A neighbor mentioned to me that our neighborhood association was once again hosting a plant exchange (last year was the first one), so I headed over today.  Last year was really nice – 5 free plants per family (4 annuals, 1 perennial), with free window boxes and potting soil.  When I went today, I expected it to be a similar set up, but I found out once I was there that they had changed the way it ran. 

First of all, there were no free plants, because funding was significantly lower this year.  You could only get plants by paying with a ticket.  How did you get tickets?  They couldn’t tell me in a straightforward way, but after paying $10 for dues to the neighborhood association, they told me I was entitled to 2 tickets as a member of the association (wouldn’t tell me before that).  I later found out that for every plant you brought to exchange, you could get a ticket, too.

I decided I would use my tickets to get perennials, since I’d rather have plants that will continue to come back year after year, than to get ones which will need to be replanted.  There were several to choose from, but as soon as they told me one of the choices was purple coneflower, I told them I’d like two of them.  I don’t know what made them ask – maybe because I answered them so quickly – but they asked what made me choose that.  I told them that it was a medicinal plant, echinacea.  But then one of the women told me I wasn’t able to use my tickets for any perennials because I wasn’t a member of the association. When I told them that I was, they agreed that I could have one plant, but only one.

So I went over to see if they had any vegetable or herb plants.  There was one tiny pepper plant and one chamomile start that someone had brought, and when I asked the woman in charge if each of those were a ticket, she said yes, but then reconsidered and told me to take one for free, that they were going to have plants left over and the plants were so tiny she didn’t want to ‘charge’ me for it.  I took the pepper plant – none of the pepper seeds I started were successful. 

Then I got a beautiful purple coleus plant with my remaining ticket.  When I got home, I seperated the echinacea plant into seven individual rootings, and planted each one individually.  I did this with the hope that they’ll spread.  Echinacea is a wonderful herb that is a powerful germ fighter, and I’ll be glad to be able to harvest my own instead of ordering it.  It’s nice to have a flower that looks nice and is so useful, too.  This joins sage, fennel, and red raspberry as medicinal herbs that I’m now growing and will be able to harvest. 

Especially in increasingly difficult economic times, with so many people becoming interested in gardening (for food), I think it’s a shame that they didn’t have vegetable plants or herbs available.  It’s almost as people in charge only wanted decorative plants that have no other purpose.  They did have day lilies available, which have edible bulbs, but I don’t think most people know that, and I don’t really care for how they look.  And anyway, someone there told me that if I want some, I’m welcome to come to her house and dig them up for free. 

There were also two free trees available from the city, willow and (I think) hawthorne.  I asked why those two trees were selected – in my opinion, fruit trees would be more useful – they told me because they are hardy.  I don’t have a large yard and wasn’t interested in filling up valuable space with trees that didn’t have much of a purpose, so I passed on those.

When I got home, I asked the girls to dig up some tomato starts from our garden and take them to the exchange.  Two women volunteering told me that lots of people had been asking about vegetable plants and specifically wanted tomatoes, but no one had brought any.  When I mentioned that I had plenty, they asked me to bring some.  The girls went for me and took ten tomato plants to the exchange, but an unhelpful woman in charge gave them a hard time, acting as if they were trying to deceive her in some way.  (Another volunteer tried to explain to her that they were just bringing plants to exchange, but wasn’t successful.)  She would only give them 5 tickets for the ten plants, instead of ten.  After they told her they thought they were supposed to get a ticket for each plant, she begrudgingly gave them another two tickets, and the girls were left with the unpleasant feeling that she was trying to cheat them because they weren’t adults.  I told them she was probably operating from a mindset of expecting people to be dishonest and try to get more than they were entitled to, and therefore was being protective of the exchange, not that she had anything against them specifically. 

They brought home another coleus, two marigolds, and four begonias.  I don’t especially like begonias, but one of the girls did, so it’s fine with me.  We did some planting earlier before leaving to the exchange, and put in a row of marigold seeds in front of the tomato plants, since they are a bug repellent.  I’ll put the new marigold plants next to some other garden plants that will benefit from them.  The begonias went into the window box, and I have to figure out where to plant the coleus – I love how coleus look! 

