Dusk in the Garden

I have to admit: I felt a little guilty posting iPhone photos in my post last night. Being a professional photographer, I thought I owed it to my personal blog to make it a bit more decent. Also, it just looks better.

Here's a little more of a peek into what I have planted. I didn't include everything, but close.

Baby Okra plant. I'm assuming those buds have to become flowers before okra, so of course I'm growing impatient.

This bed has a bit of everything. I have 3 types of green beans, cucumbers, sugar snap peas, rainbow swiss chard, kale, mustard greens, collard greens, baby leeks and a few zinnias for good measure.

Baby veggies really are the cutest. This zucchini should be ready to pick soon.

What will eventually take over the garden bed. Young cabbage plant. Yea, I see the slug trails. I'm working on it.

Kentucky Wonder green bean. I love the way these pole beans climb up everything.

My first baby cucumber. This was a particularly exciting find. Already planning pickling methods.

Cucumber tendrils are so needy. They remind me of me with my fiancee. ;)

Ahhh, the tomatoes. This particular variety is called "A Grappoli d'Inverno" and I have no idea what that means.

The tomato bed was a pretty big task. I amended the heck out of it. Before I planted out the seedlings, I worked into the composted soil: 1 lb. cotton seed meal, 1 lb. kelp meal, 1 lb. seaweed fertilizer, and a bunch of earthworm castings with Azomite rock dust. Into each planting hole, I added a cup of garden gypsum and some epsom salts. I was worried about overkill, but the plants LOVE IT. They have grown so big and strong. 

Grew these marigolds from seed, and I'm thrilled that they are blooming. 

Some male spaghetti squash flowers. No female flowers have opened yet, but there is still plenty of time.

Okay. One more okra photo. They're crazy unique to me.

I cannot believe the blue scotch curly kale hasn't waved a white flag in surrender yet. This heat has been crazy, but the kale is still going strong. I hope I can get a harvest or two before it shrivels up in the summer.

I'm not a fan of collard/turnip/mustard greens. Being from New York, I never had cooked southern greens and I didn't care for them when I tried them. However, K loves them, so these mustard greens (and the collard greens behind them) are for her.

Young rainbow swiss chard. The chard isn't growing very quickly, and I'm blaming it on the 85 degree days here in Florida.

Early Prolific yellow straight neck squash. Gonna go harvest these guys today. 

The pepper bed also called for a bit of amending. I only used compost, Azomite rock dust and earthworm castings in here, but it seems to be working out well. Now if only I could keep the aphids off of them...

No. There isn't a prettier herb than basil. I have SO many basil plants because I'm terrified of being without a constant supply this summer. These are about 1/5 of all the basil plants I have right now.

Sick of seeing this cluster of Early Girl tomatoes? Good. GET USED TO IT. (Until I eat them, and then I apologize.)

I generally like banana peppers, but I'm actually growing these to use in the pickling recipe from my Mom's husband's Polish family. They get together once a year to pickle around 100 jars of cucumber pickles and I try to pilfer as many of them as I can.

Overflow of seedlings leads to this. I can't get rid of them, so they live in containers now.

My fiancee is a very patient and forgiving person. ;)

I hope this amends my previous post. I put much more time and effort into it. 

Enjoy the weekend!!

Bringing it up to speed

Alright, I'll back it up for a minute.

I considered constructing a vivid play-by-play of all of my gardening failures experiences since I began about 2 months ago. My plan was to include photos of me planting my seeds and glowing over their minuscule daily growth... but I thought better of it.

Mostly because it would take forever.

Hencethereforehence, I shall give a short/sweet/mild update on how the happenings have been going on since beginning of February.

