the garden: planting tomatoes

Check out how much greenery there is in my garden, compared to just a couple of weeks ago!

Tony and I got back from a trip to see our families in Ohio about a week ago. My dad had started a bunch of veggies for his garden under a grow light this spring, and he planted some for my garden, too. Which took up pretty much the whole back seat of our car on the drive back:

There are tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, flowers, and all kinds of herbs in that box.

I thought I would write a blog post about how to plant tomatoes. This is the technique my dad taught me right after Tony and I moved into our house. My parents came down to D.C. for moving weekend, and right after the truck was unloaded, one of the first places we went was Frager's, where I bought some veggies to plant in pots, including a tomato plant. (I was really, really excited to have outdoor space.)

My dad recommends against just digging a hole in the ground and putting the tomato in. Instead, his method involves cutting off the bottom leaves, planting the roots and part of the stem in a trench, and bending the stem 90 degrees to make it grow upright. I had strong tomato plants that first year, presumably with big, healthy root bases, so I planted my tomatoes his way again last year and this year.

Here are some photos I took a few weeks ago with the Early Girl tomatoes I bought at Home Depot. (Even though my dad grew a lot of different kind of tomatoes for me this year, I wanted to make sure I had Early Girls in my garden, which is why I made the Home Depot purchase. Early Girls did really, really well for me last year, so I definitely wanted to have them in my garden.)

I took the plant out of the pot and teased the roots. Then I snipped off the bottom three leaves. That part of the plant is going to be buried, and new roots will grow from the spots that were snipped off. Here's a photo of that process, although this admittedly is not a great picture:

Next I dug a trench, instead of a hole. The root ball lays at one end of the trench. And to make this work, you have to bury the snipped-off parts of the stem, then gently shape the stem upwards 90 degrees.

As you can see, we can call her "Eileen" because while a tomato plant is relatively flexible, she's not quite standing up straight yet.

 But here she is last weekend, standing pretty straight and tall. And hopefully with a wide and strong root system, thanks to dad's planting advice.

Oh, and here is another picture from last weekend. (I also have a couple of tomatoes and a pepper plant growing in pots.) Tomato blossoms abound! And on Tuesday, I was investigating those blossoms a bit more closely and found a itty bitty green tomato peeking out!

Yay, summer!

the garden: flowers blooming

So it appears we got exactly two days of spring. It's been cold and wintery for months, and then we had a beautiful spring weekend, but this work week has been hot! And the forecast for today ... 94?!

Jessi is not so pleased with Mother Nature. But Jessi's flowers? They're loving it.

Last fall, I planted some pansies in the front yard. In our climate, they're supposed to be beautiful during the fall, die back a bit in the winter, then bounce back to life with the warm spring temps. And they've done just that in the past few days.

In the tree lawn in front of our house, this was my plan:

• Crocus would come up first. (Check. They were here by mid-February.)
• Daffodils would come up next. (Well ... they came up. But I messed them up somehow because no flowers came out of the greenery. I'll have to ask my mom what I can feed them in the fall to give them some extra energy over the winter.)
• Then tulips would come up. (And they're here! The warm weather has prodded them along nicely. Those flowers should bloom any day now. And my medicated foot powder technique appears to have successfully warded off squirrel enemies.)
• And finally, five giant hostas would emerge from the ground, covering all of the decaying bulb leaves and filling up the garden bed with beautiful greenery all summer and fall. (All five hostas, which my parents divided from their own plants, are coming up, doing just fine, and seem to be loving the warm weather, too.)

Here's a shot from yesterday evening that shows an about-to-bloom tulip in the foreground with a hosta sprouting behind it. And lots of daffodil and crocus greenery all around.

The only other flower I have at my house so far is this sweet alyssum, which I bought over Easter weekend at Frager's. It smells awesome. I put it in a big pot by the front door, so hopefully it'll grow to fill the pot and smell great every time we walk past it. Here's a picture of the alyssum, which includes a bonus cameo of Francois, who came over to visit last night while Tony and I were working in the front yard:

Actually, Tony was doing the work, and I was taking photos. He sprinked some Holly-tone plant food around the evergreen plans in the front yard. I don't know what, exactly, Holly-tone is or does. I just know that my dad delivered a bag of it to us last fall with instructions to feed the evergreen plants twice a year. Yes, sir.

And I've been seeing all of these beautiful photos from the Tidal Basin of all the cherry blossoms. Seems our tree is a little cherry tree is a liiiiitle slow in blooming this year.

My herbs also have made a big resurgence in the past week or so.

Thyme and tarragon with my celery in the middle:

More tarragon and oregano with some strawberries in the background.

I thought the chives were dead all winter, but they're baaack!

I also have a great big rosemary plant, but that didn't die back at all during the winter.

