What the Hell Happened to My Basil?

One member of my household, who shall remain nameless, is a pesto nazi--nothing but fresh and homemade will do, and if we don't have it at least three times a month he feels hideously neglected.  In the winter, our basil bills add up, so I came up with the brilliant plan of getting a light shelf and keeping my plants going indoors.  From a distance it looks maybe ok, but up close you can see it's a total disaster.

In an effort to maximize my success, I brought one healthy (or seemingly healthy) plant indoors in early fall, took cuttings from two other healthy-seeming plants, and sowed some seeds.

I'm getting nowhere.  It's partly my fault.  My seeds sprouted, but I got busy at work and they dried up, no doubt screaming in pain.  My cuttings are just languishing, and my formerly healthy plant is has about three green leaves at any given time.

I think it may have something to do with the temperature indoors, which peaks at 67, and goes down to 57 at night.  I put a heat mat under my plants but I don't think it provides enough warmth.  I may have to try putting some plastic around my shelves, to try to create a slightly warmer microclimate that suits basil a bit better.

Garden Envy

We went to visit friends in Milwaukee and I was really impressed with this espaliered persimmon tree.  It's a beautiful addition to a garage wall, and might even produce something edible one day.  Like all other gardeners, L. couldn't accept a compliment, and told us all about crappy this is, since it was her first attempt to espalier something.  Apparently, if you use the candelabra shape you shouldn't have a thick central leader, and there are a few bumps where she left the pruning a bit too late.  However, since I'm not a card-carrying member of the espalier-nazis, a notorious organization whose mission is to provide devastating critiques of innocent gardeners' attempts to train trees into attractive and space-saving shapes, I thought it looked very nice.  I'm tempted to try this on the shittiest part of my yard, although I'm not sure it gets enough sun for a fruit tree.

I'm also really jealous of L.'s bamboo.

I want to get one, but bamboo plants are pretty expensive and I'm afraid it will die.  Milwaukee is just a bit more temperate than Madison.  There are a few varieties that supposedly will survive our winters, such as Rubro and Nuda, but I have my doubts (some sellers list them for zone 6, making me skeptical of other sellers who optimistically claim they'll make it in zone 5).  Rubro and Nuda are also spreading rather than clumping--my preference is for a clumping bamboo.  I really hate to plant anything that can be described as an aggressive spreader.  That so often ends in disaster.

So, to recap, I can't plant bamboo because I'm afraid it will either take over my block or freeze to death.

Conventional Wisdom and Potting Soil

My in-laws were visiting from India last summer and watched in amusement as I emptied bag after bag of potting soil into my various containers.  In America, someone said, even the dirt comes in a plastic bag.  I don't think it was a compliment.

However, it did make me think.  It's Gardening 101 that you must use a good container mix for pots for root growth and development, but maybe next year I'll experiment and see what happens if I fill a few containers with regular garden soil and a little compost.  Will it really be an unmitigated disaster?  Have we sold our souls to the potting mix cartels?  I have to say though that I bought really cheap potting soil once and it was really dense and awful and everything I planted in it just languished.  Maybe I'll just see if I can buy potting soil in compostable bags.

Institutional Landscaping of the Damned, A Continuing Series (Part 2)

I suppose I should give them points for trying, but these are just about the most depressing containers I've ever seen.  I'm not crazy about red geraniums (people have this dreadful tendency to combine them patriotically with those bluish and white petunias around the 4th of July), but this is awful.  It's hard to even blame the smokers for tossing their butts on the ground here.  It hardly affects the aesthetic at all.

It's so tempting to liberate these planters in the dead of night to prevent another atrocity in the spring--plus, those half barrels are really pricy and would look so much nicer in my garden!

Breaking News: Brussels Sprouts Not a Total Disaster

So, I've harvested two batches of sprouts.  The first batch I roasted in the oven with just olive oil, salt, and pepper, and they came out quite well.

