The Garden Proper

Here's my second post in the urban farm series--we'll take a look at our vegetable garden.

We planted many, many tomatoes in our raised beds this year. Initially, we though our seedlings had met their demise in an early February freeze; but several of them revived, so combined with the replacement ones we bought, there's a multitude! We bought mostly Early Girl and Champion, along with a few others--one heirloom, I think, and a couple Sweet 100 cherry tomato plants, and a Sungold (also cherry--quite delicious, I gather). 

Here's what the western raised bed looked like back in late March:

Tomatoes

Lettuce, peppers, cucumbers, and squash populated the other part of the bed

Below you can see the same bed from the patio side in mid-April. The tomatoes have bushed out and everything else is larger. 

And here's another angle on the western bed, as seen from the end nearest the house (also in mid-April):

A week or so ago, Jeremy made a wooden frame on which to hang bird-netting to protect the tomatoes. Here's the western bed in May (see the lettuce bolting on the left, and the squash flowering?):

We planted some potted herbs, and I've loved having them. In the past our cilantro has given us very little time before bolting, so I forewent it this year. We put basil in the eastern raised bed; we've also had a few volunteer basil plants pop up from seeds in our compost! Meanwhile, here are parsley (back pot) and mint (front):

Here's a view of part of the eastern raised bed, where we planted radishes, lettuce, Swiss chard, and basil. Up at the top of the picture you can see a couple cucumber plants. Again, this is back in March. Since then we've eaten up all the radishes (and planted a new batch), and gotten lots of lettuce for salads. Most of the lettuce has bolted now that the hot weather has set in. Our basil plant is looking a little healthier than it did here, and I've made a batch of pesto from it.

Here (below) is the other end of the eastern raised bed, planted with tomatoes. They were so little back in March!

Here is the eastern raised bed in early April, just a couple weeks after the above picture:

Here's a close-up (also from April) of the new radishes coming up (bottom right-hand corner), basil above the radishes, lettuce varieties on the left, and squash and cucumbers intermingled.

A little later in April, we had some lovely radishes ready to pick! I'm definitely a radish convert. We never ate them when I was growing up, but I love them in salads now. The kids love to pick them for me when I'm making a salad for dinner.

Our tomatoes started ripening by ones and twos in later April, starting with the cherries:

Here are the eastern bed tomato plants in May:

Jeremy built wooden frames this year to cage the tomatoes in hopes of keeping our crop from the birds. Birds around here are the worst pests! Unfortunately they still get in (small birds through the top, where the holes are slightly larger, and larger birds through even the narrowest gap below--argh!). But the netting is enough of a deterrent--combined with banshee kids who love to scare birds--that most of the tomatoes are now unharmed.

Our newer raised bed in the front has the richest dirt, as you can tell from the quality of the plants. I think last year was the first season we used this bed. Below you can see lots of tomatoes, some peppers, and some flowers. We planted a couple pea vines on the far end of this bed, but they didn't do so well. We just haven't had luck with peas here. I think it's just too hot, and we'll probably give up on them--at least for summer gardening; but the five we picked did taste good!

Our vegetable garden also includes squash, planted in the usual corner by the bridge to the back house:

Zucchini on the right and back left, spaghetti squash (I think) in the front left

For some reason our squash has not done too well the last few years. Our first year we got a bumper crop of zucchini. I think the second year we had an infestation of squash bugs. Last year and this year, though, we haven't had squash bugs--or at least not many. But only four or five zucchini have reached healthy maturity so far. Birds got the spaghetti squash the plant pictured above produced. Never have I seen them peck through a hard, immature squash like that before! They seem especially vicious this year.

The Master Gardener and Caretaker of the Yard

Though not part of the raised beds, our roses are worth mentioning. They bloomed beautifully this spring. I trimmed them back when the blooms faded, and now they're getting ready to burst forth again. I love them!

This is my favorite color variety in our yard

Lego!

When did Josiah become a big boy?! Suddenly he's five and engrossed in Lego. Some friends gave him a small Lego set with a bulldozer and a dump truck. He loves it and has spent countless hours putting together his own creations with the pieces and--more recently--actually following the step-by-step directions and building what the set intended. Several times a day he excuses himself from the general hubbub to go play with his Legos. And he usually spends his quiet time in the afternoon with the Legos, too.

Here he poses with his vehicles. Oh do I love this boy!

See the cool dump feature of the dump truck?

He mostly followed directions and then made some of his own embellishments on the bulldozer.

