Yard and Garden – Page 3

June 13, 2009August 10, 2009

One Tomato Two

We neglected our two tomatoes and burpless cucumber a little bit too long. Although they get regular water, they were getting too big for their little plastic containers, so we found a spot for them and put them in the ground.

Those seedlings are getting a little too big for those plastic pots!

There just happened to be a little patch of earth next to our lower deck that had nothing but weeds in it. I cleared ’em out. I turned the dirt over and mixed in some rich potting soil and in went the seedlings. Looks pretty good, no?

: After

Hopefully this will turn out to be a good spot and they will thrive.

Of course I always check on the topsy-turvy when I’m outside.

topsyturvy3 topsyturvy4

I’m pretty surprised that the main stem is twisting up, rather than growing down as it seems to be in all the example pictures. There are a number of blossoms on it, though. Hopefully we will get lots of tomatoes.

The strawberries are ripening too!

redstrawberry

June 10, 2009June 10, 2009

Summer Days

topsyturvy1

topsyturvy2 I think it’s so strange to arrive home at, say 7:30 and still have plenty of daylight, but it’s a great opportunity to get out in the yard (and weed, what else?), something that would normally have to wait for the weekend. I like keeping an eye on plants as they grow. In this case it’s pretty much limited to the few veggies Mrs. B gave us, since virtually everything else was here when we moved in, and not of our choosing. So I tend the topsy turvey, the tomato seedlings, cucumber, and strawberry pot when I get home.

It’s hard to see when you look at them every day, but when I look back at the pictures I took when I first planted, there has definitely been some growth. There are actually tiny green strawberries on the strawberry plants!

porchplants greenstrawberry1

June 9, 2009June 10, 2009

Super Succulents

This lead certainly drew me in:

Spice up your garden with unusual, low-maintenance plants from the San Francisco Succulent and Cactus Society’s annual show and sale next weekend in Golden Gate Park.

We’ve spent so much time weeding since we moved in, a low-maintenance yard sounds like a dream. I’ve actually been thinking about xeriscaping for a while. Low maintenance + low water bills = good. I don’t know that I really want to tear out the existing landscaping, though. Maybe as we make small changes over time we’ll consider more draught-friendly alternatives. In any event, it wouldn’t hurt to learn more about it.

See “Darlings of the dry garden” for more info about the San Francisco Succulent and Cactus Society’s annual show this weekend.

May 7, 2009June 10, 2009

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Steve’s mom, “Mrs. B,” is a pretty avid gardener. She has raised beds in the backyard with all kinds of different vegetables, –multiple varieties of tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuces, squash, fennel, I don’t even know what else. She starts them all from seed, and actually ends up giving quite a few away to friends and family, as well as donating some to a local charity to sell. I usually get a few different tomatoes and a cucumber, which I’ve grown in my parents’ garden the past few years. This year, Steve and I have our own yard to plant them in!

The catch: the former owner had some interesting landscaping ideas. Both the front and back yard are filled with rose bushes (with a few other types of flowers scattered here and there), and what is not occupied by roses is covered with decorative gravel. In other words, there is nowhere to plant anything without tearing something else out. Which we fully intend to do . . . when we have some free time. For now, though, one of the tomatoes, an heirloom brandywine, was in pretty serious need of repotting, so we grabbed a “Topsy-Turvey” on impulse at Fry’s and hung the brandywine upside down from the trellis in the backyard.

I’m really curious to see how this thing works. The last time I tried a novel gardening gimmick was a complete disaster. It was a raised bed with a special soil mix. Because you start with weed-free soil mix, you were supposed to have no weed problems. Further, the mix was “friable,” so if you over watered it was supposed to flow right through and not hurt your plants. It was supposed to be idiot-proof, but everything died within a couple of weeks. Notably, the items I planted straight into the hard clay soil next to the raised bed flourished.

We still have to figure out what to do with the additional plants Mrs. B gave us, a Burbank slicing tomato, and orange cherry tomato, and a burpless cucumber. They don’t look like they are outgrowing their pots just yet, so we have a little time. She also gave us some strawberries in a strawberry pot, which of course won’t need to be transplanted. I hope we do well with the plants this summer; it would be fun to have some super fresh fruits and veggies straight from our garden.

Two tomato seedlings, a cucumber plant, and a strawberry pot.