Yesterday--yes, I actually harvested something from the garden on Thanksgiving, it was quite satisfying--I added garlic and a handful of grapes, which were supposed to break down and help caramelize the sprouts.  It didn't totally work; I think you have to halve the grapes, and the sprouts got a bit overdone because I was also making gravy and blanching broccoli, and I really am incapable of doing more than one thing at a time.  However, I think there's potential here.  Next year I might plant a few more seedlings so that we can have Brussels Sprouts more than twice, although they take up a lot of room for a pretty small yield.  Maybe I need to stake them as they grow also--my sprouts were all twisted and hunchbacked, which they never are in the store.

Summer's Last Gasp

The nice thing about annuals is they seem to hang on a lot longer than any other flowers or foliage.  My hostas are already melting into yellowy decayed nothingness, but the begonias still look pretty good actually:

And one final shot of this season's marigolds:

I've always kind of felt like annuals are cheating, from a gardening point of view--somebody else starts them and gets them flowering and you just come along and chuck them in the ground and water them for a few weeks.  It's like horticultural plagiarism.  Even if you start your own annual seeds, it's not the same as perennials that you nurture for years and years.

However, I think I'm going to do more with annuals next year because they really provide a ton of great color and structure in the garden and last a lot longer than periennials.

What the Hell Happened to My Brussels Sprouts?

They still look too small to harvest.  WTF?  I'm ready to hibernate and I've still got unripe shit in the garden to deal with.

Ok, well, obviously, I should have consulted some experts before panicking.  First, according to Growing Great Vegetables in the Heartland, Brussels Sprouts taste a lot better after a few frosts.  Second, the book recommends snapping off the tops when autumn starts, to encourage the plants to put their energy into the sprouts rather than into growing ever taller.  All right, they've got maybe another week or two to get their act together.  Then, off with their heads!

The Under-Blogger Hard At Work

As useless as she is at helping in the garden, she's even more useless when it comes to churning out new posts.  In fact, she thinks my laptop is actually a heated cat bed.

Raptured While Raking?

On my way home from work the other day, I noticed that one of my neighbors had apparently been zapped up to the mothership or something, right in the middle of raking. The next day, it was still there!

Naturally, the more logical explanation is that they simply forgot, but these particular neighbors have a very small, very immaculate yard (I don't know them, but I kind of hate them), and it's just not like them to leave a rake lying about.  I think the rapture finally happened, and hardly anyone noticed.

Suck It, May

Check out my November flowers!

I love these hardy chrysanthemums, even though they do have an unfortunate tendency to flop over.

Institutional Landscaping of the Damned (An Ongoing Series)

This just leaves me asking why.  Why not just put in a decorative rock or something?  What is the point of a brutally pruned shrub entombed in a desert of rock mulch and accompanied by an air conditioning unit? In fact, accompanied is exactly the right word; they haven't tried to obscure the unit with a riot of bushes, they've placed them in perfect balance.  Neither element of the design is more or less important.

It's alive and green, but really looks dead and lifeless.  Ironically, the completely untended weeds along the bike path a mere 20 feet away look much better (if you can block out the chain link fence).

I get that people want low-maintenance landscaping, but I think some well-adapted native plants would actually require less work--they must be spraying weedkiller regularly to keep this space free of interlopers that might detract from their bush/air conditioner composition.

Who Decided to Sex Up Irises?

So I bought some dutch iris corms at Home Despot and I'm ashamed to admit that I succumbed to a really tacky marketing ploy.  Some marketing geniuses somewhere have decided that the one thing buyers of irises are looking for is more sex appeal.  I bought three types of irises, and their names are (I'm not joking) Rock Star, Aggressively Forward, and Dangerous Mood.

The colors look fun and a bit wild, but are they serious?  Have they really done some sort of focus group of iris buyers and determined that what they really want is some sexytime?  I mean, I bought them because it cracked me up in the store, but these names really seem geared towards a teen market, and unless teens have changed a lot since I was one, they're usually not interested in irises.  In fact, it's the rare teen who's interested in plants at all.  I'm guessing that even for teens with green thumbs, irises are not high on their list of edgy and exciting plants.

