Experimentation

Gardening offers so many metaphors for life. For one thing, a garden is always in process. Even if you sat down and carefully drew out a detailed garden plan and followed it exactly, you would find upon completion that you wanted to make edits. That's just the nature of things. You learn as you go along. You see what works and what doesn't. You make edits, improvements. This isn't terribly different from life, I hope.

Gardening demands experimentation, as well. In Michigan, my Cherokee Purple tomatoes were magnificent. In Florida, they were something like a disaster. And so I had to look for tomato varieties that might work better for me here. Enter Gardener's Delight, Brown Berry Cherry, Black Plum, Brandywine, Black Krim, and my favorite--in terms of names--Beam's yellow pear. Some have done better than others. Some I'm just now growing seedlings for their trial in the garden. At the end of each season, I take careful notes on each variety so that as time goes on, I can make better choices.

Sometimes the experiments are with plants I've never heard of. Someone on Twitter suggested that I try growing Rat Tail radishes. I thought, why not? They sounded interesting enough, if only because they don't really produce root vegetables but rather seed pods that you pick much like beans. I also liked the the suggestion that I could pickle them. The experiment seemed to going rather badly, though, until last week. All I was getting was tons of leaf growth on plants over five feet tall. Then, suddenly, they started to flower profusely. And now I have the most curious and tasty snack I've ever grown.

The pretty flowers of Rat Tail radish

The spicy little seed pods of Rat Tail

I've also been experimenting with different varieties of sugar snap and snow peas. I've grown accustomed to the beautiful magenta and pink flowers of the Dwarf Grey sugar snaps, but they never produced peas for me. This season, I tried Oregon Sugar Pod II snow pea. Appropriately, they are producing white flowers and a continuous supply of peas. 

Fresh peas are just behind those flowers

I've finally had the courage to pop a nasturtium flower in my mouth, which then led me to put them in all of my salads and even eat the leaves. 

This nasturtium is getting a little
friendly with my ant statue.

Finally, the greatest experiment, the biggest leap of faith I've taken in the garden continues to yield results. As I was trimming back the tomato plants today, encouraging them to focus all of their energy on ripening the fruits they have on before I pull them up and replace them with the spring season plants, I noticed something in two of my pineapple plants. 

A fruit is on the move

We'll be eating pineapples again this summer. These will be particularly special because they are fruiting from the crowns that I cut off of my first homegrown pineapples we ate last February.

I agree with Ulysses, who says, "How dull it is to pause, to make an end," in life and in the garden. As long as I continue to experiment, I may find my fair share of failures, but I'll also find that the garden is forever "a bringer of new things."

Estimation

I used to work with someone who estimated any activity would take 20 minutes. We would invite her over, and she would say, "Okay. I'm leaving home now, and I'll be there in 20 minutes." Her house was near the university where I was working on my Master's degree. On a good day, it would take me 40 minutes to get home from there, but her estimate was half that. If I was trying to compile a report that  required her input, she would say that I would have it in 20 minutes. I would simply smile. I liked her positive thinking, but I think she's the reason I really learned how to think exponentially.

Three weeks ago, I announced my plan to redesign the Secret Garden. I mentioned that I thought it would take me four weeks to complete. I'm now thinking I should revisit exponents. The plan may well have taken only four weeks had I just gone out and bought everything already built, plants already grown to full size. As is all too often the case with me, though, I couldn't stomach the thought of paying more than $30 for a planter. I couldn't imagine paying $8 (after coupon) for a grapevine ball. I wanted plants that are almost impossible to find and have to be grown from seed. So let's just say that I won't be revealing a completely redesigned Secret Garden next week. I have quite a bit more work to do.

Here's what I've done so far. I have made progress with the path. I've been slowed a bit by the discovery that the 12" pavers I purchased three years ago are no longer to be found in stores. I'm still pondering how to deal with this, but it may come down to me pouring pavers of my own. The upside to this is that it will be considerably cheaper, and by now, you all know that this pleases me.

