Filling in

Since we harvested the garlic in the front bed, it was looking a bit barren. This would not normally bother me, but since it is in the front of the house, it looked very sad when I would pull in. Not to mention to come to our front door, you had to walk past a completely empty bed. Add to that, I got an email from our local nursery that all the veggies and herbs were 50% off. Off to the nursery we went.

So empty looking.

After some looking and thinking, Pooka and I decided on some nice plants. I will admit they were a bit thin on plants, but that is what you get waiting on clearance. We decided to plant the dill that was in the red pots on the front porch, as well as the oregano that was potted on the back deck. From the nursery we brought home a French and a Spanish lavender, an oregano, a 4 pack of celery and some milkweed. Yes, Pooka and I decided on a flower when they are $0.80 and they will attract butterflies for Pooka. She wants to see how many butterflies she can get to visit.

Laying the plants out

 I laid everything out to see how we liked it. Most of these are annuals, so I won't feel bad in a few months ripping them out and putting in more garlic or anything else. I made a point to put the lavender on the edge so I can plant around it if needed.  Another issue we have had with waiting this long, is some of the plants were fairly root bound. We are keeping them well watered in hopes it helps them get established.

In the ground

However, upon further thinking, we decided to stick the Spanish lavender between the bolting cilantro and the sad chive plant. It seems to really like this location and now I won't need to move it later this fall.

Lavender

All the seeds are done

I am officially calling it. I think I finally have all the seeds in dirt. If I don't we don't need whatever I forgot.

First I really needed to get the Blue Corn in the ground on Sunday morning. That's right, I said blue corn.

Blue corn

 Aunt Pooka gave us these seeds since she knew both kids would love them. Brother is nominally responsible for them. He loved seeing what the corn would look like once we pulled the seeds out of the packet. There were only 7 in there, so we won't get much, but this should be a good indicator on if it works and if we like it. If both hold true, I can buy more next year.

the corn

I was worried I wouldn't have anything the right size to pot them in, until I remembered that the city gave us this GIANT new recycling bin, so our old ones are empty (and they didn't cost anything), so we repurposed it into a corn pot. This will also give us room to plant some green beans in the 3 sisters method of planting. I don't think I will be putting any squash in it, but 2 out of 3 sisters isn't too bad.

Free pot holding our corn

On Sunday we also had to get the romaine lettuce going. I Know it may be a bit past the start date for the romaine, but its worth at try. The packet didn't have a planting date on it, so we are going to plant and see what happens. I would really like some lettuce I don't have to convince the kids they like. Since I didn't have any space in the ground (and I wanted to make sure it lived) we put the romaine in baskets that I have hung on hooks around the planting beds. I bet the neighbors think they will finally see flowers. They will be very confused later.


Hopefully we will get romaine

Lastly, I thought I was done, but with the front bed nearing completion, I realized I didn't have any dill plants or cumin. I guess it all died off when I wasn't looking. I swear my brain is useless lately. Pooka and I replanted those into these red pots to go on the front porch until I find a better home.  In the little red watering can are some marigold seeds I promised Pooka she could plant after her egg plants died. And really, marigolds can be eaten in salads and things, so who knows, maybe we will try that this summer.

Cumin, dill, and marigolds

It is done

On Sunday, we finally did it. We got all our seeds that are going to be started inside started. I thought I had it done Saturday, when Pooka and I finished starting all our herbs.

Pooka and I had picked up these peat pots at the grocery store for $1 each. I hate paying full price for things if I can avoid it. The sad thing is, they didn't come with any seed starting pellets or dirt. So we had to make a small trip out to get seed starting dirt. However, I could only find this size bag, which was a bit bigger then we wanted.

Seed starting supplies

Each pot got some dirt, some seeds and a popsicle stick marker. I had some extra colored ones left over from last year, and we had just enough to use all the peat pots for herbs.

The Dill ended up going into the extra tins with the parsley from the Growums. I figured it was already in use, might as well get my money out of it.  With that, I started to water all the peat pots and realized I forgot something to put them on since the pots would leak a bit of water being made of peat and all. So out came some of our cheap plastic serving trays for bread or family gatherings. But I didn't feel like having my serving dishes tied up long term.

Planted seeds, with no way to hold water.

We went out Sunday to get some cheap aluminum roasting pans. These will be put in the garden drawer once we are done and we can save them for next year (with the muffin tins). Although I was silly and got the roasting pans with lids. Oops... At least the lids are still useable for holding the pots as well.

If you can't tell, apparently last weekend my brain took a vacation and left me here. I was not thinking things through very well. Which is why it was no surprise Sunday when I went to put the herbs in their new roasting pans that I realized that I forgot to plant the snapdragons.

Forgotten Snapdragons

Now I was really kicking myself since snapdragons are one of the 3 flowers I will grow, and with the 100 days till bloom, they take awhile. So here it is, Sunday, no more peat pots, plenty of seed starting dirt, and seeds. I could of gone back into town out for containers, but frankly, I was being lazy.


A red cup with a hole

However, this tower of plastic cups was sitting there. They were about the same size as the peat pots, but they wouldn't do much for drainage. Enter a nail that we popped through the bottom. However, I realized that the dirt would fall through the bottom, but we had the coffee filters sitting right there, and a Pooka got to cut them in half. It was the perfect Pooka job. The cut coffee filters are perfect in our cups and let water drain, but don't let the soil out.