And now that the garden bed is in the backyard, I've finally been able to plant my cool-season crops. Last night I spied some turnips, radishes, spinach, romaine and arugula coming up! Hopefully the hot weather backs off a bit, so the cool-season crops survive for at least a little while! And tonight I looked at the notes I made to myself when I planted my garden last spring and realized that I already had my tomatoes and peppers in the ground by mid-April ... so I gotta get on that. Maybe this weekend?

the garden: romaine

I'm pretty sure I've made a great new discovery: It looks like you can grow a brand new head of lettuce from the butt of a head that you buy at the grocery store. The technique is identical to what I used in my attempt to grow a new celery stalk from kitchen scraps.

I bought a head of lettuce recently, and I cut the bottom off. I let it sit in water for about a week until new leaves started growing from the middle, like so:

And then I planted the whole thing in a pot, leaving only the new growth exposed.

And it's looking good so far!

And last night, my friend Lily and her boyfriend Zach stayed with us for the night, and we took advantage of the nice weather by grilling out. With a salad on the side. And guess what I did with that lettuce butt? I'm trying to get another one going.

I'll keep you posted on how this experiment goes.

As for the celery, I'm happy to report that it's still alive. I brought it inside for most of the winter and set it in a sunny window. And it was actually thriving, growing shoots like gangbusters. But then I was reasonably sure I saw bugs on the plant, which really freaked me out, so the thing went outside immediately. The cold didn't do it any favors, and a lot of the growth turned brown. But things have turned around in the past few days with the beautiful weather. Here's a shot of the plant yesterday evening, and all of that dark green stuff is brand new. So hopefully things keep going in the right direction.

I also have a bonus celery growing, which I planted earlier this year. It's not thriving yet, but I have not given up hope.

decor: orange ikea lamp

A couple of months ago, I pinned a photo of a white metal cabinet from Ikea, which I thought could fit perfectly by the front door and would solve all of my shoe storage/umbrella storage/magazine storage/paper shredder storage problems. I'm 29 years old, so I've reached the point of my life where I'm trying to downsize my Ikea furniture, not add more, but I've been searching for months for a piece of furniture that would fit in that space, to no avail. So on Saturday morning, I finally decided to pull the trigger on the Ikea cabinet, and Tony and I got in the car and made our way to College Park.

Only ... we got there and found out the white cabinet has been discontinued. Extreme disappointment ensued. (They still sell red, though.)

But you can never leave Ikea empty-handed, can you? The geniuses behind the Ikea shopping experience force you to walk through all of their displays, and you can never resist picking up something you love. Like this glass lamp. They got me. I bought it. I'm a sucker. (It was $13 for the lamp + $6 for two bulbs.)

I have it parked on the trunk under the stairs, next to my elephant planter.

The colors in my living room are teal and orange, although I've been thinking I need more pops of orange to make the color scheme more obvious. The shape of the lamp is also very modern, which I like to contrast with all of the antique pieces I have. Plus, this little lamp gives off a nice warm glow in the living room in the evenings.

So, our Ikea trip summarized: one major decor disappointment and one minor decor success. Now I'm stalking Craigslist looking for the Ikea cabinet. Maybe someone in the D.C. metro area is approaching 30, looking to upgrade their furniture, and selling their Ikea stuff online. Fingers crossed, y'all.

<3

In unrelated weekend news, my crocus bulbs started blooming yesterday. Looks like my medicated foot powder technique worked in keeping the squirrels away so far. Spring can't be too far away.

the garden: surprise radishes

Tony was working in the backyard recently, and when he came inside, he brought a radish with him. The radishes were ready to be picked, he said.

RADISHES. I totally forgot about them. Actually, I thought they never came up after I planted them in the fall. And then leaves fell and made a mess of my garden, and I totally forgot about the radishes.

Soooo, we had some radishes on our salad. With romaine, spinach and tomatoes, all from the garden. I told you I love this climate. We get all four seasons with an emphasis on the spring and fall.

<3

So, this was a blog post about my radishes, which I acknowledge is not the most interesting thing in the world. So, to reward you for making it this far into the post, I present you with a super cute picture of my cat.

the garden: tomatoes in a bag

It is December, and we are eating tomatoes from my garden.

A couple of weeks ago, when the temperature was supposed to hit freezing overnight, I covered my cool-weather vegetables (lettuce, spinach and celery) with towels, and they all survived just fine and are still going. But I thought a frost would be too much for my tomatoes, so I picked all of the green tomatoes and brought them inside.

To help them ripen, I put them inside a brown paper bag and folded it closed. I keep it in my kitchen, and every couple of days when I open it, there will be a couple more red tomatoes ready to come out. It's like magic.

