It's Summer!

It's official, summer is here. Finally! Ushered out of their nest on this first day of summer, these yellow sac spider hatchlings on our back deck fled as quickly as the their little legs would allow in the warm afternoon sun.

Stopping by my Happy Valley gardens long enough to water, this fat robin was seen watching for worms working the raised bed where I've been burying our compost lately. The compost is breaking down so fast, most likely because of the many worms there so it's no wonder that the robin sits on the edge of that bed - patiently waiting.

Visiting with other gardeners while there, we loved the whisps of mare's tail clouds in the summer sky above the gardens.

 Relaxed and comfortable and warm, the Village Green in Fairhaven was a pleasant stop.

 I loved this potted rose I passed while walking down an alley in Fairhaven on my way to lunch.

Sitting outside, we enjoyed our lunch at Skylarks and made a note to come back soon to enjoy an evening of live jazz.

Happy summer to all!

What's Growing On - In the Garden

This is the time of year when my first quick glance of the garden gives me the impression that it's becoming overgrown and unkept. Here's my Garden Nbr. 01 at the Happy Valley Community Gardens.

At first glance, I feel like running from the weeds that seem to grow much faster than my garden plants, but then I start looking at the detail of the blooms and berries that are forming and I don't feel so overwhelmed. I know that if I simply take the few minutes to pull even just a few weeds while I'm watering each bed, progress is fast. Today after finishing the watering, weeding and picking a few early strawberries, I photographed a few of those beautiful little details that often get missed.

The borage is just beginning to blossom. Since their starshaped blossoms face the ground, the best way to photograph them is from underneath. I love how the drops of water and the light clouds in the blue sky above seem to highlight their blue blossoms. Those blossoms are edible and quite decadent when frozen into ice cubes and searved in a glass of lemonade on a hot, hot summer day.

 The first of the peas are beginning to fill out their pods.

 Clumps of green raspberries are forming on the vines.

 The chocolate mint is quickly spreading to fill up its raised bed.

The French fingerling potato plants are growing fast and looking healthy.

There were even a few early strawberries ready to be picked with plenty more to look forward to within the next few weeks.

Harvest Monday - June 06, 2011

Spring tends to be rather cool and wet here in the Pacific Northwest, so here it is, well into the month of June and the weather has finally (finally!) warmed up enough to where we can start to get serious about gardening. My Garden Nbr. 01 at the Happy Valley Community Gardens is actually starting to look like a real garden.

 

 The leeks are blooming.

As are the irises that I planted in the recycled fishing tote two years ago.

Today's harvest - purple irises and yellow Japanese irises, chive blossoms and leeks. I made more chive blossom vinegar for salads from the blossoms and oven roasted the leeks with some organic carrots and sundried tomatoes.

Having removed the huge pallet board compost bin from my garden earlier this spring (see - http://really-rose.blogspot.com/2011/03/dirt-and-fences.html) does not mean that I have stopped composting. I'm still composting, just using a different method. With several beds in Garden Nbr. 01 and Garden Nbr. 02 that still have the original heavy clay soil in them, I'm simply digging in my compostables. This method is working much faster than I had expected and the soil in this bed is already greatly improved.

Harvest Monday - May 09, 2011

The highlight of this week's harvest was having friends visit me in the garden to help. Andy dug some green garlic and leeks.

Curious about what a Community Garden was all about, I took my friends on the grand tour. They seemed a bit surprised by the amount of space I have there. Here they are, in my Garden Nbr. 01 at Happy Valley.

More forget-me-knots were picked for a bouquet.

 My friends caught me watering the irises.

I made a giant omelette stuffed with sauted leeks and green garlic, assorted grated cheeses and fat free four cream with some of this week's harvest.

More yum!

Jan's Path

Often low spots at our Happy Valley Community Gardens challenge our gardeners into finding clever solutions. I love how my friend Jan turned the water-filled low spot at the entry way to her garden into a wonderful stone walkway. Here's what she was faced with every time we received a heavy rain.

She brought in stone to build up the entry.

Here Jan is clearing out one of raised beds in her garden.