We also planted seeds for eggplant, cucumber, yellow summer squash, and green beans (bush).  I wanted to get some acorn and pattypan squash seeds in (we already put in butternut), but we didn’t have enough time.  Maybe later tonight when it’s cooler we can plant them.  We noticed some plants started growing in the compost pile (not the tumbler, which heats everything so that seeds are killed), so we transferred them to the garden – it looks like they are watermelon.  I’m really astounded by how many, many tomato plants I have that seeded themselves, either from the compost pile or from last year’s plants.  I’d guess that I have at least 50, probably more.  We’ll see if it’s possible for us to grow more tomatoes than we can eat! 

The rest of the garden is so far BH looking good – we picked the first three strawberries this morning, the snap pea plants are zooming up, the beets are coming up nicely, and we should be able to harvest some lettuce very soon.  The weather we’ve been having has been great for the garden, I think – lots of rain and thunderstorms in the evenings, with warm and dry days.  I haven’t had to worry much about doing watering!

It’s really gratifying to watch the plants coming up.  I’ve said it before, but there’s something about planting things yourself that warms your heart and is so satisfying.  I don’t know if whatever the garden will yield will justify the time involved (not much expense this year), but gardening is a valuable skill to learn and I find the time outside working in the yard relaxing. 

Avivah

At long last, my blueberry bushes arrived a couple of days ago.  I ended up calling the company to change my initial order several days after I posted about it, so I only got three varieties instead of six.  The reason I changed the order is they have special pricing for ordering a prepackaged group of 15 plants (just $50 for two year plants).  When I ordered 30, it was because I wanted to take advantage of the pricing and get two sets.  But it turns out that you need to specify that you want the sets of 15, and if you don’t, you get charged a higher price.  It was worth making the call and checking, since it saved me $40.

If you order the sets like this, they send you whatever they decide to send on that day, and can’t tell you ahead of time what it will be.  But whatever they send will be suitable for your climate.  The three varieties that I received were Jersey, Elliot, and Blue Ray.

 >>Where did you buy your blueberry bushes from?<< 

 A while back I posted about an opportunity to get $20 off of a plant order, and that I ordered blackberry canes and strawberry plants from that company.  But I wouldn’t say that company has super prices – once you start doing research, you see what a wide variety of prices you’ll find, and how many plants or seeds you’re able to buy will depend on finding affordable sources for what you want.

I found a great company for seeds and fruit trees/bushes (Fedco), but they’re located in Maine and so I couldn’t order berry bushes from them because they have plants that are appropriate for colder climates than mine.  After doing a lot of research, I settled on a company in a gardening zone similar to mine, that has what seems to me pretty good prices for blueberry bushes – www.danfinch.com. 

Yesterday we put most of them in the yard – they need to planted in an acidic soil, so I went out with my ds to Home Depot to get some peat moss to plant them in.  We’ve put a row between us and the neighbors on each side – on one side we have a fence between us, but on the other we don’t, and I really hope that they don’t get trampled by visiting grandchildren.  🙁   They are only about 24 inches high. 

After putting most of them in, we still have a few more to plant, but I don’t know where to put them!  I’m considering lining the back of my yard with them, but the partial fence there is overgrown with weeds that are like small trees and my dh is going to take care of that.  The only problem is, he probably won’t have a chance to get to it for another few weeks, and the plants need to go in as soon as possible, so they don’t die!  

Avivah

Today we did some cool weather planting.  Before Pesach we put in the strawberry plants and started lettuce – otherwise, the only things there are some garlic, leek, and onion that have been there over the winter.  The lettuce has started coming up in the garden bed as well as one of the planters that they were planted in.  One of the planters didn’t drain properly, so I think everything in that one must have drowned from sitting in so much water after the heavy rain we had on yom tov.

