Urban Burley

Got my tobacco crop from field to barn today. Such as that is in the big city. My thanks to the Bullitt County support team that made this urban tobacco operation functional. Next stop...2012 State Fair.

Vine Hidey Spot

Using drift wood from the Falls of the Ohio I made a vine structure for Ruby to hide out in. The top picture was back in March. The second picture is how it looks at the end of July. There are three different vines planted on it. Hyacinth bean, moonflower and lufa gourd. The lufa is definitely the most aggressive. I also have a few okra plants growing in the circles at the base and some peppers in pots. The bottom picture if a similar structure (and an older one) that Nathan and Otis made over at Aleve's house. This one is two years old now and it's beautiful.

Apples to Apples - Garden Over a Season

Here's two views of my new growing beds. The top picture in each pair was just after I put in the boxes at the end of February. The bottom picture in each pair was taken at the end of July. About five months apart. I've already had several crops out of the raised beds and have just planted cow peas and pole variety of red speckled lima. I'm hoping it climbs up the trellis I made from some salvaged wrought iron porch supports. Oh how I love scrounging in alleys.

Yucca - Peak Bloom

I always look forward to the yucca by the back corner of the house to go into peak bloom. The color of the blooms against the mint green lap siding is beautiful. It's peak bloom right now. Thursday, June 9th.

Taking the Wide View

I added a new ap to my phone today that let's me take panoramic shots. I had no idea how they might look on a blog platform so... here's the answer. These shots were taken in the back yard on June 9. I'm hoping this yard looks amazing for Ruby's birthday. The zinnias should be popping about then and I'm hoping the vines will have started to climb up the teepee structure to make her a hidey spot.

Level: Maximum Potential

Theoretically, these two new cedar raised beds (8'x3') could produce more food than any other 48 square feet. They have not yet suffered a failed crop, a drought, a low germination rate, insect infestation, or any other something that could lower their potential. They are, in essence, at the level of their maximum potential. But you can't eat maximum potential. So sooner or later these better start pumping out some food with some actualized potential. I'll load up more pictures then.

Child*Chicken*Compost

Ruby has taken to liking letting the chickens out. And since the chickens like the compost pile, Ruby too likes it. Tis a joy to see all three in communication and healthy. The child, the chicken, the compost.

The Discussion

These guys are our additional family on a regular basis which we love. But last Tuesday was hard. So today we had "the discussion". It resulted in the information in the top photo. These are the self-determined rules, consequences and priviliges they came up with. Then they decided to make three bucks between them. A buck fifty each for helping in the garden. Good boys today. The evening culminated in a walk up to the IceCream and Pie Kitchen where they both got rootbeer floats. Sounds pretty damn "Waltons" after seeing this typed out. But it didn't feel "Waltons" at the time.

Sporobolus heterolepis

I love me some native clump grasses doing what they do in the spring. These are on the east side of the Bernheim Visitor Center in a large monoculture planting of prairie dropseed. I also love em in the fall when they seed out and smell like cilantro. Makes me think I work in a Oxacan tacoria.

Such Potential

There is such potential in spring. Things can go so many different ways. Warm spell. Wet spell. Late frost. I can't remember where I planted a few perennials last year that haven't popped out yet. Dig here? No here. Do I go with tomatoes in the same spot? What were my favorite annuals on the porch last year? But one by one the garden spaces fill with decisions and things start growing. Clay pots fill up. An object in the garden gets moved to a new home and it changes the way you think about it, look at it. This year the rules of engagement have changed. Now I think about the garden space from the perspective of a little person. A climbing, go anywhere, curious little person. Things sit further apart this year. Even the spacing on my plants is wider. This will be an interesting garden year.

Wash up Ruby. Time for Dinner.

Miss Ruby is learning to feed the chickens, weed the garden, shovel compost, gather the eggs and water the collards. But most fun of all is washing up. Thank you to the bunny that surprised us with a brand new pair of chicken shoes on Easter. Love em. I was getting tired of scrubbing the chicken shit off her shoes. Now I can just hose em off.

Guess Who Built a Hoop House

They did.

Poly Culture

It is increasingly clear to me that we would be well served to consider plants in "community" more than in single species plantings. And although I know this is a design aesthetic opinion, I think that community plantings look much better. As climate change rears it's ugly head I think that monoculture will become the luxury of fools and the childless.

Water after Planting

Parenting has afforded me a few new gardening tricks.

1. Plant seed.
2. Place daughter astraddle planted seed.
3. Wait for five minutes of drool.
4. Repeat.

Gardening is slower this way. But the water content of drool is sufficient for initiating the germination of newly planted seed.

You may need to click on the picture to see the quantity of drool provided.

Big Burn, Little Burn, Flicker

Bernheim uses fire as a tool to help re-establish native grasslands. In my backyard I'm doing the same thing on a smaller scale. Little bluestem, Indian grass, prairie dropseed, Virginia wild rye, bottlebrush grass, river oats, and a bunch of native wildflowers do very well with periodic burns.

To be clear about this... burning like this is ILLEGAL in the city. I have no idea who set my native grass patch on fire?

I'd like to make a formal complaint.

Curious Garden Indeed

A new favorite book.
A little boy named Liam (cool name) lives in a nasty ole town with not much going for it in the way of green spaces or gardens. He explores an elevated railway track and finds a struggling little garden there and takes it upon himself to become the gardener of the little patch. The little patch begins to grow and expand. A moderately reasonable story of succession involving mosses is communicated. (As a bryologist this gave the book a bonus point.)

Evenually the garden takes over the entire rail line, then rooftops, then every abandoned thing ends up as a little oasis. But more importantly, more gardeners begin appearing. The once dreary landscape is transformed.

This book provides some important lessons:

• Start where you are with what you have.
• Start small but dream big.
• Nature wins. Even in our abandoned industrial spaces.
• Succession is your friend.
• Gardening is contagious.
• Transformation is possible.

Buy this book for the kids in your lives. But more importantly, take them out to plant something. There is even a package of seeds in the book. Personally, I would never plant them because it doesn't say what seeds are in it. But it makes a good book mark.

The Curious Garden by Peter Brown
Little, Brown and Company, Books for Young Readers
New York, Boston
(c) 2009
$16.99