To The Surbiton Manor Born

  We came back home to Steepmeadow after 10 days in the Canadian Rockies to find that we had many, many ripe strawberries, and a lot of weeding to take care of. First off, suffice to say that Jasper and Banff National Parks in Canada are mindbogglingly stunning. Pictures just can't capture the power of that landscape. It was a great place to run a marathon (a slightly disappointing, but considering the extra 4,000 feet in altitude not too bad 4:23).  A good friend was kind enough to watch over our cats and even water our garden, which would surely have perished in the smothering 90 degree heat in our absence without it.  We need to rethink long vacations in June. It's prime farming season.  In any case, the plants all just about doubled in size while we were gone. A few ancho peppers were ready to harvest.  We had a LOT of volunteer tomatoes pop up in last year's tomato beds. I replanted some of them into containers and into spots (notably the peppers in the Meg...

  Curb Appeal Weekend The Memorial Day weekend was a doozy. We moved dirt. We planted something in every bed. Memorial Day is a big one here. Stuff needs to be in the ground. And while it wore us to nubs, we got it done. And a 20 mile run to prep for the next marathon. (Note to self: Planting large garden and marathon training are not necessarily complimentary activities. Consider a fall marathon next year.) And so, intrepid reader, we move on to a visual tour of Steepmeadow as it stands today: Above, we can see the landscaping. That's a whole lotta mulch and dirt and a large number of hostas moved from the side of the house where they dwelt under the abuse of the Hated Previous Owners (HPOs). The Teeny Weenie Free Zucchini Garden, planted by Kiki & and a passel of neighbor kids. We shall see what comes up. The new raised box over the remnants of the felled shabby decorative tree left by the HPOs. It's got Hubbard squash and flowers in it. The three year old blueberry bushe...

  5.5 yards of dirt is really quite a lot. We had this delivered on Friday the 19th. I had the day off and worked steadily from 9:00, when it came, to 7:30 (joined  by Kiki when she was let off work) in the evening. It was grueling, heavy work. But we did it in just one cool, drippy, windy day because we wanted our cars in the garage. We were motivated in this by the damaging hail we received last Thursday. It badly damaged a lot of the tomato plants that I'd set out.  In retrospect, I don't think that starting them as early as I did (February) did them any favors. I suspect that there is a reason they are small in the spring, as it makes them more resilient to the ever-howling winds. Also, the greenhouses seem to be good for sprouting seeds and for small seedlings, but after a point, the plants are weak and anemic. They really need real sun to survive. Lesson learned. Next year, I plan to start marigolds & tomatoes much later - the recommended 6 weeks from last frost...

The pepper bed is full of peppers. The tomato bed is half full of tomatoes, mostly Wisconsin Chief tomatoes. Cucumber seeds have been planted by the trellis next to the snap peas. Snap peas come early, cucumbers come later. So peppers, tomatoes, varieties of greens, peas, cucumbers, beets are all in the ground now.  No sign of the lettuce, but that wasn't planted that long ago. Tulips are up. Our yard is full of lovely violets The bumble bees seem to like them. We have quite a few of them out there. I won't be mowing the back yard until the violets are done. I cut down quite a few out in the front yard this afternoon, because I was concerned that the mower wouldn't be able to go through them if they and the clover and the dandelions got much bigger. But I sort of regret it. I think the yard looked better with the flowers. There was a LOT of clover, though, which added a LOT of much-needed green to the compost pile. Soaked that down good, and it looks like things are rotting...

  Things are popping in the yard now. Today we made it up to around 80. Tomorrow is warmer. It's very fast, and this necessitates action. The Teeny Weeny Free Zucchini garden finally has a plan. We're going to take the old raised bed that we bought from Wayfair our first year here (4x4), paint it, and put it out front for the neighbors. Like a Little Free Library, only with vegetables. This is a before picture. I primed it this evening. It does feel like a thunderstorm, which is predicted for today and tomorrow, scattered. This makes me reluctant to plant out anything. I seeded some merlot lettuce, Paris Island lettuce, & buttercrunch lettuce, but covered them with gauze like that in the photo above.  I couldn't quite persuade myself to put any tomatoes or peppers in the ground today with violent storms predicted. Even covered, they are pretty fragile.  I also dropped a few sunflower seeds & the rest of the milkweed seeds in the wildflower garden area. We'll see...

  The New Pepper Bed Minnesota is not known for long springs, and this past weekend the proverbial switch was flipped from winter to summer. Suddenly all of the sweaters look like yesterday's news. I think - were some of the seedlings better hardened off, it would be possible to plant out tomatoes and peppers. But they are not hardened yet. In fact, they are bloody weaklings. Those that have grown large in pots are the weakest of the lot. An hour in the sunshine and a light zephyr, and they're wilting and gasping for water. We'll see how they are in a week. This brings me to the lesson learned: Don't start tomatoes until 6-8 weeks prior to planting out. The Wisconsin Chief's that I planted far later are in the best shape. The early Delicious variety has a lot of duds and a lot of plants that spent what I now consider to be too long in the greenhouse.  The peppers still need that massive head start. They are genuinely slow plants. Bottom line, the little greenhouses ...

A new raised bed to cover the dead stump and a new Honeycrisp Apple Tree in the Foreground This past weekend saw a flurry of activity here at Steepmeadow. Two new Honeycrisp apple trees were delivered. I planted them in a pounding, cold rain. I wanted to get them out of the buckets they were delivered in ASAP, and Saturday was a washout, living hell. So there was nothing for it but to forge ahead. This year's plan involved building a new raised bed over an eyesore we've had in the front of the house since we moved in. We cut down an overgrown arborvitae at the corner of the garage. This left a stump surrounded by rubble over an electrical main buried in the soil. Needless to say, we did not dig down to place the box. Sadly, we ran out of pressure-treated pine 1/2 x 6' pickets just four boards short of completion. To make matters worse, these are now out of stock at all of the major supply stores. Today, I had to order a pack of 6 untreated, non-ground-contact boards of the ...