75% complete

I've dug up and relocated quite a few plants, which means that part of the planting plan is coming together. I've also placed one of the planters.

One planter has found its new home

I had to do a little triage with my trellises. They've always been a bit wonky, so I decided that I would attach them to one another to ensure that they would remain even. When I pulled the first one out of the ground, I discovered that it had left one of its legs behind. The rest of the trellis was showing signs of cracking, so I stained it and its twin to match the arbors and give them a longer life. I'm pretty pleased with the transformation because it creates symmetry with the blue arbors at either end of the garden and the blue wall of the house opposite the trellises.

Before

After

Finally, I'm conducting a bit of an experiment. I want to use Germander as a low, clipped hedge. Most people I've spoken to haven't heard of Germander. It's part of the mint family. Since it's so obscure, I had to order seeds. Again, the upside to this is that I paid only $4.50 for them and could ultimately grow hundreds of plants. The downside is that they've taken 14 days to germinate, which means that they're just wee little fellas right now and are likely to remain so for a while.

Let me introduce you to Germander

So that's where I stand at this point. With each successive post to this blog, I am noticing the compounding of a theme, not of my creation, that resounds week after week. It makes me think of Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach," with one minor revision:

Listen! you hear the grating roar

Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,

At their return, up the high strand, 

Begin, and cease, and then again begin,

With tremulous cadence slow, and bring

The eternal note of [patience] in.

And so, here continues the lesson. I estimate it may take considerable time to reach that goal. The garden will likely be finished much sooner.

DIY Garden Projects

I been working diligently on the Secret Garden overhaul this past week. I keep trying to remind myself that it always looks much worse before it looks better. Most of my time was taken up with construction and garden craft projects, which I'll get to in a moment.

I was also able to convert all of the garden's sprinkler heads to drip irrigation. The drip lines running all over the place don't look gorgeous right now, but they will certainly help make the garden look lovely. They'll also make things a little easier for me, as I'll no longer have to worry about the pop up heads beating the living daylights out of some plants while completely missing others. Better yet, I was able to run micro drippers straight up the fence and into my elevated planters. Everyone will think that I run out every day to water them. It will be our little secret. The cost to convert was free, thanks to the folks at DIG Corporation and their contest I won last year. I couldn't get these in until I cleared the garden.

The conversion head with the lines snaking around the garden

At this point, you all know that I like power tools and must find building projects to keep me occupied. The new garden design involves planters, so I've built the first of four. I'm not pleased that it cost $27 to build, but I have plans for bringing down the cost of the others.

No idea why the top looks warped...anxiously
awaiting the return of my DSLR from the Nikon hospital

If you ever read a blog post in which someone explains how to do a project and claims that it's easy, even though it looks somewhat complicated, I suggest that you just consider it really complicated. I've taken a risk on something that I really hope pays off because making this succulent sphere was tons of work, and I have yet another one to make. Cost? $35 each. Big risk.

Here's hoping the succulent sphere fills in

Finally, I have spent three years trying to find the right lighting solution for the garden, but have always come up short. I'm feeling pretty good about what I'm working on now, though. I bought a grapevine wreath from Michael's for $6 (thanks to a 40% off coupon), and after soaking it in the bathtub for a day to make it pliable, I've made 4 grapevine balls that form the structure of my lights. That's all the more information I'm going to give right now.

How is that a light?

So, I've really not shown you much this week, just hints of what you'll hopefully see when the garden is complete. It's all pretty unnerving at this point. After all, it could go so spectacularly wrong. But it's fun to try something and see how it works out.

Planning a Facelift

I could say that I'm growing rather tired of all the lessons I get about the value of patience. They seem to come pretty frequently. I could say that, but it would be a bit untruthful. The lessons are by no means annoying. In fact, I think I find them comforting. Perhaps they suggest that I could eventually learn to be patient. Perhaps.

