Garden Post - Tiptoe through the Tulips with Me...

OOOOOOOOOH.

Because if I'm going to have nightmares you need to... too!


Anywho...
I AM SO EXCITED FOR SPRING!

Aside from the obvious reasons of yay sun, and yay wedding coming up, and yay experiencing warmth and overall happiness. I am excited for my tulips... and my soon to bloom ability to tiptoe through them.

Tulips are in the purple pot with the towel
draped over the top. Gotta keep them safe! 

Last fall, as the winter winds began to creep through the trees and found their ways to JR P.I.'s and my porch, I planted some happy little tulip bulbs (what color, I'm not sure, because... it's me). I had determined that I was going to do my green-thumbed grandmothers proud and grow tulips.

So JR and I went to the Home Depot... or maybe we bought them from Burpee, but needless to say we bought some tulip bulbs and some garlic (this one definitely came from burpee), and we began planting for our spring crops.

We're going to ignore the fact that the garlic died in the throws of winter, because of all the damn snow, and instead revel in the the fact for some bizarre reason, they survived, because
through all the snow, the unthinkable happened, they started to sprout.

And now I have happy little tulips "popping out of the snow, like daisies!" If you can name that quote you get a high-five!

I've been tending them with a gentle touch and plenty of water (most of it snow based). Hopefully in a few weeks, these tender plants will produce gorgeous flowers... hopefully. I am so, so, so excited that I can barely stand it, to get back into the "garden" again. I use the term loosely, because my garden is a series of pots and planters, but I am still really excited to see what we'll be able to grow and eat this year. 

I've got high hopes for our batch of pea plants that we started from seeds, as well as, a bunch of lettuce that started as seeds too. The radish sprouts died quicker than I could say, "Oh my gosh! Yes! Radish plants!" So... yeah, but we've got a couple of hybrid on deck corn sprout-lings still going and a few carrot seedlings. I'll bring those around to you next post! 

Tasty, Tasty Pineberries

Happy, Happy Chives

And on another, happy note, I had a whole heaping of chives that actually over-wintered, so that's ober exciting. They've actually already started to really hit their growth spurt. And, I have gotten a new pineberry plant to replace the one that I killed this winter as well, so soon I shall have delicious pineberries to snack upon.

Happy Gardening! 

Much Love, 

LoRo

Prepping for the Big Move

So last you heard was the big engagement. Now, it's time for the big move. I have 21 days to pack up and move into JR's condo in beautiful Virginia. It's going to be tough (seriously you should see how much SCHTUFF I accumulate), but someone's got to do it.

The combining of the households is requiring a storage unit, because it just doesn't make sense to get rid of a perfectly good bed (the crappy bed frame, yes, the bed, no) and my perfectly good IKEA chair bed (also amazingly comfortable). So we've been packing boxes for a few weeks, separating things that are going to his place and things that are going into storage, while also getting my place in tip top condition so that I get my deposit back (I have a lot of things I want to buy with that deposit).

The combining of the household is also requiring an incredible amount of new storage over at JR's. Let's just say "WALL OF BOOKSHELVES" together! Now a little quieter we'll say "wall of miss-matched bookshelves." We have IKEA bookshelves ranging from Beech to Dark Brown. We'll see how it works...

In the meantime, we've been prepping for the wedding and cooking and I have been steadily researching plants to grow in next year's garden.

Right now all we have left in the pots are Silver Rose Garlic (which are growing quite nicely, we should be able to harvest a couple in the next few weeks) and some China Rose Radishes that are really FREAKING stubborn. I thought anybody could grow a radish! I planted the seeds when I supposed to and everything, but those DAMNED Radishes refuse to plump! We'll try again in early spring to see if maybe the spastic freezing is what's stunting their growth, but who knows.

So next year's garden (let me tell you JR is ober psyched about the new planters coming to his porch - emphasis on the ober) is going to be bigger, we're going to be moving some planters up onto the balcony railing to improve light-reach, and we'll get a few bigger pots for the balcony floor to grow some really tasty things.

The key to next year's garden is going to be edible. Everything will be edible. EVERYTHING (okay maybe some marigolds wont be, but everything else is edible). Burpee.com has become my new favorite website. I visit it basically every 20 mins. Who knows if there's a plant that missed my eye before! I have to see! I HAVE TO KNOW!

So! Next year's garden, I'm thinking:
Chives
Oregano
Basil
Scallions or Onions of some kind
Born to Be Mild Jalapeños
Cayenne Peppers
Sweet Flavorburst Hybrid Peppers
Bush Belle Hybrid Peppers
Container Corn (This is a thing)
Baby Boomer Tomatoes
Shooting Star Eggplants
Peas in a Pot
Caracas Carrots
More Silver Rose Garlic
More China Rose Radishes
&
Pineberries (currently have a plant to see if it can weather the winter, so far it's doing fine!)


I think we're going to need a bigger balcony....

My Not So Secret Container Garden

So a few weeks ago I let y'all in on a little secret, I'm growing a container garden on JR P.I.'s (previously noted as MM) porch. That's right, my boyfriend is the once infamous trumpet player of the Legwarmers.