I could maybe see sexing up the names of already alluring tropicals and exotics, but irises just do not seem like an ideal subject for this particular tactic.  Maybe you could create cool names for new colors of fritillaria--that name already seems kind of dirty to me, and it's an awesome and dramatic looking plant in the garden.  But irises are like lilacs and delphiniums--very nice, but also very old fashioned plants that really don't need names better suited to cheap nail polish.  What's next, hostas with names like Hey There Hot Stuff or begonias in new shades ranging from Garter Belt to Heaving Bosom?

The Smell of Death

There are a lot of nice things about fall--pumpkin pie, jack o'lanterns, candy corn, the fresh smell of new school supplies, fall fashion...  For some reason, though, my yard really smells like ass.  I think it's all the rotting foliage.  It's just awful, and it lingers until we have a really good hard frost.

World's Cutest Dwag

We lost our dog this month--he was older, and had a lengthy history of health problems.  In fact, the autopsy report came back and he was in startlingly bad shape.  Dogs just do not complain, and no matter how bad they feel they find pleasure in walks, ear scratches, and new smells.

I ordered this online in the midst of my worst grief.  Next time I lose a loved one I might need to put my credit cards away for a few weeks.  Ordering a custom engraved memorial rock seemed really essential at the time; now, it seems a bit silly and I can't seem to find the right place in the garden for it.  Plus, I'm kind of worried that over the years my garden might start looking a bit like that Steven King novel that I'm never going to read.  However, I do want to remember him.  I did love having him out with me in the garden or on the porch on nice, not too hot, days.

Here's Mack enjoying the packaging from something else I must have bought online at some point.  You'd never guess from this photo that he had all kinds of plush bedding of his own.

The Under Gardener at Work

Slinky provides moral support while I work on some weeding in the bed beneath the window.

Happiness is a Clean Shed

I did one thing right this summer--I cleaned out my shed, which was a complete and utter disaster.  I didn't think to photograph it in its "before" state, but basically you couldn't see the floor or the back wall.  Most teens have more organized rooms than my shed in its previous state.

Another Satisfied Customer

Stumpy enjoys our new porch furniture, though she's a little concerned about the lack of food on the table.

Compostable "Plastic" (or do I mean "Compostable" Plastic?)

I use those cornstarch compost bags to make our compost pail a bit easier to clean, but I'm not convinced they are actually compostable.  Maybe it's my horrible non-cooking compost, but this bag has been in the pile for quite some time and seems to be in pretty good shape.  I fear that it's not going to break down for another year or two.  I suppose that's better than the hundreds of years that some scientists think it would take for plastic to degrade.

Someone sent me a book in biodegradable bubble wrap last May and I dutifully brought it (the bubble wrap, not the textbook) home from work and threw it on the compost.  I found it, in pristine shape, last week when I redid my compost.  I'm afraid the manufacturers of bio plastic worry too much about performance and not enough about degradability.  Which reminds me of a great book, Alan Weisman's The World Without Us, which describes how long all our crap would continue mucking up the earth if human beings disappeared tomorrow.  Highly recommended.

Oh My God I Hate Fall

What a mess.  A couple of years ago my neighbor and I were raking and chatting and we came up with a brilliant plan to hang nets underneath all of our trees, like aerial condoms, that would gather all the leaves together and which we could then neatly deposit into a massive compost pile all at once.  Somehow this never seemed practicable--I so wish I'd majored in something useful like engineering.

I want to just let the leaves do what leaves naturally do in my perennial gardens, except that they mess up my self-seeding annuals.  I've had moss roses coming back in one spot for years, and then last fall I was lazy, so this spring I had to plant new starter plants.  Besides that little issue, however, doesn't it seem like the leaves should just be allowed to break down and enrich the soil where they fall?  Last spring I actually bought partially composted leaves to put on the gardens!  How does it make sense to spend a lot of time removing leaves, only to reapply them later?