And her friend makes sure the stones make a sturdy walkway.

Floods at the Gardens

It may not be official, but it feels to me that we should have set some sort of record in Spring rainfall this year, and it is no surprise here that we have some flooded areas at our Happy Valley Community Gardens. I took a little stroll around the soaked grassy paths between the individual garden plots and snapped a few photos of some I found the most intriguing. In reality, just blooming weeds and dead plants from last fall reflecting in a small trench dug around a raised bed without a frame, this garden reminded me of canals running through more exotic lands.

While there were many pools of rain water on this black tarp and the ground around it was extremely soggy, the fact that there were so many water logged pallet boards and huge clumps of sod stashed in this particular garden, I found it eery in a way - like maybe there was something ugly hiding under that huge black tarp that might come out and prowl the gardens only at night. I am curious now to see what really grows there in the summer.

This garden has been a work in progress for two years now and has challenged as many gardeners. Last year, a man and his son put in the back breaking labor of turning the sod with a shovel. Very hard work in such heavy, water soaked clay! Rows of corn and spinach were planted, only to remain mutant dwarfs with the corn tassling once it reached six inches tall. We have a new gardener there this year, a college student looking young lady that spent several days turning the soil once again, then built this raised bed and plastic covered hoop structure. She lugged in those orange buckets filled with something to mix into that soil. She has worked extremely hard so far, and I feel deserves to be the very first one in our community gardens to harvest this season's tender fresh vegetables.

This is a very pretty little garden and I like the raised beds with plenty of sawdust put down in the walkway to make it passable once you figure out how to get past the flooding over the slate tiled walkway at the entry. The gardener here has a small bed of some of the prettiest tulips I have ever seen. She told me once that she brought those tulips with her when she moved to Washington State from a state far far away.

Scattered randomly with newspapers tossed onto the walkways and over the raised beds, this was a rather interesting garden with all its puddles. Newspaper decomposes rather fast, but I'm a little curious what their goal could be and wonder what they were thinking.

This is my Garden Nbr. 02, and as you can see, I have an area that is flooded too. It might have taken me half a bale of straw just to fill in that low spot, but rather than use straw for fill, I have decided to pick up a bag of the most inexpensive dirt from a local garden center to dump in that hole before covering that portion of my path with straw.

Gardening in the RAIN

It didn't surprise me that I was the only one out working at the Happy Valley Community Gardens today. After all, there was constant rain and our high only reached 45 degrees F.  Wearing my Muck boots, a fleece jacket covered with big rain poncho and my souwester fisherman's hat, I managed to stay fairly dry, and it really was a rather comfortable temperature for working in the garden. We've received so much rain lately, our rivers are once again close to flood stage, and as it turns out, so is the rhubarb in Garden Nbr 01.

 The strawberry bed has standing water in places too.

My goal for the day was to remove that pallet board (visible here on the upper left). The remnant from the compost bin I've deconstructed, this seemed like as good a day as any to get it out of there. Water soaked from all the rains, these big pallet boards are quite heavy when wet. Heavier than I expected anyway. Having been in my garden for a few years, it was also somewhat rotten on the bottom. With a thick layer of mud from sitting in the dirt for so long, it was probably just as well that I was the only one in the gardens today. This certainly wasn't one of my more glamorours garden tasks.

I left the pallet board that served as the back of the compost bin in place. I did that for a couple of reasons. First, it creates a bit of a privacy wall for me and I am hoping it continues to help shield my view of the garden directly behind the north end of my Garden Nbr. 01. For three years, that garden has remained an eye sore. The lady that gardens there does not pull weeds, barely works the soil, plants very little and harvests even less. Rarely does she even show up at the garden. It amazes me that she continues to maintain a lease there. Anyway, enough of that! Secondly, I left that pallet board in the back because I can use it for vertical gardening. Maybe I will attach twine to it and encourage squash or cucumbers to climb, allowing a smaller footprint for vegetables that normally require a larger amount of ground space. Just a thought anyway. I attached boards at an angle to the back pallet board and the raised bed frame for extra support. I like how it opens up the growing space in the middle of this garden. Here's how it looks now.