No, seriously, he is... I'm dating a famous man.

Guys, really... seriously... I am.

So anyway back to the actual post.

What originally started out as me wanting to grow some seeds, has now turned into a full blown porch obsession. If you remember the pictures of the tiny little green sprouts from last blog, these are them now. On the left is the marigolds, in the middle is the ?s, and on the right is the poppies.

So far I have learned 2 things from this potting organization:

1. I really wanted to grow plants. I mean, seriously, it's like I just took a pot full of soil and made it rain seeds... 

Throwin' poppies, poppies, poppies

2. I over-populated my pot. There is absolutely no room for these plants to reach their full potential, because I've created a pot sized experiment in Darwinization. Talk about survival of the fittest. These are going to have to be replanted or thinned out before full growth can be achieved. 

Here are the snap dragons, in the left pot, which look like they're blooming, but they're not happy about it... I really think that last cold snap we had did some damage.

in fact. It's almost as if the snap dragons are all...

See...

I also clearly did not succeed in reading comprehension... Not is not No, but I'm too lazy to fix it.

Told you... my snap dragons hate me. 

As for those little jiffy cups I was telling you about, they're doing awesome! Or they were before the deluge we had last weekend, we'll find out soon if they will turn yellow from the inundation. But so far so good! 

From left to right we have Chives, what I think are maybe bachelor buttons, blue belles (yeah, Texas!), Amaranthus, and what was left of the marigold seeds. They're growing quite nicely. I'll update y'all with more pictures and more garden lessons next time. 

But I leave you with this pic of our herb jungle. The Pineapple Sage in the back, dill in the middle and the low growing oregano! NOM! 

Getting my Garden On

After the long dreary winter there is nothing I want to do more than sit my bum out in a chair and soak up the everlovin' sun and down pint after gallon of sweet tea. As all my DC Metro people know, this has been a little difficult as of late due to the spastic weather patterns, but do y'all remember that one week of pure delish 70 degree weather we had in the middle of April?

I do.

And boy have I been graving it because I want to sit outside on the porch and soak in my garden.

That's right...

I have a garden, and by I - I mean we. 

Boyfriend recently bought porch furniture for his porch, which has been sans furniture since he moved in 6 years ago.

Of course, as a good southern woman, I could not stand for that. If there's one thing southerner's love doing is sitting out on the porch in the early evening soaking up the cicadas' song and smelling the sweet scent of honeysuckle wafting from the backyard.

Granted I cannot grow honeysuckle on Boyfriend's porch, due to the fact that it's invasive and will take over the railing before you can say lickety-split. And his complex made verrrrry clear that NOTHING can hang on the railing. (Boo-Hiss).

So instead We've been growing a veritable menagerie of plants all over the floor of his porch. This will be QUITE the learning experience since the last time I tried to grow plants all I grew were weeds, and Boyfriend's plant experience is limited to the kind of plants that never need water or tending.

So needless to say we're learning as we go. And needless to say, I hope to share my growing experiences with all you loverly people.

What are we growing you ask?

Well let me tell you.

We have some plants that are full grown cause we bought them that way...

• Snap Dragons (that clearly did not like the cold - they're practically dead at this point)
• 2 kinds of Basil, Thai and cinnamon
• Hot and spice oregano (sooo good)
• Pineapple sage, (which goes great with chicken)
  and
• Dill... I dont really know what to do with the dill, since I'm not sure I even like the flavor. 

THEN

We bough lots of little seeds to grow things all by ourselves...

• Marigolds
• Poppies
• Mystery Flower (not a name, we actually can't remember what we bought)
• Chives
• Blue-belles (only the best flower ever, yeah Texas!)
• Amaranthus
• and I think Bachelor Buttons

The marigolds, poppies, and the mystery flower are all growing strong in a 24x6x8in pot.

This is what they looked like 3 weeks ago.  They're quite a bit larger now.

While all the other ones we put in a Jiffy "greenhouse," which means they're growing in 2x2x3in little pots that we can cut apart and plant into bigger vessels later.

They're all growing really well. I can't wait for the blue-belles. I just wish that I could buy Indian paint brush seeds somewhere, I remember those growing on the sides of highways as a kid. Absolutely gorgeous with the blue-bonnets poking through every so often.

 

When they rustled in the wind it was as if they were dancers, swaying to the sound of a symphony only they could hear. 

But I digress. 

I have learned quite a few things since starting the garden a few weeks ago. 

• Apparently Rosemary is a very hardy herb for our area, practically impossible to kill people have told me. (not that I'm growing any right now). 
• Marigolds in bloom will keep other pests away from your herbs, because they're toxic to bugs. 
• Sprinkle black pepper, LIBERALLY over all of the exposed soil, because birds and squirrels dont like the taste, so they'll stay out of your soil.  (who knew animals liked to steal soil)
• And lastly the new smaller leaves of the herbs seem to have the best flavor. This has been corroborated with constant searching of the internets.

Personally aside from all the cool benefits of growing herbs and being able to include them in our food, I'm most excited for the marigolds to start blooming because I love the look of marigolds.

 Do y'all have any porch gardening tips?