Thinking Spring in October

Just planted a few bulbs--some giant alliums (christophii), dwarf irises, daffodils ("cheerfulness" and "barrett browning") and something called Mediterranean Bells (nectaroscordum)--and a bit of garlic.  Planting bulbs is seriously unsatisfying.  It's a lot of work digging all the holes to the correct depths--yes, I've tried the drill attachment, no, it doesn't work in clay soil with lots of roots--and there's no payoff for months and months.  It's also really difficult to know exactly where to plant them.  Last spring I cleverly put white golf tees out to mark where I wanted to put groupings of 5 or 7 bulbs.  Today when I went to plant I couldn't find a single tee anywhere.  I did, however, find a long-lost dandelion digger that I hadn't seen since July.

Yard "Butler"

So I bought this thing called a Yard Butler that is supposed to help you mix your compost, and it does the job, but after just a few minutes of the rather backbreaking labor involved, I just want to protest against the name.  It is in no way like having a yard butler, which evokes images of swanning about the garden in a long white dress snipping deadheads off the roses in a desultory fashion while a team of under-gardeners performs the manual labor and there's an absinthe cocktail waiting on the veranda for when you get tired.

Using the yard butler is the opposite of that.  It's like doing bench rows from an awkward standing position.  You shove the thing into the compost, which is easy enough, but when you pull it out these little wings pop out, which is what mixes the compost.  However, unless your compost is already done, the little wings hit a number of snags and it requires quite a bit of brute force to get it out while dragging up whatever solids are lurking at the bottom of your pile.  I think it should be called the Sadistic and Not At All Ergonomic Upper Body Garden Trainer that Will, Incidentally, Mix Your Compost If You Really Apply Yourself.

Update:  Well, it turns out it's NOT called the Yard Butler, it's a compost aerator made by the fine people at Yard Butler.  However, I stand by my rant.  No matter how many products I buy from Yard Butler, I still won't be living like the landed classes in an Agatha Christie novel and there won't be anyone standing about with trays of cocktails waiting to convey my instructions to the head gardener.

Composting Update

How gorgeous is this?  This fills me with really unutterable joy.  This is what it used to look like:

And now here's the view from our upstairs landing:

How totally fabulous is that?  And, there's room to expand.  I've got my eye on one of those roly-spinny composters that makes compost tea in the bottom.

Just Plain Godawful

So, this is probably the ugliest part of my yard, and it's right next to the front door.  As you can see, we've paired the sturdy greenery of hostas and day lilies (the invasive orange kind, of course) with assorted objets d'plastic and a severely pruned arbor vita.  Probably the out of season sleds could go somewhere else, but there's really nowhere else to keep the trash and recycling bins.  This is my number one priority next spring, but how to fix it?

I Am the World's Worst Composter

Yes, this is my compost.  It has weeds growing in it, and the chicken wire is falling down, and it's generally a wretched sight.  Naturally, I put it where it's visible from one entire side of the house all year round, including the living room.  It's also directly underneath the black walnut tree, so even if I happened, purely by accident, to produce compost, it would be poisonous to a long list of plants.  However, last week I got paid and inspired and I started to redo it.  This makes me so happy:

There's more work to be done, but it already looks a lot better, and with covered compost that isn't full of toxic black walnuts I might even be able to use it for something someday.

I Hate Gardening

I think I can say that this was a pretty disastrous gardening year.  The tomatoes grew a thousand feet tall, produced bushels of green tomatoes, but never really ripened up to their full potential.  As soon as they started ripening in earnest we had a patch of cooler weather and they just stayed where they were, refusing to die, but also refusing to produce tomatoes.  Maybe next year I'll try out some floating row covers and see if I can keep them warmer on any cool August nights.

The okra have pretty good potential, but, as I already mentioned, they mostly came while we were away.

The zucchini failed completely, which is a terrible sign.  What idiot can't grow zucchini?  But, I tried to keep them from taking over and trimmed them back and they never forgave me.

I don't even know what happened to my cucumber plant.  One day it was threatening to break out of its bed with vigorous growth, the next day the entire vine was a shriveled, pathetic wreck.  It still produced a few cukes, but they weren't really any better than grocery store cucumbers, so I don't really see the point.

