can’t figure out how they deconstructed it to get to the insides (see below photo). I would LOVE to have a little bee house like this! It looks really easy to clean out and take care of (plus it’s home to leaf cutter bees as well!).

It might be a little too late to start this for this year, but it might not be. My garden is just starting to bloom so maybe some mason bees would move into my house if I made one this week. Maybe not. It’s on my list!