There are two times for planting – the spring (cool weather crops), and then the summer (warm weather crops), and then you can plant the cool weather seeds again in the fall when it’s cool.  Last year I didn’t start thinking about a garden until the very end of May, so I totally missed the timeline for the cool weather crops (and when the fall came I was still pretty uneducated so I missed the chance again :)).  This year I’m fortunately a little more aware of planting timelines than I was last year!  The things that can be planted now should be finished by the time the summer plants/ seeds are ready to go in the ground, so it’s a good use of garden space to double up – I think it’s called succession planting.

Today we turned over the ground in the raised beds to loosen the soil and pulled up any weeds that sprouted since the summer.  Then we planted garden peas, snow peas, turnips, beets, spinach, and mesclun greens.  I was a little lackadaisical about how I planted the spinach – bending over for so long wasn’t so comfortable (that’s the reality of being a week away from my due date!), so I sprinkled them haphazardly around and stirred some dirt over them.  I’m not so optimistic about their chances for success.  It’s a good thing my kids planted more carefully than me!

Since this is our first time planting spring vegetables, it will be interesting to see what comes up in the next couple of months.  I wanted to get these seeds in before Pesach but it would have been too much of a rush, and as I’ve said before, I don’t like the pressure that comes with rushing.  I want my kids to have positive associations of the things we do together, even the work, and that would be pretty hard if I was tense and stressed out!

Today the weather was beautiful, and we all enjoyed working outside together.  As I looked around my yard this afternoon, I was thinking how much more I wanted to do as far as preparing more lasagna beds for the summer planting, and creating mulched paths between the beds because it gives such a nice tidy look to the yard!  I’d still like to have that, but unless in the next couple of days I can muster up the energy and enthusiasm to do some major work (driving back and forth loading lots of compost and mulch, unloading, going back for more….), that’s going to have to wait until the fall.

Have you ever felt like moving slower than usual and being mellow? That’s how I’m feeling right now, and I’m not mentally geared up for rushing around in the next couple of days.  I’m glad to have gotten these seeds in the ground, and also to have cleaned up the back deck of all those things that accumulated over the winter.  At this point, the main thing I want to accomplish this week is my monthly shopping so that I know we’re stocked up for food for the next 5 – 7 weeks, and that’s a full two day project (one day of shopping, one day of organizing to put everything away).  (I initially planned to go on Friday, right after Pesach, but it seemed like too much of a rush, so I’ll go this Wednesday instead when my bulk order is ready to be picked up.)

I find it helpful to balance busy and slow periods – when I do, I can enjoy the busy times and enjoy feeling accomplished, but not get overwhelmed.  After the intense busyness of the Pesach season, it’s a good time for all Jewish women to relax a little and enjoy the feel of spring in the air. 🙂

Avivah

In order to prepare for our blueberry bushes when they arrive, I started to get the soil prepared yesterday.  That meant moving one of the lasagna beds that we recently built along our fence and adding all of it to the other two beds.  So I’ll have two beds that are significantly wider and longer, instead of the three I was originally planning.  And then I can plant the blueberry bushes along the fence.

It was a surprise to discover that right under the dirt layer along the fence, there were huge chunks of flagstone.  I can’t figure out why anyone would have put it there. The kids moved all the pieces to create a path between the two lasagna beds, and hopefully it will make it clear what area is meant to be walked on and what isn’t!

Along this fence we also have a huge amount of weeds (mostly morning glory – it’s beyond me why people actually plant it on purpose) that grow every year and cover the fence.  Trying to keep the weeds down is pretty much futile because the roots are still there and on the neighbor’s side of the fence.  I kind of like the look of the fence covered with greenery, but I’d like to be able to use the area for planting and the weeds will keep anything I plant from thriving.  So the next part is digging up all the roots – we got a good amount done yesterday, but there’s still plenty more.  I’m tackling this by digging from my neighbor’s side as well as ours – it’s more work in the short term, but she’s not able to do it, and I don’t enjoy weeding every day and still seeing that it’s overgrown.  In the long run I think getting it all out will be the easiest thing. 