Behold, my windowsill on Dec. 1:

I love this climate.

the garden: bulb planting time

The tree lawn in front of my house has been difficult to maintain. The area gets a lot of foot traffic, especially from dogs who are in need of a bathroom. I don't want a big square of dirt in front of my house, but the annuals that I've tried planting there have gotten trampled.

So here's the new plan. Little crocus flowers will bloom first, in late winter. When spring comes and the crocus go away, the tulips will come up. And then the daffodils later in the spring. And then, as the daffodil foliage is starting to die, hostas will come up, covering the dead bulb foliage and keeping the whole area green until the next winter. That's the plan.

I put the daffodil bulbs in the tree lawn last season. And my parents divided some of their hostas for me, and we planted them earlier this fall.

And this past weekend, I planted the crocus and tulip bulbs.

Here's the thing about crocus and tulips, though. Squirrels like them. Apparently they're tasty. The interwebs recommends planting the bulbs under chicken wire, so squirrels can't dig them up, but I didn't  have the motivation to go to that trouble. So I'm trying to ward off the squirrels with another internet-recommended remedy: medicated foot powder. Apparently squirrels do not like the smell or something.

I squirted some of the medicated foot powder in a plastic bag, then threw in the bulbs and tossed everything around until the bulbs were coated.

For each hole I dug, I put in a bulb and then a squirt of medicated foot powder. I may have looked like a crazy person standing on the sidewalk with a trowel in one hand and medicated foot powder in the other.

So I'll let you know how it goes and whether the crocus and tulips sprout in the spring.

<3

In other garden news, my basil has all died, sadly, because it's been too cold. The peppers are still going strong, though. So are the lettuce and spinach. None of my radishes ever produced.

And the tomato aren't producing as much as they had been, but I'm still getting a few tomatoes, and the plants have green tomatoes and even some flowers.

Oh, and the celery -- it's still alive!

the garden: goodbye, leaves

I went to do some Christmas shopping this morning, and when I came home, Tony had raked up FIVE bags of leaves from our front yard. Which may not sound like a lot, but our front yard is the size of a postage stamp.

Our tree dumped pretty much all of its leaves in the past few days. In fact, early this week, I was thinking I should post a photo of the beautiful yellow leaves outside our bedroom window. Too late.

the garden: celery once again

Celery will not defeat me! After two failed attempts, I'm taking a shot at this once again, trying to grow a new celery plant from the base of an old stalk.

This time, my strategy is to plant it in a pot. Hopefully that will ward off the critters and make it easy to move inside if the weather gets too cold. I'll keep you posted.

the garden: tomatoes of late

The tomatoes I've been picking lately -- since the heat mercifully disappeared -- are so darn pretty. They're uniform in shape, size, and color. I feel like I should call Bonnie Plants and invite them over for a photo shoot -- that's how pretty my tomatoes are. It wasn't that way all summer. I picked a TON of tomatoes this summer, even during the hottest weeks, but they weren't consistently good-looking. I'm thinking the extreme heat stressed my tomato plants and made them produce smaller fruit that was misshapen at times.

That said, I enjoyed my misshapen tomatoes, and I enjoy them now. They just look better lately.

<3

So here we are, in late September, and which of my summer crops are still growing? I have one eggplant growing on my plant. I've picked four so far, so that'll give me five for the year, which is about what you can expect from one plant. And the tomatoes and peppers are still going strong. I'm really getting my money out of those plants.

the garden: propagating ivy

In early spring, Tony tore out some dying bushes in our front yard, and I got some big ideas for how I wanted to re-landscape it. My plan included ripping out large swaths of ivy and planting a flowing carpet of sweet alyssum flowers. It was going to be gorgeous. But the alyssum was a bust. Maybe it was the heat. Maybe it was my forgetfulness in watering. But, the bottom line is, the alyssum didn't make it, and I was left with a large swath of dirt in my front yard. 

The ivy grows with great speed in unwanted directions, like up the tree and into the sidewalk. So I figured, hey, just give the ivy a month or two, and it'll grow and cover that large swath of dirt. No dice. It's late September, and I've still got that unsightly spot in my front yard.

So I decided to try propagating my own ivy. We all know how miserably I failed at a similar experiment with celery. So I'm hedging my bet and approaching this experiment in two ways: half of the ivy stems went right in the ground Sunday. The other half are sitting in vases, and I'm hoping they sprout roots before I transplant them.

Sunday afternoon, I got the clippers out and cut off a couple dozen stems, mostly new growth. 

Then I cut off most of the leaves. The idea is that those stubs where the leaves were will sprout roots to support a whole new plant.

For the stems that I planted right in the ground, Tony dug little trenches and set the ivy inside. 

Then I covered them up, except for a few leaves at the top. 