I've learned another one of these lessons recently. You see, had I been more patient in the early months of owning this house, the Secret Garden probably would not have been in a persistent state of being "not quite right." It has always seemed cluttered, maybe even that it's lacking a specific identity. That's been bothering me quite a bit for the last few months.

Bit of a messy corner

And another messy corner

A generally unsuccessful corner

You get the point...

Many of the gardening books I've read have cautioned would-be gardeners who have moved to a new home to wait a while, get a sense of the place, let ideas percolate, and then begin the creation of a garden. Some have even suggested that one wait a year or two. Every time I read something like that, I thought the author was very right and wise, and then I walked straight into my garden and did the exact opposite. The results have been pretty disappointing. The upside is that I've been letting things percolate at the same time, and now, a little over 3 years of being in this house, a real Secret Garden plan is falling into place.

That plan begins with destruction. We've been clearing things out. Some plants have been ruthlessly cut down and pulled out, and others have been relocated to new areas of the yard.

A small portion of what has been removed so far

A relatively cleaner slate

Over the years, I've noticed that visitors to the garden walk rather awkwardly down the paver path. I think the limited number of pavers have made them feel like getting to the swing involves a game of hopscotch. So we're doubling down on the pavers. But that's just one of many changes to take place in the garden in the coming weeks.

An easier path to follow

In such a confined space, the garden needs a lot of structure, I think, so that's what I'm going for in the designs. I haven't finished drawing them up, but here's where I am so far.

Entrance gate to the right. I'm rather short on plants
in the plan at present.

I hope to finish the reconstruction of the garden in about a month. As ever, I'm very cost-conscious, so as I give you updates on what I've accomplished from week to week, I'll also give an accounting of my various projects.

I hope you'll find the renovation process satisfying to watch. And, please, I beg you, be patient with me as I create the new space. I hear patience is one of the best things to cultivate.

The Great Garden Cover Up

I've been keeping a secret. It's not a secret that could make any real impact on the world, really. Some of my family and friends already have some inkling of what's been going on around here. The honest truth is that I've been growing things...edible things.

I've taken photos with every intention of writing blog posts and telling you all about what's been going on in the garden, but to be completely honest, I have felt guilty. My mom's shower froze in Ohio last week, for goodness sake. My sister-in-law has been enduring shocking below-freezing temperatures, too. My former exchange student, who spent the Christmas and New Year holidays with us, visited friends in Michigan, and let's just say that had I been the one going through what she experienced, I'd be a little cranky right now. When she wasn't enduring canceled trains and flights, she was coping with significantly delayed trains and flights. I covered my plants for two nights. And, in the interest of full disclosure, I wasn't covering kale or leeks, which are known for their ability to endure the cold. I was covering tomatoes and pineapples.

In short, I've felt a bit like a phony.

Preparing for the cold

There are a lot of people who like to flaunt the mild Florida temperatures to others who are suffering in colder climes. In my mind, they're a bit like people who talk smack about their football teams. It's a language I've never understood. Recently, I mistakenly replied to a message to all family members, in which I merely cheered for my home state's football team. I received the most incredibly rude response from one person, which has led me to decide that I simply won't communicate my desire to see a particular football team win anymore. I see no cause to beat someone's hope or joy into submission, but it seems I may be in the minority. Though I'm fluent in German, "Schadenfreude" has no meaning to me. And so I've remained silent about what's been happening in my garden.

But then it occurred to me today that summer in Florida is very much like winter nearly everywhere else (and vice versa). In summer, I can't grow anything but jalapeños, if I'm lucky. Yet I derive the greatest pleasure in seeing the ebullient posts from others who are celebrating their first tomatoes of the season in July when I fear I may wither from the heat. The fact that any of us can drop something akin to a speck of dirt into the soil and ultimately find sustenance from it is nothing short of a miracle to me, and it's something to be celebrated, no matter the time of year. I wish that every one of us could, regardless of space, attempt to grow a little something that we could harvest and share with family or friends and experience the great pride and deep honor that comes with knowing that we've been part of a miracle. Perhaps it's a good New Year's resolution to try. So now I'm ready to confess.

