With the weather finally warming up, it's high time to do some gardening, which I really missed while living in the rental. Unfortunately, the trees took the suddenly warm weather as a sign it was time to dump a year's worth of pollen into the air all at once. I never thought I was allergic to tree pollen, but I woke up with horrible allergies on Friday and felt miserable for most of the weekend. Thankfully it rained a bit on Sunday which gave me a brief window to go outside and get the garden planted.
The garden is in the backyard and has a fence that will do very little to detract moose, but I guess it's better than nothing. Also the gate is kind of wonky. It sure would be nice if one of our dads would come up to Alaska and help us fix this (HINT HINT)...
On Saturday when we were picking up dog food at Alaska Mill and Feed, which is probably one of my most favorite stores in Anchorage (remember, I'm 80 years old), we saw that they had TONS of vegetable starts. I know I can do my own from seed, but these are so much easier. I'll take the seed route once my very nice husband gets me a greenhouse to keep me sane and gardening in the wintertime (HINT HINT). Andy basically had to steal my purse to keep me from buying the whole lot of plants.
The garden area has four "raised" beds (can you really call them raised if they are less than 4 inches off the ground?), so I had kind of limited space. Since I'm not familiar at all with gardening Alaska style, I picked veggies that I've had some experience with. This first box has broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts. I've never grown brussels sprouts before, but I'm guessing they'll be pretty easy to grow since they're basically cabbage/broccoli/cauliflower cousins (yes this is a scientific fact).
One of the cauliflowers:
Side note - do any of you gardeners know why, when I grow seedlings myself they come up all crooked and wonky and when the nursery does it, they come out all perfect and straight? I think they add something to the seeds so I just give up and buy the expensive starts. Jerks.
Back to the garden...
In the second box we have a ridiculous amount of sweet onions (which is good because Andy and I consume a ridiculous amount of onions) and some fancy lettuce. I love growing onions, but I hate how you get them from the nursery in a giant massive clump and then you have to spend an hour untangling the poor baby onions from one another. Then once you put them in the ground they look like they're dying for a couple of weeks. Onions are tricky.
Here's one of the kinds of fancy lettuce. No idea what the variety is, but it's pretty and I'll eat it no matter what. I HATE buying lettuce at the store, especially up here where it rots within about two days of purchase. Another reason I need a greenhouse (HINT HINT).
Box 3 has more onions (seriously...we need them) - red ones this time - and some more lettuce. This time it's red romaine. I put some beet seeds in the other half of the box. Sadly, some plants can't be bought as starts. Oh! also, there's some extra pansies in this box. I didn't have room for them in the pots I planted on the deck and I didn't want to waste them. Also they're technically edible so they can live in the garden.
The red romaine:
Finally, box 4 has the other two brussels sprouts that didn't fit in the first box and some carrot (rainbow and normal orange) and radish seeds. I also planted my extra marigolds. I read somewhere that they help keep pests away from the garden. Also edible.
Oh! And, do you see all those sticks around the garden? They're raspberries! I'm excited for those to come in, and I'm sure the moose are too. Speaking of moose, the garden has been planted for 3 days now and no tracks so far, so maybe the fence is doing its work - or maybe there's just enough easily accessible food outside the fence right now. We'll see.
I'm really proud I got everything in the yard. Also, I haven't been able to walk right for two days because I essentially did one giant squat for 2+ hours on Sunday. Apparently I need to work on my quad strength.
We found this plant growing outside the garden fence (a couple of them actually). Is this rhubarb or some kind of chard? Andy's rooting for rhubarb.
While I was taking all of my garden pictures, Ripley was doing this:
He is so happy about the grass.
What else is growing? Let's see...
Oh yeah! Remember that tree that I said the moose killed? Aunt Dixie, avid blog reader and fan, I'm sure, intervened and told mom not to let us chop it down because it wasn't really dead. SHE WAS RIGHT!
It's a larch tree. It's a deciduous conifer, which is the dumbest kind of tree ever. Of all of the conifers that would grow in Alaska (pretty much all of them) why would you choose to plant one that looks like a pile of dead sticks for 3/4 of the year? Joke's on that tree because the moose is definitely still using it as a rubbing post. I'm guessing the middle will never grow.
Oh hey - do tulips bloom in June where you live? I didn't think so. They don't usually do that here though I'm guessing. Stupid snow in May.
Ripley was not amused by all of my picture taking.
Oh this one is for mom. The lilacs are starting to bloom! Mom, I'm sorry I lied to you on the phone the other day when I said there weren't any buds. Next time I promise to tell the truth when you ask me about the current state of my yard.
Oh and speaking of our random plant conversation on the phone, Mom, can you tell me what this is? This is the shrub that I said looks like the other lilac in the winter (when it's all sticks) but it's clearly not. Any ideas?
Sorry, I know it's rude for me to have a personal conversation with my mom through the blog. I'll stop.
Here are some more pretty pictures to make up for it. This year I picked some more traditional plants for my deck pots. Usually I do some funky grasses or something, but I've been seeing a lot of marigolds around town and I really love them.
Also lobelia. Basically all of the pots I planted are blue and yellow or blue and orange. I stole the scheme from the hanging baskets on 4th avenue downtown. I'll have to do a post soon about all the flowers they've planted in town. It's incredible.
Speaking of the deck, my tomato experiment is going fairly well so far. My plants are over two feet tall now and flowering. They had to spend the last month or so inside and seem to be doing okay now that we put them out, even though it's not super warm at night.
See? Everyone said I couldn't grow them without a greenhouse. If it all goes according to plan, I'll show them. Oh wait...no! I need a greenhouse! I meant to say that I hope the tomatoes die.
After I wandered around the yard taking all these pictures, I turned around and saw this:
This is his not-so-subtle way of telling me that I've spent too many minutes ignoring him. Poor Ripley.
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