Crystal Madrilejos

We’re hitting that time of year when the garden starts getting out of control. The bugs, the weeds, and the heat are in full force. It’s also about the time everyone realizes that they didn’t allow enough room for everything they planted to grow to their full potential. Gone are the days of neat and tidy beds. Mother nature laughs at our feeble attempts to keep her in check.

But with all that said, it’s also the time when the garden looks full of life! We have been harvesting salad greens for a good month or more now and we’re just about reaching the end of this batch. As the days grow longer and hotter, eventually the greens will get bitter and go to seed. Our greens are right on the verge of becoming inedible (some of them have already turned bitter) so we’re considering pulling them out and planting another round.

This was the lettuce around mid-June:

This is the lettuce now:

This year we planted a few rows of Mesclun but we weren’t too happy with it. Last year it was great, but I don’t know if we just planted and harvested it too late in the season or what. But there was something in the mix that got really bitter. Plus, there is arugula in the mix which normally we love. But it grows so much faster than the rest of the greens and gets tough and extremely peppery if left to grow too long. It can really make or break a salad. Next year I think we are just going to stick to the individual varieties instead of the mixes.

-c.

We’re bit late in posting about the garden this year. But if any of you were wondering about our little patch of veggies, we‘re happy to say that things are going well! We applied much of what we learned last year and think the garden will be even more productive.

A few of the main changes are:

1. We are sharing the garden with 6 other people (same as last year) but instead of one huge plot we divided up the garden and each couple has their own plot. Last year we were a bit ambitious and didn’t anticipate how much work it would be. I think everyone was a bit overwhelmed. The smaller plots are so much more manageable.

2. There is one plot in the center of the garden of lettuces/greens. The salad greens were the one thing that everyone LOVED last year and it worked out so well. We planted 1/3 of the amount we planted last year and still have a ton!

3. Deer fencing has (so far) been our savior! Last year the deer pretty much wrecked us and discouraged us to the point of giving up. There really is no point to doing all this work if the deer are just going to eat everything. So we bit the bullet and invested in extending the fence to about 10 feet tall. Only once has a deer tried to get in this season with no casualties to any of our plants! We’re crossing our fingers that the fence continues to deter them.

The images above was the garden a month ago, and this is the garden today:

Crazy, right?

–c.

The trees in our yard have been bare for a few weeks now but before all the leaves fell I was able to get a few shots of them in their full autumn glory! I can’t believe Thanksgiving is next week. Where did the time go?

p.s. The glass circle hanging from the tree is a beautiful bird feeder by Eva Solo that we got for our wedding from our friend Iliana. We used to have it hanging on our porch but the birds loved it so much that they made such a mess all the time!

–c.

Medina County is known for being “home of the Buzzards” (more specifically Hinckley Township) and it’s not uncommon to see them flying around these parts. They are quite unsightly and frighteningly large.

Last week when I pulled into our driveway after work I saw about 6 of these ginormous scavengers sitting on the fence beyond the creek that runs behind our house. Some were on the fence, some in the bare trees nearby. It was freaky! Within the next couple of days, the number of buzzards seemed to multiply exponentially and it started to scare me. Andrew said we had better check what they were picking at because where there are buzzards there are usually dead things.

Andrew figured it was a dead animal of some sort, which I wasn’t too keen on seeing. He said we should check to be sure it wasn’t a dead body! And I said that I definitely didn’t want to see that! In the end, it was a dead deer that was still relatively fresh but picked clean. Andrew described the ribs as looking like a crown roast. Lovely. Just another one of those things that comes with the territory.

–c.

As we’ve mentioned many times before, this is our first dip into the gardening pool. We’ve learned a lot thus far and have been surprised by many things but nothing prepared us for the vigor of the small, dirty starch balls we call potatoes. They grow like mad! Our garden rows are packed and our build-as-they-go container is even more so. We literally could not dig up enough dirt to keep up with them. We had to give up and just let them go. This is the picture we posted before of the container right when the taters started to sprout:

And this is how far we got in building up the sides of the container before the potatoes got out of control:

Some of the plants are blooming which means there are potatoes down below. We got a little shovel-happy and decided to dig up one of our Yukon Gold plants, below was the yield:

Needless to say, they were so, so good. For the rest of potato plants we’re going to let them bloom and start to die a little before we harvest them so the potatoes can continue to grow and it’ll allow some time for their skin to toughen up a bit as well.

-a.

Out of all the things I wanted in the garden, lettuces were right near the top of the list, which went: potatoes, lettuces, corn. See, I told you it was near the top. And I’m happy to report that our little leafy greens are flourishing. They’re to the point where I think we totally overdid it. Note for next year: A full row of arugula is way too much. I think we were arugula-deprived heading into spring so we overcompensated, and then some. But, there are worse things than having too much arugula, like having no arugula.

All the varieties we planted (Swiss Chard, Green Oakleaf, Lolla Rossa, arugula, Red Romaine, Tango, Gold Rush, spinach, kale and some all-inclusive mesclun mix) are up and producing wonderfully. There’s nothing like picking fresh, fragrant salad greens minutes before a meal.

Below is a picture of our first salad bounty. These are just the thinnings.

It’s nutty to look at the above pictures because they were taken a little while ago and the lettuces are so much fuller now:

-a.

We have two new additions to our yard for the summer!

Andrew set up a horseshoe pit (which is fun, but totally dangerous). The stakes are distanced 40 feet apart and set in the center of 4′ x 4′ patch of dirt. Most people use sand to absorb the impact of the horseshoe, but we make do with what we have. There are a whole set of rules that I have yet to memorize, but you can check here for further details.

The other game I call the Ring Game, though I’m not sure if this is the real name. I did a tiny bit of research and some places call it the “Bimini Ring Game” and others call it “Ringing the Bull” and the basic idea is to swing a ring attached to a string and try to get it on a hook attached to a wall or in our case, a tree. Andrew learned about the game from his Mom who saw it being played in Florida while on vacation. The versions I’ve seen online have fancy plaques but we went the simplified route. It’s surprisingly fun and frustrating.

–c.

A couple months ago Andrew and I went for a walk in the fields behind our house. Just across the creek that runs about 100 feet beyond our fence, there was a large Black Walnut tree that I noticed was leaning precariously.

A few weeks ago it fell! Andrew’s dad and brother have an office right next to our house and his brother heard it fall but wasn’t sure at the time what it was he was hearing. Just a loud cracking, crashing sound.

I know things like this happen all the time, but for some reason it makes me sad. Ever since it fell there has been a ton of bird activity around it. I’m not sure why.

–c.

Our peonies began blooming a few weeks ago.

Lucky for us, we got a couple before they were all gone.

–c.

Last weekend we transplanted all our starts into the ground. We’re now crossing our fingers that they make it!

Here they are hardening off on the porch before going into the ground. Wish them luck!

–c.