Both of these tomato plants...

were planted on the same day. They were both 2 inches tall. One was planted in a Wall o' Water (the big one), and the other one was not. Nuf said!

My dog...my enemy!

Ok...so I know I have a digger. Squiggy loves to take things outside and bury them. Once, after we forgot to put away the left over pizza one evening, we awoke to find it all gone. We presumed he had eaten it all until a week or so later when a very dirty, very nasty piece of the pizza resurfaced on our family-room floor. Then another a week or so later.

In all fairness, I did know I had a digger. So I had been planning to put a fence around my garden to keep him out. However, he had not been digging so much recently, and the last few times I had planted stuff last summer...no digging at all.

So, I had decided to try out a "training" regime to protect my garden, rather than a fence. I also thought I would plant slowly, so that if he started to dig stuff up, I could remind him (if necessary with muzzle therapy...which is a major Squiggy time-out), that when mommy puts something in the ground, he does NOT get to dig it up.

I planted in phases, to kind of test him...see what he would do. I started with potatoes. Not even a paw mark. I waited a couple of weeks and put in some other plants. Still nothing. I even played in the soil just to see if he would get interested in what I might be doing there. I could tell he had been in the beds because there were paw marks. So, I told him "No Squiggy!" every time. But still, no digging...anywhere.

So, I put in the rest of the plants. In fact, by yesterday afternoon I had put in almost everything that my beds could hold. I have officially been digging in the dirt and burying things...without incident...for an entire month.

What goes through the mind of the dog? That is what I want to know. This morning, he had dug around my artichoke plant. Just a little...and not at the root of the plant...a few inches off. After a month of no digging anywhere, the area 3 inches South of my artichoke is suddenly interesting to him and intensely in need of being dug up?!?

Then, this afternoon when I went out to check the garden. There was nothing new in the digging department. One of my squash plants looked pretty thirsty, so I watered it.

But this evening....when I went out to cover everything against the cold, I found that he had MURDERED two of my corn plants and a spaghetti squash! What happened between 4:30 and 8:00, that made him want to dig in a place that I had not even touched in over 24 hours?!?! What goes through the mind of the dog?

That dog is very lucky he is cute...and that his dad stopped me from killing him with a shovel!

I had a dream...

last night that one of my potato plants had finally popped out of the soil. Guess what, not one, but two them have!

However, my biggest gardening success today was not the potatoes, or the corn, peas, melons, herbs or zucchini that I planted. My biggest success was nipping my gardening anxiety in the bud!

I had been getting increasingly nervous that nothing was gonna grow and that I was wasting a lot of time and money. I was beginning to worry that I was planting things too close together, or too far apart. Rather than enjoying the smell of the soil and the warm sun and cooling breeze, I was over-thinking where to put the thyme and how far apart to plant the melons. I was obsessing and had to remind myself that everything I am doing this year is an experiment. That even if I don't end up with 100 pounds of fresh produce this summer, I will have learned a LOT in the process...and that the process this season is as important as the outcome.

The heart of the problem is that, like almost everyone I know, I am far, far too hard on myself. Far, far too quick to judge my worth as a person on unrealistic expectations, and far too inclined to miss out on the joy of the process because of the fear of failure. What a waste of time and emotional energy!

So, I plugged those plants in that ground with my bare hands (I really don't like using gardening gloves). Then I mulched it (I was sorry that I did not use gardening gloves for this because I ended up with about 100 little slivers), and then I lit my Chinese lanterns, put my feet up and watched the sun go down. Saweet!

* * * *

Lord, Creator of every green thing, thank you for the gift of food. Thank you for the life and purpose that You put in each plant...and thank you for the joy of getting to watch You make them grow! Amen!

Great Basin Community Food Co-op Seedling Sale

TODAY!!! May 21, from 9-12 @ the parking lot of the Great Basin Community Food Co-Op. I will be buying lots of locally proven plants from local farmers. Super excited!

P.s. Starting to get nervous that nothing is really gonna grow :(

Companion planting?

New concept for me...companion planting. I read a little bit about it tonight on-line. Does anyone out there know much about it? I am thinking it sounds like a way to maximize your soil usage and the amount and variety of food you grow, but it also seems like there are some plants that grow well together, and some that don't. Any thoughts or experience appreciated.

I also planted today (check out some of the seedlings that finally made it into my beds). During this process it occurred to me why it is better to plant some seeds directly into the beds (rather than sprouting in individual cups). You plant a continuous row of seeds (because they are very, very small seeds, like lettuce or carrots), and then you thin them out once they sprout. This does not work so well when you sprout the seeds in individual cups. Not sure what to do with the lettuce clumps I inadvertently produced?!

What had held me back til now?

In my childhood home(s), there was always food growing! Some of my earliest memories were of my Mother's garden, picking peas straight from the pod. Soooooo sweet and delicious! There were fruit trees in the house I grew up in, at least 4... apples, cherries and peaches. A huge grape trellis with vines of green and black seeded grapes provided our patio with privacy from the neighbors. We made jelly with my grandmother...of her home-grown peaches and plums, and our grapes and cherries. Yet, once I left home, it never crossed my mind to have a garden, and when choosing trees for my first house, I avoided anything that fruited! In fact, by the time I had cleaned up a ton of rotten fruit off the back lawn, you might even say I had developed an aversion to home grown food.

Now, I find myself in a smallish house in Sparks. There is a 40 foot ash tree in our small back yard, and a 60 foot tall oak tree in the yard behind us. We have a very nice, very shady backyard. It is great for relaxing on the patio on a summer afternoon, or for the kids to play in. It is NOT good for growing food. Most edible plants require 6-8 hours of sunlight each day. They turn all that energy from the sun into the food I want to grow. For several years I presumed that in order to have a garden, I would need to move. We had even started looking @ houses.

The thing that changed my mind was a concept I stumbled on called "edible landscaping." The basic idea is that edible plants can also be beautiful enough to grow anywhere in your yard, and that vegetibles can grow as well in a beautiful pot, or in interesting patterns, as they do in long, predictible rows. This was revolutionary for me. I had been planning a fence to hide the one small strip of sunny ground we have in our backyard before I converted it into a few boring looking rows of veggies. Now I am scemeing a full frontal assault on my front lawn. I am planning an entire side yard of espaliered plumb trees and other tasty delights, just north of my driveway! I am contemplating ripping out the ornamental cherry tree in my front yard to put in something more fruitful! Eventually, I am hoping that every sunny square foot of my soil will be producing food.
But, I have still not figured out where to put the chicken coop.

Urgent Update!

Just in case any of you (or should I say, Zsera & Cat...just in case you were worried:) All of my plants made it through the very cold night we had last night.
I was not sure exactly what to do with the plants that I could not put in a Wall O' Water, so I cut up some black plastic garbage bags and tucked those little sweeties in for the night (I had seen this done in a movie once). This morning they all looked happy as clams! :)
Are you figuring out yet, that most of my gardening knowledge comes from completely peripheral sources (e.g. movies, and "overhearing" things).