Then I need to amend the soil so it will be acidic enough for the blueberries, but I’m not worrying about getting that done right away.  If the area is cleared, the roots are gone, and the soil is loosened, then a big part of the preparation has been done, and it won’t be overly much to add the soil amendments at the same time that we plant the bushes.  I read somewhere that you can do that. 

The yard doesn’t look especially neat right now, because of the digging in progress, but it’s good to know that we’re moving forward.  I was planning today to go get a lot more of the composted manure (from the person I went to a few weeks ago) to start lasagna beds in my side yard, and dig up more of the roots.  But I woke up to find that my dh left to work and my keys are in his pocket.  Then H-shem obliged me with a heavy rain, which meant that I couldn’t have gone anyway and I didn’t feel like I missed my opportunity.  I think it will have to wait until after Pesach at this point, since the weather forecast for the next two days is for rain. 

It was nice to be able to do all of this even though my oldest two kids were out for 6.5 hours – ds15 had his first Little League practice (he got his paperwork in just in time) and came home very happy.  It didn’t hurt that he hit a home run his first time at bat (he had been worried that because this was a higher level league, that he would be one of the weaker players).  He told me he thought he liked basketball as much as baseball, but when he played baseball yesterday, he realized it was different for him – “It’s like baseball is part of me”.  He’s a very good player and has played every year since he was 8 or so in the spring leagues, except for last year.  At that point, he was too old for the local league so he coached ds’s team.  This year he’s joining a different league, and is now the top age limit for that; I’m glad he’ll have one more season to play.  Dd14 spent those hours helping my mother in law get a big jump on her Pesach cooking.  She convinced her grandmother to allow her to make more complicated dishes than they usually have, and I think their guests will be very happy with the results. 🙂

My kids commented that it seems kind of funny to be so relaxed and doing all of this in the days before Pesach when everywhere I go, people are talking about what part of their kitchens they’re working on.  🙂  But as I said to my kids, everyone gets things done on the schedule that works for them, and there’s no one way that’s inherently better than another.

Avivah

Have any of you wondered what I do with all of my spare time? :)))  I don’t seem to have a problem staying busy with something – I don’t relate to being moms who say they’re bored staying at home with their kids.  When I tell my husband, “I have an idea!”, he usually looks shocked and jokingly says, “No!  YOU have an idea?”  Because I always seem to have new things that I’m learning about and being busy with. 

One of them is what to do about my fence situation.  I really want to fence in my yard fully, but it’s so expensive.  I’ve been looking online for used fencing, but even when I have seen something that would work for us, it sells so fast that I haven’t yet been able to buy any (after looking for a year).  We’ve looked at the least expensive new options, which would be chain link fencing, and though I don’t love how it looks, it does have its strengths.  One big plus is that it would be strong enough to use as a trellis for training garden plants to grow up, something I very much want to try this year, since it would maximize the amount of plants I could grow in the limited area I have.  But even a chain link fence will come out to at least $800, and probably closer to $1000 once the cost of all the extra supplies are included.  That’s a lot of money, and I could buy a lot of vegetables at the store for that!   So I can’t really justify it as a way to save on trellising costs. 

Several months ago, I read about blueberry plants being attractive landscaping bushes, and good for creating hedges between properties.  I’ve gone back and forth on this idea for months – I like the idea of having a plant that looks good and provides something edible, but I don’t like the idea of my neighbors on the other side eating my berries without permission!  Call me stingy, but if I’m paying the money for the bushes and doing the work, I want to be able to enjoy the rewards of my efforts. 

But after finally getting the final costs for a new chain link fence (that we would install ourselves, eliminating the labor expenses), my mind keeps thinking about possible alternatives, and going back to the idea of using bushes as a fence.  I considered that even if my neighbors did take my berries from their side, I would still have the privacy of a hedge, and the berries from my side of the bushes.  And a fence would only provide privacy, so even with a smaller amount of berries I might be better off with bushes. 