Half a coffee filter later

Long story short (too late, I know), it is done. We now had a bunch of cups full of snap dragon seeds. However, it had the same "Water can get everywhere" issue as the peat pots.

Finished Snapdragons

Fortunatly, the roasting pan and lid had a bit of extra space. Now all our seeds we plan on starting (while it is still snowing) are in dirt, many have already sprouted and in some cases have been transplanted. Now to sit back and relax, or not since that pea plant is getting too big to not have a pot. But that was a project for a different day (or at least a different post).

Herbs and snapdragons all ready to go.

 

New Friends

Thursday evening Pooka made some new friends. I was out getting the grill started while Pooka looked at her (kinda neglected) garden. I looked over and couldn't figure out what was on the dill. I got closer and sure enough, we had visitors. 

Can you see me? 

Caterpillars. Lots of them. Now, Pooka and I have both read the book about the caterpillar that eats everything, and after realizing it was more then just one or two, we decided to remove said friends. However, Pooka didn't want me to kill them since we need them in their life cycle.  So instead, I went out, armed with a tupperware and a caterpillar removal tool (also known as a skewer) and I pushed them all off their little perches or sadly took the perch with them. 

1 little, 2 little, 7 little caterpillars

Here they are, all 7 of them (I think 1 might of gotten away). Yeah, that is more then I wanted eating our dill plant. 1 okay, I can live with, but 7. Yikes.  We kept them in that tupperware (with the lid cracked) overnight. By morning we had to decide what to do with them.

Hanging out in our new/temporary home

Pooka, Daddy and I talked about it. We had discussed doing butterflies with Pooka before, so we decided it was time. So with a bit of research (looking up images of caterpillars on google, I know so scientific) we think they are Black Swallowtail caterpillars that turn into a really kinda cool black butterfly. Turns out that butterfly likes sunflowers, and lay their eggs on carrots, dill and parsley. So we had a whole buffet going.

I still wasn't sure that I wanted to have 7 caterpillars to raise into 7 butterflies to eat the garden, or worse yet,  leave 7 butterflies worth of babies in the garden. I am willing to keep a couple, but not all. We took a quart jar with some carrot greens we had thinned out, and put them in it with holes poked in a lid (it was a used lid, so it would never seal again anyway). So a quick email to Pooka's preschool teacher. Her teacher loves the idea of taking the rest as a class project, so we are going to try and both learn how to do caterpillars. And once they are all ready to fly away, we are going to release them into the prairie behind Pooka's school. 

I am wondering a bit if the caterpillars are going to do the overwinter thing (they don't migrate, they just make a sleeping bag for the winter), in which case, I guess I will have a few winter house guests. 

This is what we think they are.   However the only way to know for sure is to let them eat their fill and take a nap, (as well the keep it alive part). I am sure their will be updates to this. Anyone done this before?? Got any tips for me? 

Pretty picture and pretty big.

Today I went outside without a clear picture of what needed done (besides all of it) and what I wanted to talk about. And since I didn't feel like tempting fate again, I decided to let Pooka really choose what to talk about. She saw her dill plant in flower and told me to take a picture of it.

Dill in flower

All summer we had been pulling off the dill flowers. Pooka asked if they were so pretty why we had to pull them off. I told her it would keep the plant healthy longer. We talked a bit more about it and it led to a discussion of the life cycle.  Pooka's explanation is this: "They drop their seeds, have a little sprout that grows, and it makes more seeds and it does it over and over again. It's called a life cycle."  While she is close, we are going to have to work on a few concepts but not bad for being 4. 

Here is a picture Pooka asked I post. She was trying to take a picture of her strawberry plant from inside.  It may be a bit off but it matches the rest of us around here.  In her defense, I think she saw something shiny after she hit the button. 

And a Pooka sees something shiny. 

One day I will learn....

...that after about Father's day to stop letting Pooka go look at plants at Lowe's, or a nursery, or well anywhere. Especially after she makes a decent argument about how we need something. In this case, it was Dill. She wanted dill so we could make dill pickles. Oh and then I remembered I use dill in my garlic herb bread, and then I thought about the other places we use dill, and while Daddy looked at us funny and brother complained that he just wanted to go home (in brother's defense, he had just finished a baseball game, on the tail end of a super busy weekend where bedtime never happened).  We went to Lowe's, and bought a register vent, some blue tape for the kids to make spider webs with and a dill plant, and a container for the dill plant (since I am kinda running out of pots).  So welcome to the party Mr. Dill. We hope you like your new home between Ms. Oregano and the Cilantro clan. Oh and don't mind Ms. Flossweed, shes a quiet one.

In other news, we realized that my supposed chives pot doesn't have chives in it. We don't know what it is, however, 3 sad little chive seedlings have popped out to say Hi. Now we need to decide what we should do with them. Do I try and weed the other seedlings out of that pot, do I just say forget it and go buy chives (and risk another nursery run), or do I just let science take it's course and wonder? It will probably be let science take its course and pull the non chive things as they get bigger.

The one thing I realized today, no yesterday, it was one of those days that ends in y, I need to get out there to weed and stake up the cherry tomatoes and put another set or 2 of supports on the big tomatoes. Maybe I will get that done today, or maybe tomorrow. First I need to see how many stakes I have left to build with. That may be the limiting factor.  Well, besides the fact that they are too big and a bit too close for traditional cages. which means more experiments for all of us in engineering. (And Pooka has said before "I'm smart, I'm an engineer." Granted she turned a shoe string, a door knob and a trash can into a ballista, but that's another story and topic entirely).