Drowning Nor Waving

Another article on delicious land reclamation for the purposes of sexy urban farming; this time, in Cleveland. I could not tell you why reading about projects of this type gives me such mad utopian joy, but there you go.

In other news, the beans were out of flower and growing themselves mightily when I checked on them this morning, and my first batch of small spicy death-radishes will be ready to go very soon. Perhaps pictures tonight, once I'm packed for Readercon.

From the garden this evening:



Also, I started knitting my first pair of socks today while at cszego's, where we had our Canada Day lunch/picnic thing/hang around and eat and chatter party. They are purple and green and lovely. I have already messed up the toes a little, but this just means the toes will be a bit pointy.

This evening, there will be farmer's market cherries and revisions.

Since today is the first day of the rest of your life second half of 2009, I think that's a pretty good halftime show.

Yes, I have been remiss in my garden reportage. I am reminded because I just went out to do the watering now that it's cooled down a bit, and couldn't figure out why the leaves on one of my pea plants were so tangly, and started to untangle them and realized it wasn't leaves. I have my first two peas of the season. :)

So! Since I have two sets of pictures to show you, one from early in the month and one from just on Monday,

( We'll just side-by-side these suckers... )

It's Victoria Day, and I bought myself an eggplant seedling this afternoon. This calls for...a Garden Post!

( We'll start off with the inside stuff, and work around to the outdoor... )

Major planting happens in the other windowboxes and fake raised beds next weekend, I think. And then we will be in business.

Home sick today, after two hours at work that convinced me I wasn't going to get through the six that came after them on my own steam. So today has been mostly an exercise in strong pain meds, napping those meds off, reading Robert Graves (so I felt like my useless ass was earning its oxygen a bit), a bit of halfhearted knitting, and some vague puttering around the apartment to tidy up things. This has really not been a day to write home about. The most exciting thing that happened is that I have a pea sprout coming up. Yes, that's all.

So yes. I'm reading Robert Graves. Specifically, Goodbye to All That, which has a lovely black and white photograph as a cover. I am stealing the appearance of this man, who I assume to be Graves, for a character somewhere.

So far, I find I like Robert Graves a lot more when he's telling a no shit, there I was story than when he's being *cough* *clear throat* The Memoirist. There is a palpable difference between the two voices. One is assumed, and one is real, and I think I like the real guy more.

Also, the differences between him and Vera Brittain, who was pretty much a direct contemporary (there are two years between them, now that I actually check, which surprised me because Graves's family and presentation thereof are so much more Victorian) are...fascinating. It's in social perception and writing style and what they choose to leave in and leave out; it's in detail and what's shown and what's ellided. I suspect these are mostly issues of class -- the upper class preserving certain Victorian habits and traditions versus the more modern Edwardian middle-class, where if you want to be with it, you have to hop on a different bell curve, that of modernism? But I'll need some more datapoints to really get that down.

(One or two more memoirs, I think, and then I have to go find some of the contemporary fiction. There is no better way to learn about an era than to find out what they were reading.)

It was cloudy and chilly this morning, so I wasn't prepared for how, when I left work tonight, it was suddenly spring.

But yeah, the sky is brilliant blue, it's sunny, and everything is suspiciously greener. The daffodils and crocuses are out, and the tulips are starting to turn from stalky green things into possible flowers. And I got the most unbearable urge to stick my hands in some dirt.

Thus is inaugurated the 2009 balcony garden. I shall torture you with garden posts until at least October. :D

---

Okay, so no pictures today, since for one, my phone needs charging and for two, there's not a lot to report. I picked up 40 L of potting soil on the way home (almost gone already), and used it to freshen up my old balcony railing boxes and fill up the two new ones. So really what you would have to see would be some boxes with dirt in them.

Seed inventory shows that I still do have quite a bit of stuff, but not so much with the variety, so I only planted the two boxes on the east side of the balcony and left the western ones for when I get more kinds of seeds. The overall strategy this year, I think, will go towards mixed-use zoning -- the ones that did best last year had two or three kinds of plants, and I think that was a nitrogen issue.

So the green box, the one that we saw last year:



--has been planted with peas, beans, and cucumbers in the same configuration as before: niiice tall beans in the back, shorter peas in the front so they can climb the pigeon netting, cucumbers on the side. This did me really well except for the fact that the cucumbers never got pollinated properly, and I think I can fix that by putting in a greater variety of flowering things and some marigolds to drag the bees in.

It now has a brownish sibling sitting right next to it (right behind where that pic was taken from) which is a little more experimental. I've done the beans along the back and one or two pea plants on the westernmost side, but the centre is spaced-out radishes and the easternmost side some small lettuces. We're going to see how that flies.

I still do have spinach and strawberries, and since the strawberries need full sun, I need to think carefully about how to do that. The spinach will probably go in the west-railing boxes, which are another of those big ones and this guy (also shown as per last year):



Greens are the plan; the plan is greens.

Further photolicious updates to follow!

Okay, so you guys remember this guy? This planter of great balcony rail-sitting love which, due to its ability to get all sunlight ever, gave me beans and peas well into October?



I bought two more of those suckers at Canadian Tire this afternoon.

Come Planting Day, my life is going to rock. *bouncebouncebounce*

There's a frost coming on tonight. I just ducked outside in my pajama pants, fuzzy sweater, and thick socks* to pull the last three peas off the plant before they died overnight.

I suspect this is the End of the 2008 Garden.

My harvest stands at 12 beans, 19 peas, 4 small spinaches, 2 tiny chilies, and 2 radishes. The carrots never really rooted, I left the green lettuce out a bit too late and it died, and we have already explored my deficiencies as a turkey baster for some otherwise lovely, lush, and green cucumber plants.

Things we learned working this summer's garden:

1) If I think I'm going to survive the apocalypse in some utopian rooftop-agrarian fashion off this, I perhaps have another thing coming. At high speed, and forcefully.

2) Things I grow taste better than things other people grow and sell to me in stores. I don't think this is just psychological. They really do. I didn't even cook with those peas; I ate every single one off the vine. They were too good.

3) My problems, I think, were generally issues of sunlight distribution and soil nitrogen; or to use smaller words, this is what happens when you just stick things in the dirt and water them without knowing shit. There were much greater yields and much bigger plants when I mixed a few in a container, ie beans, peas, cucumbers, peas and spinach (winner), or beans and radishes. There were much greater yields when I moved certain pots to better spots. I actually went and picked up a few how-to books for container gardening at the beginning of the fall, and hopefully with their magic purchasable knowledge I can stop busily rediscovering fire next year and actually grow enough to eat semi-regularly and maybe even put up.

4) It's not even worthwhile to start seeds indoors. Not enough light. They grow all spindly and then snap at the first strong wind. Just do 'em outside.

5) More windowboxes. And the ones that sit on the balcony railing. Snap those things up next spring. That idea about climbing the vining stuff up the pigeon screening totally worked, and maybe if I get better coverage and start sooner next year, I can achieve Leafy Bower.

6) The herbs don't actually benefit overmuch from being outside. May as well leave them in next time and use the space for something else.

7) Speaking of space, I need to work on some ideas re: levels next year. The things that are at a premium are space and sunlight, notably space with sunlight.

8) Despite not knowing my ass from a hole in the ground on this topic, I have good instincts. Be proud of that, monkey. You made this work. Trust them.


Gardening season being over, I declare it knitting season. And will be drawing up some actual plans for this garden for next April. Next year, we do this forewarned, forearmed, and with diagrams. :)

*Heating or not, my toes aren't going to be warm until March.