Green 1/24th Acres

Whatever combination of soils, fertilizers, sweat, and love Katherine and I provided, along with whatever combination of sun, rain, and genes God provided, have all added up to a swell garden in the span of only about three weeks.

Our potatoes are exploding out of the barrels I put them in, lettuce is about to take over the garden, and seeds are finally sprouting. By the end of summer we should be enjoying a pretty bountiful harvest. Hopefully soon we will get our eggplant and squash into the ground.

The main garden on planting day...

...and after a couple of weeks.

Our broccoli, with wee florets inside. Soon, we will have more broccoli than anyone would ever want to eat in a lifetime. Oops, did I give away your Christmas surprise?

We thought the seeds were history. Katherine blamed me. Now they are sprouting. But do I get any thanks? Nope.

When we moved in, this flower box on the front porch was filled with dead plants and useless potting soil, and was more or less rotting away since there was no drainage of any sort. Now it is full of herbs and marigolds, and we'll be the family to ruin it, by God!

Pots full of taters.

I've already banked (added dirt to) them twice. And we thought the radiation treatment wouldn't have any side effects!

Two weeks ago, this garlic was just bulbs. Now, it's just bulbs and big long leaf things.

At the Seattle Green Festival, we got a free packet of sugar snap peas from one of the booths. We don't really eat that many peas, but I planted some nonetheless. Boom. These were probably the fastest growing things we planted. This growth was after only a week or so. They should be climbing all over our patio railing before too long.

When we moved in, the previous tenants had thoughtfully left us piles of useless junk. Among the odds and ends we inherited was a pot with a dead plant in it. When I went to throw out this poor deceased chap, I noticed a tiny green sprout among the dead brown leaves. I transferred it into a hanging pot and it greened right up.

And now, voila, mucho growth on a very healthy strawberry plant.

We're getting there...

A few new beers to add; Manny's Pale Ale, a local fave, which I thought was actually a little bland, but the grassy notes on the finish were admittedly interesting. Old Seattle Lager, had at Madame K's Pizza in Ballard, was terribly boring; Budweiser is better.

I also managed to squeeze in a Wells Bombardier English Ale, which was a little more bitter than I like in an ale, but had a creaminess usually reserved to stout, which was nice. Blue Moon's seasonal Rising Moon Spring Ale was crisp and refreshing, and although I was expecting a lime attack - it has lime in it - all I got was a very faint hint of lime flavor in the after taste. Pretty darn good, wouldn't get again.

In bigger, more important news, I can scratch one thing completely off my list: I was recently promoted at work to the position of kitchen manager, which will, ideally, have me back working with food and training our staff more on product quality and safety. It should also - again, in theory - allow me to implement and train on new programs I want to start, like cleaning dishes until they are actually clean and more radical goals like keeping hot food hot and cold food cold.

Overall, I am very excited about this move, and hopefully it will help me to get over the "burn out" I've been experiencing from slinging mashed potatoes five nights a week for the last year and a half.

In other, albeit less substantial news, K and I actually enjoyed the first fruits of our garden labor the other night. For Cinco de Mayo, I made a "Mexican" dinner, with homecooked tosdadas, upon which I piled broiled mahi mahi fillets, pico de gallo, and most importantly, assorted mescaline lettuces from our garden! That's right, people; we grew food, and then we ate it. Take that, Green Giant!

Bombardier. Great name. So-so beer.

Not too limey, for a lime beer.

We grew the lettuce. God and Con-Agra grew the rest.

More garden pics

K planted our herb seeds all by herself.


She also helped a lot with the tilling, which is pretty damn hard work.

Our first veggies! Broccoli, cherry tomatoes, tomatoes, and various kinds of lettuces.

Garden, in progress

Yay! Gardening got done! More to come, but dammit man, this was good for four hours!

The tower which will allow red wriggler worms to convert food waste into beautiful compost.

Our friends, the red wrigglers,


This was a slice of bread a few days ago. Now it is mostly worm poo.

Onions soon .

My babies, the red potatoes I finally got planted.

Countdown

The countdown timer tool went down, I should have a new one up soon...

Updates via pictures and captions

Aspall English draft cider is, unfortunately, one of the less interesting I've had. The label says "medium," so maybe that's code for neither crisp nor sweet. The Peeps and the chips made it a good evening, though.


Clearing 40+ years of sod by hand was no easy task, but my wife was up to the challenge of taking pictures of me while I did it.


I'm either offering her a worm, or begging for help. Either way, my request went unanswered.


Ta-da! One bald square of land! All I need to do now is assemble the cinder blocks and boards into a foundation, fill it with soil and compost, and transfer seedlings into it.

And in other good gardening news, our first strawberry plant has already grown a couple of inches! Jam, anyone?

We're farmers!

Our sustainable home garden got under way today!

Actually, for K's birthday I got her a book on gardening, seeds for her favorite veggies and herbs, and several other gardening staples as gifts. We have mutual goals of planting a garden this year, and even though I have a smidgen of experience in the area, I wanted her to get comfortable and learn as much as she could. I also need some refreshers, as I used to have a bit of a green thumb, and lately I've managed to kill every plant I touch. Seriously, I got a free tree from the Arbor Day Foundation in the mail, and all I had to do was plant it. I killed it before it ever saw soil. Not only that, but they mailed it to me in a cardboard box, so technically I killed two trees. Maybe we should stop investing in this...

Brown thumbs or not, we're really excited about this journey. Gardening at home creates more than just chores, which as we all know, keep our hands dirty and our thoughts pure. (Thank you Catholic school!) It provides food, saves money at the grocery store, reduces our carbon footprint, educates us about the land we live on and our interactions with nature, gets us outside, keeps our yard looking decent, helps us spend time together, gives us common goals, and makes us feel really, really good.

Today's was a small step, but I raked up some of the many layers of guck that has accumulated in our yard as the result of disinterest by previous tenants, and we got some plants in the ground. Our first McKinney Family Garden plant was a Rainier strawberry, which will ideally help cover a large bald patch in our back yard, as well as provide us with juicy strawberries throughout the season. We also planted a soft, pretty ground cover nearby to share the burden of making this huge bald patch more lush and attractive.

Tomorrow (4/5/09), we're planting some seeds in a starter greenhouse, and Kat is emptying what has been a sad little flower box on our porch in order to put in a functional herb garden. In the coming days, we will be building a "raised bed" garden to plant various vegetables, as well as starting at least a couple of container gardens. Stay tuned!

She's a waterin' fool!

With a little good luck, we'll be eating strawberries from this little guy in a month or so. If no luck, we will go strawberryless. With bad luck, this variety grows poisonous strawberries.

She always grins this big when she's massaging the roots of small potted plants. Also when she vacuums. It's weird...