So on Friday (yes, Friday, what else would I be doing then? :)) I spent several hours researching berry bushes (service berry, ligon berry, huckleberry, and cranberry), before moving on to blueberries.  You wouldn’t think there’s that much to learn, but there are several categories of blueberries – lowbush, highbush, and rabbiteye.  And in each of those categories is a seemingly endless variety of blueberries, with every having it’s own climate needs, height, berry flavor/size – it was almost dizzying.  I researched which were most attractive, which were most productive, which kind produced fruits at which part of the seasons, which had the best flavor (and there were so many opinions on this – ones that some claimed were the best, others in the same gardening zone said didn’t grow well for them).  Which could be grown successfully in my area.  What I’d have to do to prepare the soil for the bushes to be planted.  I looked at nurseries across the countries, searched for reviews on the various nurseries, checked their pricing….and was feeling a little overwhelmed by it all.  It really was a lot of information.  And I don’t especially enjoy cramming so much into my puny little brain at one time.   

I noticed that one nursery not only seemed to have very good prices, but had a note on their order form that they offered an option to choose bushes that would work best for your area.  So that’s finally what I decided to do.   After deciding on this, my biggest concern was that if I ordered on Friday, that the bushes would come on Pesach.  I didn’t mind if they came a day before, because I’d (in theory, anyhow!) manage to get them put in somehow.  But since they need to be planted as soon as possible, I didn’t want to have them sitting around for a week.  I asked about the delivery schedule (on the website it said that April 15 was the end of the shipping period for blueberries for the year), and was told it would take a couple of weeks to process my order, since there were over 200 orders to fill before mine.  So that was a relief!  (And hopefully they won’t surprise me by being overly efficient and send them early, which is what happened with the strawberries and blackberries.)

Then I asked her some questions about the categories of bushes.  I told her my basic needs, and then told her I’d like a selection of 30 bushes.  (I hope that’s the right amount for my needs – I decided on this spontaneously as I was talking to the representative.)  She said they’d give me 5 bushes of six different kinds, all of which are suitable for my climate, and would choose them so the harvesting season would be continuous (ie some would be early bearers, some mid season, some late leason).  She said if I want thick hedges, I can plant them three feet apart and they’ll grow together, but the fruit production will be much less because the sun can’t reach all parts of the plants.  If I want higher berry production, they suggest planting them 5 or 6 feet apart.  So I think that on one side of my yard, I’ll plant them closer (where the privacy is more important to me) and on the other side I’ll stagger them further apart. 

By the way, these come as bare roots, which means they look like sticks.  It will be a while until they grow into hedges, and I won’t get any fruit from these until next summer, but I’m happy with the fencing solution dh and I came to.  He’ll fence in the back of our yard fully with chain link (and use the slats that close the spaces up), and I’ll plant the bushes along the side yards between my neighbors on each side.  My hope is this will look more attractive and friendly than fencing, but will provide us with the visual screen that I want to have.  And of course, the berries will be a nice bonus.  🙂

Avivah

So today was the first day I scheduled to begin cleaning the kitchen for Pesach.  Since Tuesdays are always busy days for me, I knew I wouldn’t be able to start until this afternoon.  And that’s what I was going to do, when there was a sudden knock on the door – a delivery arrived.  And what do you think it was?  The strawberry plants and blackberry bushes that I ordered at the beginning of this month.  And they needed to be planted immediately.

Well.  That certainly wasn’t part of my plan for today.  In fact, according to the estimated dates they would be sent, I didn’t expect them for another three weeks, after Pesach.  Accordingly, I didn’t even have a prepared bed to put the strawberries in, or know what conditions they needed.  But adaptability is a great trait to develop in being happy day to day.  And so I adapted.  🙂 

I’m happy to say that after doing some quick research, my 25 strawberry plants are now in the ground, as are the newest blackberry bushes (along with the one extra one from last week’s purchase that I couldn’t find a place for).  Last week, ds10 planted the raspberry bushes in the rain, and the next day when it was sunny, got the other blackberry bushes put in.   And this morning, my ds ran in excitedly to tell me that there are already signs of green buds on the raspberry plants that he put in on Thursday afternoon – it was so nice for him to see them already showing signs of growth!

Are you wondering what ended up happening with my kitchen?  You’ll have to wait for my next post.  🙂

Avivah