Josiah is on a mission to obtain more Legos now, too. He particularly wants Lego weapons--even putting in an order to Dad for "two swords, a spear, a gun, and an ax." (The other day he asked me about 20 times to talk to Daddy about his wish for Lego weapons.)

Of course, Lydia and Abby are very interested in the Lego, too--and Josiah is quite protective of it. Sometimes he lets them watch him or "guard" the Lego while he runs to the bathroom. Sometimes he lets them play with one of the two minifigures ("guys") he has. But I think soon we'll need to supply the girls with some of their own Legos. We're debating how and when to introduce more Legos, especially with Clara quickly becoming mobile and eager to get everything into her mouth!

Peaches and Apples

While May ushers in the summer heat (today's high was over 100), we still get some nice mornings and evenings, and our fruit trees and garden are gearing up for full production! I'll show you around our little urban farm in pictures (and probably a couple separate posts) . . .

Back in February, our Mid-pride peach tree blossomed. Here it is, pruned and pink, on February 20th:

Our Anna apple tree bloomed then as well:

They look so sparse compared to their leafy fullness now! I love those pink and white blossoms, though--they come into their glory right around the girls' and my birthdays. We soon saw the tiny bulbs of peaches on pollinated flowers, which swelled into miniature, hard, oblong peaches. Here's the Mid-pride on March 23rd (so a month later):

It really is a lovely tree. Jeremy has pruned it considerably each year, yet it's large and tall. It provides a nice sight barrier next to the neighbor's yard and gives some shade from afternoon sun on the patio. The picture below is from April 4th--you can see the peaches have grown some more!

Our Mid-pride is the biggest and best producer (thus far), but not our only peach tree. We also have a Bonanza peach (a dwarf variety, pictured below) that only gave us a few peaches last year. They were tasty, though! (You can also see our grape vines in the below pictures--green Thompson seedless. We bagged the grapes to keep birds from eating every single one.)

Bonanza in bottom left corner of photo--in March

Bonanza in April 

Along the neighbor's fence on the other side of the back house, Jeremy planted a white (also called Georgia) peach: a Babcock. Unfortunately, we didn't really like the one or two peaches it produced last year. They were sweet, but cloyingly so, without the sharpness and depth of flavor of the yellow peaches. Hopefully they'll taste better if we pick them earlier . . . or we'll be passing them along to others who appreciate them more than we. (Our children might!) This year he also planted a Desert Gold and a May Pride peach, one in the back yard and one in the front.

You saw the blooming apple tree above? We had another, wider and a bit shorter, designed to be paired with the Anna for pollination--a Golden Dorset. Sadly, it developed a weeping wound from some sort of fungus (I think), and Jeremy finally decided to ax it. He transplanted the Desert Gold peach into the Golden Dorset's spot. Here's the little tree after irrigation (thus the mud):

Without cross-pollination from the Golden Dorset, the Anna produces fewer apples and less beauteous ones (they tend to be a bit misshapen). But I think they're still pretty (pictures from April):

Our other apple trees are still pretty small. They line the fence along the west side of our yard. Jeremy's design is for them to be a fruit-bearing hedge to help with privacy along that chain-link fence and, of course, give us apples. If they all grow healthily and produce well, we'll have a huge crop of apples in a few years!

Just a couple more pictures to round out the post and bring you up-to-date on our peaches and apples:

Several peaches on the Bonanza are almost ready!

See that apple on the left? Give it a month, and it'll be ready, too!

What Will You Be When You Grow Up?

Lately the girls often echo Josiah's commentary or sentiments on a particular subject--or add their own opinion in very similar phrasing. They like to tell me their career plans, one right after the other. They all plan on multiple roles, as you can see:

Abby

Lydia

Episode 1, lunchtime:

Josiah: "I'd like to be a fireman and a police."
Lydia: "I like to be a nurse and a doctor."
Abby: "Um, I like to be a mama and a daddy!"

 Abby

Episode 2, lunchtime again, a few days later:

And another installment of the same . . .
Josiah: "I wanna be a fireman and a policeman!"
Lydia: "I wanna be a nurse and a docker!"
Abby: "I wanna be a big dog and a little dog!"

Josiah on the lookout

 Lydia

Episode 3, playing pretend:

Josiah: "I'm a brave knight!"
Lydia: "I'm a brave camel!"
Abby: "I'm a brave mama knight!"
Josiah: "Mama knights are just called . . . moms."

Abby

Hopefully Abby straightens out her logical reasoning skills as well as her ambitions in time.