The raspberries seem to be enjoying this cool, rainy weather. They are sprouting out nicely since I pruned them, and all those new little plants that I dug up and transplanted last week are looking strong and healthy. I could tell that they had grown - maybe doubled in size already.

The weather forecast says more rain, heavy rain, for the next three to four days. Let's see if I brave the rain again and head out to the gardens. Do you garden in the rain?

Connelly Creek Nature Area

With the Happy Valley Community Gardens conveniently located practically in the middle of the Connelly Creek Nature Area, some days I can't resist a walk after working in the garden.

Finally, the north end of Garden Nbr. 01 is cleaned up and ready to plant.

The rhubarb is growing nicely this spring. Soon I can make that pie.

By carefully stepping from one clump of grass to another, I manage not to get my feet wet as we make our way through the wetlands behind the garden to join the trail.

Gardening chores complete, Torrie enjoys our walks too.

A map and more information about the Connelly Creek Nature Area is available on the Cty of Bellingham's website here - Trail Guide - Connelly Creek.

Water

Even though the Happy Valley Community Gardens are one of the few twelve-month community gardens in Bellingham, we get so much moisture naturally here in the Pacific Northwest that the need for year-round water service is not necessary. There planting peas, the soil in my garden was so moist, the thought of watering was far from my mind. Promising 8 to 10 peas in each of their 4" to 4-1/2" pods, these are Mr. Big Peas. Those little white specks scattered on the soil, Sluggo, slug and snail control for organic gardening. With armies of slugs marching and munching their way through our gardens each and every night, those little plants would be gone by the morning without Sluggo.A crew from the City of Bellingham stopped by to turn on the water for the season. Water service is provided there from around the first of March through the first part of October.

Giant sweet peas are what I planted in this corner bed. Visible from our parking lot and just to the left as I enter my garden, I look forward to their colorful blooms and sweet fragrence.

These are Super Sugar Snap peas. Said to have a more plump pod than regular sugar snap peas, their vines should reach 6 to 10 feet, requiring the support of a trellis. (The ground still too soggy here to crawl around on without getting wet and muddy, yes, I admit it, I am a Blue Tarp gardener!)

I love plucking peas straight from the vine for a crisp treat right there in the garden and am looking forward to fresh garden snacks later this season.

Back in the Garden

Finally, two days in a row without rain, so off to garden I went. I first stopped at the Whatcom Farmers Co-Op for a bale of fresh straw because I knew the walkway between the raised beds would be terribly muddy. You see, we've definitely had too much rain.

I found wintered over kale - a tasty treat in early Spring.

Last year these daisies were practically hidden behind other periennials as my flower area turned out to be much too crowded. Since I have two 10' by 40' garden spots, Garden Number 01 and Garden Number 02, at the Happy Valley Community Gardens, I have plenty of space so will be spreading things out a bit more this year. I love big clumps of daisies and will put these where I can enjoy them more. Here, I'm digging up daisies.
Our growing season last year turned out to be too short for the leeks to fully mature and I was delighted to see that most of them had not rotted during the wet winter. I divided some of my chives and planted them in front of a row of leeks. I think some Bright Lights Swiss Chard will look especially pretty in front of the chives. Those clumps of daisies that I dug up were then divided and planted in the next bed over, which just happens to be the first one on the right as I enter Garden Number 01. With five clumps of daisies in such a prominent location, I will definitely enjoy them this year.
Only in my garden for a couple of hours today, I at least managed to get the straw raked out in the walkway and several of the beds readied for early Spring planting.
Not the only gardener taking advantage of this second day in a row without rain, there were several others out working their plots today too. A majority of the other gardeners there today were new gardeners this year to our community garden. I get passers by that stop to introduce themselves and chat as I work in Garden Number 01 because it's located on the end near our little parking lot and not very far from a path that leads to a trail that is part of Bellingham's Inter Urban Trail System. Today even ladies out riding their bikes on the trail noticed our Community Gardens and road over, introduced themselves and chatted a bit before taking a walking tour of the entire gardens. I love the enthusiasm and positive energy at the gardens. It feels good to be back in the garden - again.