Deep down at the bottom we found a garden

As I promised, this weekend was THE weekend. The one where Farmer B and I tried to turn the thicket of shoulder-high weeds back into a garden. I have been dreading it since the beginning of the summer. I anticipated it being a horrible experience with oppressive heat and bugs... and holy heat wave - was I ever right.



Farmer B started by pulling up the anti-puppy fence that we keep around the garden and immediately both dogs dove in to the long grass. We ended up accidentally breaking the underground electric dog fence while pulling up the garden fence, which was an added bonus. Include an added trip to Home Depot to buy wire repairing equipment to this wonderful task.


Did I mention this weekend is Farmer B's birthday too? Yeah, he's a dedicated husband when it comes down to it.

Then Farmer B used the push trimmer to hack through the weeds in an attempt to find the raised beds. Surprisingly they were still under there - burried, but intact.


Did I mention how hot it was? Luckily the heat index was just UNDER 100 degrees so we didn't pass out, but contemplated it several times.

After he whacked down all the grass and weeds around the raised beds it was my fun-filled job to pull up the masses of weeds that had found a new home in the raised beds. As I was doing this with sweat running down my arms and spiders the size of cats running up my arms I really wondered if it was all going to be worthwhile at the end of the day.


When I got one bed about halfway cleared I decided to grab Clementine from the chicken run and toss her into the bed to save me from the creepy-crawlies who were hell-bent on latching on to my face as I pulled up 3-foot long weeds. My dainty (useless) yellow chicken spent 2 seconds in the blistering direct sun in the garden, made an angry bokking noise, then made a bee-line for the shady woody area all the way on the other side of the yard before I could even grab the camera. Pathetic chicken.

Then I decided to bring out Maggie and put her to work. I tossed her into the raised bed and went back to weeding. It worked out GREAT! She grabbed two large spiders and some wormy-leggy thing before becoming overwhelmed from the heat and making a bee-line to the same shady patch of trees where Clementine was relaxing.




Pathetic. Both of them.


At the end of the day I had a sore back, a visible garden area and one de-weeded raised bed. I was beyond exhausted, but felt good that it was done… but felt angry that I still had the other bed to clear.


On Day 2 I returned to the garden (sans useless sun-shy chickens) and pulled the weeds out of the second bed. I was happy to see that the spiders were just as comfortable in this bed as they were in the other one. I was a bit afraid that some big-fanged 8-legged creature might not ruin my day by jumping at my arm. Luckily my fear was unwarranted.

I did find something very interesting buried in this bed though…


Carrots! Who knew? I didn't attempt to bring them inside since I'm sure they were woody and rubbery and weird, but it was a funny thing to see growing amongst the weeds.

At the end of day two, it was done. A weedless garden. Two weedless raised beds. Finally.


I figured that when I was done I'd have one of those "See what you get for not weeding all summer?" moments. I was wrong. Instead I had a "Gah - this was HORRIBLE - THIS is why I didn't go out into the garden all summer" moments.

I'm now faced with a couple of problems.

1) I'm convinced that these beds are now full of weed seeds just ready to sprout at their first opportunity. I'm not sure quite what to do about that. I do not have the resources to empty out the beds and buy all new compost, peat moss and vermiculite. So I'll have to think on this one since I did want to try a Fall planting…

2) I now have about 3 inches less of mix in the boxes as I did when I started. Regardless of what I decide, the boxes will have to be topped up in a big way before I ever plant again.

So there you have it. As my dad would say "Good job done." As I would say after doing this "@$%^ job done!"

The Triumph of the Carrot!

Bwa-ha-haa!!! I have conquered the carrot! Bow down before me you long rooty orange fiend! You thought you beat me last season, but I triumphed this time and forced you to grow in my kingdom of gardening horrors!


Mwa-ha-haaaa!!

But seriously - I did it! I successfully grew carrots! They're one of the things that has petered out in past gardens and they just plain grew well in my SFG this time around. I was floored when I pulled a few out of the ground and they actually looked like carrots and smelled like carrots and were bug-free to boot! I am seriously giddy about this carrot harvest. But I'm sure you didn't gather that, did you?