Were there any successes?  I'm hoping that maybe the brussels sprouts will work out, and I suppose the basil did alright, as did the hot peppers.  Hot peppers are the easiest thing in the world to grow.

Early in the season I had some decent lettuce and spinach but I failed to keep seeding it and so that ran out as soon as it got too hot.  I tossed around some lettuce seeds at the end of August, hoping to have a few respectable leaves for sandwiches, but it's still not even at the baby greens stage.  It's like embryonic greens even now.  Ironically, I grow lettuce not because we eat a lot of it but because we eat so little--I just like it on sandwiches that I pack for lunches and it's annoying to buy a new head of lettuce every week when you just need a few leaves.

So, that's about it.  Gardening sucks.  But there's always next year....

Oppressed Garden Helper

Slinky is determined to sneak out and help with the garden.  Unfortunately, I just don't trust her to be sensible around cars, other cats, anti-freeze, songbirds, etc.  I'm tempted to get her one of the new cat holsters, which promises to be a harness they can't slink out of, and stake her out while I get work done, but I haven't done it yet.  If nothing else, it will make for some amusing pictures.  Here's a promotional picture of a supposedly happy cat wearing the holster:

Holy Shit, Patio Furniture is Expensive

Just ordered eight new chairs, two ottomans, and one round dining table for the screened porch, and god damn that was pricy!  It was 70% off thanks to an end of season sale and it still cost more than my first car.

Sweet Revenge

One of my favorite things to do while weeding is to fling the weeds onto the sidewalk.  That way I get to enjoy watching them die as they get trampled over a few days.  It helps to have a lot of foot traffic.

Once the weeds have been reduced to dust, I sweep them up and put them into the compost.

This Week in Horrible Trees

Sometimes I really hate trees.  First, there's the worst &%@#ing tree on the planet, the seriously invasive hackberry.  Then there's the black walnut.  Forget about the fact that I have to protect my tomatoes and peppers from the juglone with expensive raised beds.  Forget about the fact that I just read that even if you cut down all the black walnuts in the vicinity the juglone will continue to infect your soil for years.  Just look at this hosta!  All my leafy, shade-loving, and black-walnut-toxicity tolerant plants look like they've been through the Blitz because it's a banner year for nuts.

Totally Useless Herbs

In the spring, when I'm filled with optimism about all the fabulous cooking I'm going to do with all the wonderful vegetables I'm going to grow, it's really easy to buy a bunch of different herbs that I have no idea how to use.  After all, they're only $2.69 each!  Of course, most of the summer it's hot, and who wants to cook elaborate and unfamiliar meals then?

Now that it's early fall it's time to face reality, and realize that there was never a chance in hell I was going to use Winter Savory, Summer Savory, or all that Marjoram that seemed like such a good idea months ago.

To be perfectly frank, I even grew way more basil than I needed.  It's possible that I'll make pesto with the woody shrubs my basil plants have become and freeze it to use all winter.  It's also possible that I'll finish cleaning out my closet, organize my files at work, and re-alphabetize the cd collection.  Possible, but not bloody likely.

Next spring I'm going to plant rosemary, thyme, parsley, no more than four five basil plants, and possibly a succession of cilantro, if I can keep it from going to seed for more than ten minutes.  Those are the herbs we really use, all the rest are just culinary porn.

Fall Gardening Slump

Well, it isn't really Fall, but I'm getting ready to start school again, so it seems like it.  My gardening mojo drops dramatically when I start thinking about work.  I have the best job in the world for gardening--summers off!--but I do get a bit distracted just when it's time to harvest and maybe do some cold season crop planting.  And forget about fall clean up!  That comes when I'm well into a frenzy of grading papers.  I just barely manage to shove a few bulbs haphazardly into the ground in late October, before I completely ignore the garden until May.

Jelly Bean Tomatoes

My jelly bean tomatoes are producing really well, although it would be a lot easier to harvest the ripest fruits if the whole plant hadn't fallen over, due to completely inadequate support.

This is clearly a complete disaster.  It's impossible to dig through the foliage trailing along the ground and find the tomatoes that are ready for eating and this entire area of the garden is full of chipmunks reveling in the jungle I've created for their convenience.