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2/8/15: K and I build our raised beds. We used a total of 48 8' landscape timbers (some of which were cut in half by the lovely folks at Home Depot.) We used 6" galvanized spikes to assemble them. Lined the side of the bed with black landscape fabric (to help with chemicals in wood not leaching into the soil.) After we had 4 cubic yards of of a compost mixture delivered, we decided we would be stupid brilliant and forgo a wheel barrow and rather employ a tarp to help us drag the dirt back to the yard. It only took 338783 trips or so (but whooooo is counting?) After 8 hours, our project was finished. We followed it up by a careful balance of tacos and tequila.

2/18/15: One of the billions of photos I took of my seedlings. They lived on my dining room table for about 2 weeks (much to K's chagrin.) They started getting leggy, so I knew I needed a new solution until it warmed up outside.

2/21/15: Grow lights! I built these puppies out of two $12 workshop fluorescent lights, some PVC and a whole lot of foil. I originally built it for the dining room table at the front of our house, but after deciding that our neighbors might suspect us of running a drug ring, we moved the set up to the back bedroom. ("No, officer... I don't intend to smoke my cucumber seedlings...")

3/2/15: More growth and more solo cup planters. Sigh. They grow up so fast.

3/9/15: Yea, in true "Oh, Kaylee" fashion, I decided that Noooo I (didn't) want those store-bought convenient tomato cages and instead opted to make my own. Let's face it. Any excuse to use bolt cutters is fabulous in my book. (Bonus points for any future necessary tetanus shots after these babies rust up real nice.)

3/18/15: Since I planted about 4 times as many plants as I needed for the beds, my patio is currently inundated with container plants that I do not have the heart to sacrifice. No one is gonna make that choice, Sophie.

Also, this is after planting out the peppers. Tomatoes are in the back left bed. Various things in the right two beds. Featuring: the cheap plastic fencing I had to put up to prevent my ever-so-graceful dog from plowing through the beds in pursuit of the yellow tennis ball.

 Things since then have been pretty gradual. Lots of growth over the last 3 weeks or so. The photos below were taken yesterday and this morning. Already about to harvest my first yellow squash tomorrow.

 Of course there is much more to share, but I will try to spread it out gradually (kind of like how I gradually dole out my crazy.) Sorry for the iPhone photos. I will try to take more photos with my big-girl camera next time.

Now that you're semi-caught up, I can properly slack off for a day or two.

How does this thing work?

(cough cough)

Hello.

I'm Kaylee. Yes, like in "Oh, Kaylee."

The name. Oh, Kaylee. It's kind of an inside joke that is partially at my expense (okay, completely at my expense.) 

You see, I've adopted a new adjective for my less-than-grounded personality. 

Mercurial.

Yea. I'm definitely that.

I'm a 28 year old Mom/photographer/fiancee/student/reader/knitter/gardener/painter/writer/reader/try-anything-once FLAKE. I know "flake" has a negative connotation, but hang in there for a moment while I make excuses explain myself.

I disclaim. I over-explain. I'm wordy. I'm flighty. I change my mind. I jump into new ideas with two feet and 100% of my heart (and money and time and sanity.) I love to create.

I also promise that I am not in love with myself, but that was a whole lot of "I's."

My fiancee (who we will just call "K") is unfortunately subject to my rather sudden and elaborate change of direction when I decide that (for instance) one day I wake up and proclaim, "I want to be vegan" or "I want to make a vegetable garden" or "I want to become a proficient calligrapher."

K's response varies, but is usually some shade of "Oh, Kaylee."

See? Cheeky.

Those ideas don't sound so bad, you say- but I didn't just plant some lettuce and peppers in a grow box on my patio... I proceeded to plan an elaborate garden that currently takes up 1/3 of our lawn (and cost us probably a month of income between the supplies, seeds, soil amendments, tools, containers and fertilizers.)

Did I mention that my only prior gardening experience was viscously murdering a cactus one time?

Anyway, my point is: despite my constant change of mind, some ideas stick. And that is what this blog/journal/journey will be about. 

I'd never read this, so I don't expect others to, but here's to yet one more capricious endeavor.

Consider my first blog entry written. Oh, I also have an Instagram that is kinda ahead of the blog game by a few weeks.