The boys were equally giddy and it was like Christmas morning as each rooty beauty popped out of the ground. One of the good things about being a not-too-successful gardener is that if ANYTHING actually grows, your kids think you're a gardening god. It's wonderful!






But the best part was they even tasted great. We had about half of them for dinner last night and I've got to say nothing makes a mama prouder than hearing her boys arguing over who gets to eat more carrots.

I bet you thought I had forgotten about gardening with all this talk about puppies and chickens, but I'm still trucking along. I'm getting ready to plant our Spring veggies and I'm going to try potatoes for the first time too. Before I can plant we need to revamp the garden fence since a certain white puppy of mine has recently discovered that if she gets really really wet and then jumps in the SFG and digs a hole and rolls in it, she gets really really awesomely muddy...right down to her skin.

December Harvest

Instead of writing a length the details of my absence again, I think I'll just admit flat out that now that it's the holiday season and we keep having family in town and life is just so busy, I am finding it hard to keep up with everything. Since something has to suffer, it's bound to be the blog. Luckily not much is going on in the garden, so I haven't had much to report.

Until today.

Today I decided we'd harvest one row of radishes and half a row of carrots. I did a craptacular job of thinning the carrots so I knew we'd get some funky looking roots on those things. I know that next time I do carrots I'll do a raised bed so I can assure the soil won't be too hard packed and weird for them to grow down.

The boys were fascinated with picking the radishes. I think they were as shocked as I was that we actually grew something that looked like it was supposed to look. We have two rows of radishes and we pulled up one row. We didn't do both rows because I have no idea what on earth I'll do with these radishes since it's not really salad weather right now. Although my friend Courtney sent me a very yummy sounding radish recipe that I'll try out with this bunch and report back with the scoop.


We brought the carrots and radishes inside and cleaned them up to put in the fridge. I've heard that you can eat radish greens and carrot greens, but it didn’t sound too appealing to me. When I'd trimmed them up I went out front and tossed the leftovers into the front yard. I assume some deer or rabbits will enjoy them tonight. Our front yard is like a Motel 6 for deer. Often when Farmer B returns home in the wee hours of the morning he counts up to 20 sleeping deer curled up on our front yard fast asleep.



My carrots do look a bit weird and they all have sunburning. Living in Florida I expect to have to put sunscreen on everything to prevent sunburning, but who knew it related to carrots as well? I read that sunburning causes green tops on the carrots and an off flavor and dark green pieces in the cooked product. You're supposed to cut away the green portion and use the rest of the root. When the tops are healthy, sunburning can be avoided by pulling a small amount of loose soil up to the row when the roots are swelling (about 40 to 50 days after planting). I suppose that makes sense. The tops are exposed so it does make sense to pile loose soil on top. Lesson learned.

Baby Carrot Killer

I've read enough at this point to understand that thinning plants is the way to produce strong plants. Carrots are no exception. But I find my self on the anti-thinning side of the fence. It seems to heartless to rip these little baby carrots out of the ground when they are the only damn thing in the garden that has insisted on growing through a microburst, a Tropical Storm, record-breaking flooding and a hot Florida summer. And to top it all off, we planted them waaaay out of season.

So the idea of grabbing these little troopers by their baby soft green sprouty tops and yanking them out of the ground to a certain death just seemed wrong. But I suppose you have to sacrifice a few for the greater good, so yesterday was judgment day for many of our little carrots. I will admit to not understanding why you can't just plonk these little carrots into another row for them to continue growing. So I did bung some into another row just to give them another shot at life. I'm sure I'll be discarding them within the week.

So the thinning began. I felt like the Grim Reaper of baby carrots. It was sad. I read that when they're 4 inches tall they should be thinned to 2 inches apart. Mine were all so close together that they were touching.

But we yanked.
And pulled.
And tossed their little corpses to one side.
And sniffed them and marveled at how carroty they actually smelled.
Then stuck some in the ground just to see if they'd take root again. Why not? They were destined for carrot death anyway.

So there you have it. Our first thinning over with. We haven't had to thin anything before because pulling out dead plants doesn't count as thinning according to my gardening book.