About Me

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Montgomery, Alabama, United States
I'm a Zone 8. I'm doing a little gardening to satisfy a curiosity to see whether or not I can do it. People make it look so easy-- what's stopping me from making it work? Contrary to my name ("Hana" means flower in Japanese) I have a history of killing plants. Well, most of them. Let's see how this one goes!

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Rain!

[started 8 April]
So it rained for the first time in what seemed like weeks today. Lazy me, I had forgotten to water the garden last night so it's a good thing that nature took care of that for me. I did shuffle my boxes of seedlings inside for fear of them drowning. Oh! And the progress report on them is quite positive! I had started flats of a bunch of different heirloom tomato seeds that I had procured through the good folks at wintersown.org back in 2008 and was terrified that, after two weeks of not germinating, that my seeds were either no longer viable or I had killed them somehow. To my surprise and infinite pleasure, one or two little seedlings had popped up. That was enough to make me happy.

[edited 17 April]

So I need to just post my entries instead of waiting for complete thoughts. I have lots of new photos but I will post them later. For now here are the photos that go along with the one I started over a week ago!

Garlic or something?
Garlic or something I think. It just sort of volunteered-- I'm excited!

Oregano
Oregano that I have not killed yet-- this is a momentous occasion-- I have never ever ever been successful with oregano. I am keeping my fingers crossed!

Tomatos and stuff
Tomatos and stuff
This is kind of the salsa pasta side of the garden with tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and other stuff. I wish I had taken the time to start seeds in the winter as these aren't particularly exciting varieties. All of the tomatoes are Homestead and the peppers are all generic "Sweet Bell," "Sweet Banana," "Cayenne," and "Jalapeno" plants from Wal-Mart.

Legumes
Tomatos and stuff
Tomatos and stuff
This is what should eventually be the legumes and root veggies side. I have planted all sorts of random beans, peas, and radishes more in the hopes that something will grow since most of the seeds I planted are kind of old. The viney thing that DBF's mother claims is some sort of jasmine will serve as a natural trellis. I hope that will work out.

Blueberries
These little guys excite me. DBF and I wanted fruit trees, but we decided to start small with some blueberry bushes. I think they are Jersey and North Bush varieties. I'm crossing my fingers in hopes that they produce!

You will notice the 2x4 in some of the photos. The previous owners built the garden plot and-- stupid me-- I should have accounted for the fact that the thing is literally inches away from the back fence when I was preparing things. I cannot access the rear half of the garden without stomping all over my nice fluffy soil, so I have to use a plank of wood to precariously balance on while I do maintenance, like weeding, grassing, and whatever else requires me to get to the other side. I will bet that it is hilarious to watch, but it's kind of scary (not for me, but for the poor plants that are under constant threat of my crushing them to death under my clumsy butt).

I will update with more recent photos are things have taken off a smidge. I'm mostly excited about the heirloom varieties that I have gotten to sprout. I need need need to get them into individual pots before their roots grow together. Since I started this post a week ago I have gotten every single variety to germinate. Now we have to find homes for all of them.

Yawn! Sigh! Bed time! See you tomorrow!

Monday, April 5, 2010

Remembrance

While I could not find any good photos of my Austin garden, I did find some of my mother's garden in Dayton. She has a pretty green thumb, but isn't a particularly glamorous gardener. She just wants stuff to grow, and grow now.

Glass Flowers. Wait, what?
Okay, not real flowers. But pretty nonetheless.

Christmas Cactus
Christmas cactus, the hyper-reproductive rabbit of the plant world.

Potted plants
Happy potted plants bask in the sun. I'm not sure if my mom particularly likes succulents, but my sister sort of has a fetish for them and so we've all ended up with tons, procured from her collection.

Insuk's Wang Kong
Here are the beautiful Insuk's Wang Kong runner beans that I gave my mom. The Austin heat totally fried the hell out of mine, but hers just kept making gorgeous flowers all throughout the summer and produced lots of delicious beans. Mmmm.

Zucchini
Zucchini are bad. They like to hide.

Yellow Squash
Almost as bad as zucchini are yellow squash. It didn't help that my mom literally threw seeds into the garden so the plants were crowded as all get out. Reaching in to harvest these suckers was not fun and they are prickly. Oh my goodness.

Cherry tomatoes
We were literally harvesting pounds of cherries a day throughout the late summer and early fall. I wish I had given her normal tomato seeds-- I can't imagine what the beefsteak harvest would have been like!

Cukes
These were pickling cucumbers of some sort. Tiny and delicious.

Insuk's Wang Kong
The Insuk's, but with beans on the plant. These things are all sorts of ridiculous in terms of size.

The Garden
This is what it looked like. I'm sorry, but it looks insane to me. Harvesting was pretty difficult, especially once the tomatoes and squash in the middle of the pile started to ripen. It was pretty fun, though. I miss waking up in the morning and hauling the latest tomato harvest in with a big bucket.

Hrvest
One of the early July harvests. We didn't get many bush beans or peppers because the poor plants were completely shaded out by the tomatoes, runner beans, and squash leaves. Still fun, though.