I've Moved!

It's been a while, and a lot has changed. Suburban Gardener just isn't a good descriptor anymore. But never fear! Come check out my new blog Five Wooded Acres.

Getting Back in the Swing of Things

I apologize for not posting. First, at the end of July, I got a new job which left me pretty busy. Then, at the tail end of August, I had a medical emergency which left me in the hospital for a week. I go back to work on Monday, and hopefully will not be too busy for (at least fairly) regular postings following that.

Some balcony updates: We are very pleased with our Patio variety tomato! It's producing like a champ! We've already gotten one Gypsy Bell Pepper, and this morning I counted 3 or 4 more on the plant. An odd note: our eggplant is turning yellow. Not the leaves, the actual fruit. Weird. Don't know what's causing it, but I'm kind of bummed because that's the only fruit on the plant!

Garden Plot updates: Right before my stint at the hospital we planted both Snow and Sugar Snap peas at the plot. Unfortunately, due to lack of watering, they are probably not so great. It's been weeks since either of us has been up there to look (I couldn't for medical reasons, and S. has been taking care of me) at the situation. Hopefully within the next few days we will find the time to go up and assess damage. It's been fairly dry, but we did get some rain a couple of days ago. Probably not enough to help plants that haven't been watered in almost a month...but one can hope.... Hopefully our onions at least will have survived.

Dracaena

We found this growing in the straw next to a construction site. Thought it was beautiful. Is it some variety of Angel's Trumpet?

Grapes

Does this count as a green thumb photo? We grew them ourselves, at our old garden location.

Green Thumb Sunday

This is our wildly blooming eggplant.

Empty Nest

Early this morning (and possibly yesterday) the baby House Finches flew for the first time. It was actually pretty uneventful, and we missed it almost entirely. This morning, there was only one left in the nest, and as we drank our coffee, I saw—out of the corner of my eye—flapping wings, and then it was gone too. All grown up! I wonder if they'll be back to their nest? I'll be sorry to see them go, it's been fun to watch their parents feed them…but it will be nice to be able to sit out on the balcony again.

The agricultural lime that we added to our watering can to combat blossom end rot on the Roma seems to be helping, there are several tomatoes set that don't have it. Also, our Patio Variety tomatoes are setting fruit like mad now (see photo)! Unfortunately we have lost our cucumbers to some fungal disease. They just got covered in fuzzy white stuff and never put up any new leaves...I had given up on them a while ago, but I think it's final now. We also seem to have lost our Rosemary, perhaps due to overwatering? I water that pot when the Basil wilts, and maybe the Rosemary likes less water than that. There are a bunch more flowers on the eggplant, too, I hope it sets!

In other news, we tried to do more tilling in our garden plot the other evening, but the tiller wouldn't cooperate. I hope it's not a serious problem. We now have two tomatoes, a hot pepper, three bell peppers, three rows of bean seeds, some onion sets, some garlic, and some radish seeds planted. Last evening we met one of our garden plot neighbors, who gave us a bunch more tomatoes (they were in containers so were drying out, but he has physical limitations so couldn't plant them himself.) It was very nice of them! We planted them in the ground, and they're wilting like mad, but hopefully they'll recover. We watered them a bunch to try to ease them through the shock.

A long, hot Sunday

This Sunday we finally got ahold of a tiller to use on our garden plot. It really only took a couple of hours before S. had almost the entire plot tilled. After an hour, we ran out of gas and had to go get some, but after that it was smooth (if extremely hot) sailing. I had a turn at the tiller's helm, and gained a new respect for how strong S. is. I had a hard time steering it, and it started to get away from me (I was doing pretty well until I came to the end of the row. Turns out the tiller likes moving forwards a lot more than it likes going backwards)! But I gave a shout and he came running to rescue me before I got the tines tangled in the fence. He had a nasty sunburn on his arms by the end of the day, but I somehow managed to escape that. We came back in the evening to plant some bush beans seeds (one short row each of Blue Lake, Sonesta (dwarf wax) and Green Crop) and some yellow onion sets. S. planted the onion sets, while I did a bit of raking to smooth out the tilled areas.

It's interesting when you garden on land that someone else used to use. We've found a couple of interesting artifacts lodged in the ground. You can see them: from left to right, some sort of knife blade (it has teeth, but it's not quite a saw, either...perhaps for harvesting salad greens?), then an odd but very sharp hook with a short handle, and finally a hoe head (not the handle, just the metal part.) Fascinating.