Now, I hope that does the trick, but if it doesn't, I'm working on the backup plan. The other half of the stems are sitting in water by a sunny window. The stems should sprout roots in the water, and once they have roots, they may have a better shot of surviving once they're transplanted into the ground.

I'll keep you updated on this experiment!

decor: deco plant stand

Flattery will get you everywhere.

I blogged in June about a super cool plant stand that I spotted in my mom's backyard. And when she came to visit me over Labor Day weekend, what did she bring? An Art Deco plant stand of my very own!

Lovely, isn't it? She found it in an antique store, had my dad spray paint it black, and gave it to me as a belated birthday present. My mom styled her plant stand with evenly spaced terra cotta pots, a look I clearly copied. Except I put mums in mine for fall, which Home Depot had on sale over the holiday for 88 cents (!) each.

Thanks, Mom <3

the garden: celery update 2

That cool fall weather that I've been waiting for finally showed up Sunday. Low humidity, mild temperatures, nice breezes -- perfect for painting furniture on the patio, doing some gardening, taking a walk through the neighborhood. And sleeping with the windows open, something Tony and I did for the first time since the beginning of the summer.

It also was the perfect weather for my celery plant to thrive. That is, you know, if my celery plant STILL EXISTED.

(Recap: I've been attempting to grow my own celery from the base of an old stalk. See my original post and my first update.)

It turns out that last week, someone dug up the entire plant and took it with them, leaving a big hole. They also left a few leaves, just to taunt me. I don't have enough evidence to convict, but all circumstantial evidence points to the damned squirrel that lives in my alley as being the culprit.

Squirrels: 2. (Including the tomato crime.)

Jessi: 0.

the garden: fall planting

The other day, Tony was lamenting back-to-school time and summer's imminent departure. "It seems like summer just started," he told me. 

Um, no. See, he drives to work. For those of us who walk to the Metro every day, it seems to me like summer, the incessant 90-degree temperatures and the wretched humidity have over-stayed their welcome. Bring on autumn breezes and light jackets. 

So I'm happy to report that I've officially declared this to be "late summer," which is when you put fall vegetables in the ground. The cool season crops that you plant in the spring also do well in the fall. 

Tony and I usually have a salad with dinner, so I planted four different kinds of lettuce and one spinach. And I get a kick out of picking radishes, so I planted three different types. 

I always have had good luck with Botanical Interests' Freckles romaine, so I'm planting a ton of it. I've had fairly good luck with Burpee's Black Seeded Simpson, so I'm trying it again. The Burpee Big Ruffles Hybrid spinach got eaten by bugs when I planted it in the ground in the spring, so I'm planting it in a pot this fall to see if that works better. And I got two kinds of lettuce from my dad, which I'm trying for the first time: Botanical Interests' Speckles butterhead and some sort of baby romaine. (Lettuce seed packets have about 10 billion seeds in each one, but you only need a seed or two in each hole, so they're good for sharing with, like, your 100 closest friends.) 

As for radishes, the Burpee Cherry Belle did well for me in the spring, so I'm planting it again. Plus, I'm trying some new fancy pants kinds: Botanical Interests' French Breakfast and NK's White Icicle. 

By the way, I love those garden label sticks (which were a present from my parents) to help me remember which variety I planted where. 

Let's talk containers. I have most of my summer vegetables in terra cotta pots, which are great for amateurs like me because the clay absorbs excess water, so it's hard to kill your plants by overwatering them. But that's not such a good quality to have in the wintertime because the excess moisture in the pots will expand when it freezes, and the pots will crack. So, I planted some of my cool-season vegetables directly in the ground, in between the summer plants that I'll have to take out when the weather turns -- and the rest I have in indestructible plastic containers. If there's a light frost, I'll try to cover the lettuce and radishes or bring the containers inside to extend their lives for a little bit. But if I forget, at least the pots won't break.

And finally, another great planting tip, which I picked up from my mom: Put a coffee filter over the holes in the bottom of your pot to make sure dirt can't escape. 

the garden: celery update 1

You were skeptical that I'd be able to grow a new celery shoots from the butt of an old stalk, weren't you? Well, I'm happy to report that Phase One of my celery experiment is going swimmingly and just as planned. (Read my first post on growing celery.)

This is how the plant looked Sunday, after sitting in a bowl of water on the patio for 12 days. (I changed the water every day or two.) The new growth looks great. The old base is starting to rot away.

Time to go in the ground. I buried the old stalk, so only the new growth is above the ground. Celery likes cool weather, so I put it in the shade of my green pepper plant, which I hope saves it from the last of the summer heat.

My two previous attempts at growing celery ended here because the plants died shortly after going into the ground. Hopefully my thumb has become more green since then. Stay tuned.