I had a delicious salad that came solely from my garden the other day.

A bowl full of everything from my garden!

I made preserves of salsa and tomato chutney. I had a delicious lunch of my tomatoes and thyme in a cream sauce, served with buckwheat crepes. I ate a stir-fry that was mostly comprised of my snow peas.

Snow pea stir-fry

I've been eating miracles.

I'm preserving the fruits of my labor this winter, preparing for the harsh Florida summer ahead. I hope it gives all of you in colder areas something to look forward to, a beacon of hope for delicious things to come.

And the Word of the Week Is...

Resourceful. If any of my Comp I students were reading this, I hope they'd say that "resourceful" does not constitute a sentence. Indeed, it does not, and I'd so happily concede that point to them. It does, however, refer to a skill that should be cultivated. It can be related to another skill, one which I know my students would say is important to me, which is frugality. And so this week's post will be brief and fully dedicated to those two wonderful words.

I grow indeterminate tomatoes. That simply means that no one knows how high or wide they will grow. They're gangly. They're unruly. I love them. They refuse to be contained. This is why my tomato cages are so ridiculously inconsequential. But I paid good money for them, and I'm not about to let them collect spider webs in the garage. So I've put them to a new use. I've turned them upside down, wrapped them in garland and lights, and now they're little trees for my holiday lighting.

New life for the cages

The blurry "tree" (can't find my tripod)

The end result...a whole line of little "trees"

In the end, I got a whole bunch of Christmas cheer for no extra cost. Awesome. (Yes, also not a sentence, students!)

My Greed in the Season of Giving

I have a confession to make. It will likely be an ugly one. You see, I love Christmas, but I'm growing less-enamored with gift-giving every year. It's not that I don't want to give people gifts. That's not the source of my greed. I'll get to that in a moment. My trouble with gift-giving is that I only want to give gifts that are meaningful, and that can get pretty tricky. I carefully consider each person and each gift. In most cases, I want to give something that I've made, and sometimes that means that I haven't spent much money on them. I'm not sure all of my recipients appreciate how much I've agonized over their gifts or how much time I've spent on them, so sometimes they seem to fall flat. Sometimes they seem insignificant. One of my favorite Christmas gifts of all time was a German box of tea. It apparently cost the giver $2.50, and he was embarrassed by what he worried was a meager gift, but I was overwhelmed by the thought that went into that gift. It was, indeed, perfect for me. And so I wish such were true for all the gifts we give.

The variety of gift I most often like to give is something made from the fruits of my garden labor. I've made Limoncello (made from my limes instead). I've made pesto. I've given my fiery pickled jalapeños. This has been an especially difficult year in the garden, though, so I have very little to give. And now that the tomatoes are slowly beginning to ripen, I'm feeling a little greedy. In fact, my greed knows no bounds. Not only do I want to keep everything for myself, but rather than feeling content with the success of my Gardener's Delight tomatoes, today I found myself skipping down the garden path with visions of all 3 varieties of tomatoes producing a glut for me. I was counting my chickens, so to speak. I have no idea what chickens are due to hatch, though, because the Florida sun bleached all of my plant markers out. Every plant is producing, so I just have to see what color they turn to appropriately identify them. It will be a bit like opening presents, I suspect.

Gardener's Delight, indeed!

Black Krim? Red or Yellow Brandywine? Who knows?

I am saved from pure avarice by the very real excuse that none of my vegetables will have produced enough to make anything by the time Christmas rolls around. In the meantime, I'll be mixing up homemade scrubs and sewing various gifts for everyone who means so much to me. And hopefully they'll all see through the gifts just how much they really do mean.