Okra Update

The okras are trickling in at a rate that makes them difficult to use (what does one do with three okras?).  For next year, I need to do a succession planting so that we get a series of the right size crops.  

In other okra news, I still don't like it very much.  However, I've suggested that my husband make his favorite okra recipe using the much less mucilaginous and much more delicious asparagus or zucchini, and he's willing to try it.

People Are Assholes, A Continuing Series

Last week someone left a variety of items in my garden in the area between the sidewalk and the road (the name of this common landmass is apparently still under hot debate on the interwebs).

This is a pillow; in the picture below we have part of a car's bumper and more standard litter in the form of a water bottle, partially empty.

Is it so difficult to pick up after yourself?  Is it so difficult not to leave bedding material lying about in other people's gardens in the first place?  Naturally, one's bumper could fall off anywhere, but pillows would seem to be easier to contain.

Dog Pee: Nature's Herbicide

This spring I realized that my dog had been peeing all winter in one spot in my rock garden.  

I knew dog pee wasn't good for plants, but I had no idea it could be so devastating.  Now I've blocked off the area with potted annuals and herbs, and the sedums are starting to spread into the devastated area.  It actually looks ok, and it's handy to have the herbs so close to the back door and the kitchen.  I can't wait to see how the garden looks next spring, after a whole year of protection.

Here's the culprit, looking completely innocent:

 

I thought about trying to train him to pee somewhere else, but he's kind of elderly, and it seemed kinder just to prevent him from peeing on plants I care about.  It's worked fairly well, though I can't understand at all why it's more satisfying, from his point of view, to pee on expensive plants instead of the mulch or the vinca and weeds that I have in an unobtrusive back corner of the yard.  He still tries to circumvent my blockade every once in a while, to get back to his most favorite place to whiz.

Idiosyncratic Light Requirements

I love this hardy hibiscus plant, even though it's a bit leggy.

I have a feeling that a lot of my sun-loving plants out front in the bed near the road are struggling with too much shade, leading to leggy behavior.  Interestingly, though, I've got phlox further back in the front yard that gets even spottier sun and seems to be doing well.

It doesn't even have powdery mildew this year!  This morning I was drooling over a Bluestone Perennial catalog and noticed that they list phlox as requiring absolutely full sun; I have quite a few phlox plants doing reasonably well in what I would call part sun to part shade. 

Self-seeding Impatiens

Who knew that impatiens would seed themselves?  Ok, possibly a lot of people, but I didn't.  I planted some impatiens here two years ago, and they've come back ever since.  Of course, it's a horrible spot for impatiens, since it's dead in the middle of a large bed and they are low-growing plants that belong at the edges, but whatever. 

World's Most Evil Tree

Last winter, on this spot, we had a hackberry cut down to create more sun for my garden and because it is horribly invasive--I spend all summer weeding baby hackberries.  Now I've got a hackberry shrub growing from the stump.  It's the tree that would not die.  I think I'm going to have to investigate chemical stump killing options.  What kind of respectable tree survives being cut down?

Sour Grape Tomatoes

For some reason, my grape tomatoes are not as sweet as they should be.  Thanks to my super consistent automatic watering system, they aren't splitting, but they also don't taste very good--yesterday I made a simple pasta salad with good olive oil, salt, pepper, pecorino, and some grape tomatoes just picked from the garden, and it was good, but the tomatoes were awfully tart.  I can't imagine what I've done wrong.

Travel Vs. Tomatoes: An Emotional Dilemma

Before we left, I was really worried that we would miss all the tomatoes, but in fact, we came home to the same monstrous plants full of green tomatoes.  The tomatoes are just ripening now.  Can't wait to make my first caprese salad.

Is There Such a Thing as a Garden Sitter?

After two and a half weeks away, the weeds have taken over.

On the other hand, I'm happy with my new purple sneakers, and with how much my elephant ears have grown.  Before we left they had barely produced three leaves and I was sure that Home Despot had sold me some dud bulbs.  Now just look at them!