Companion Plants

Here is a list I am compiling about companion plants to the plants I have:

• Apple Tree = ring of chives to discourage apple scab
• Cantaloupe =
• Eggplant = Beans
• Grapes =
  
• Honeydew =
• Peppers, sweet = Basil, okra
• Peppers, hot =
• Raspberries = garlic, rue, tansy
  
• Rhubarb =
  
• Roses = garlic
• Squash = Nasturtium, corn
• Strawberries = plant with borage, onions, spinach, bush beans, lettuce
  
• Tomatoes = basil or thyme, nasturtium, chives, onion, parsley, asparagus, marigold, carrots, lima beans
• Zucchini =

• Tarragon enhances growth of most garden vegetables
• Nasturtium helps fruit trees

I will be continually updating this list as I find more information.
If you know of something I haven't thought of or found out yet, please let me know!

I Didn't Plan For This

I thought I had planned so carefully because I can be a compulsive planner. {Not always the best planner though.} I finally figured out where I wanted everything to go, and had planned to do square foot gardens in my planter boxes. I even went and bought a bunch of my plants.

Turns out, I didn't plan for companion plants. Now all of a sudden my sister-in-law is telling me how certain plants can't be planted next to each other, and a pamphlet from the nursery is telling me all sorts of things about what plants nearby can either help or hinder your plants.

Things may still be ok, but I have to sift through all this new {to me} information before I decide final spots for my new plants now.

My goodness! So many things to think about and figure out!

Decorative Cabbages

{image via Wikipedia}

This is gorgeous! And a great way to show that vegetables can be a beautiful landscape feature too. I would love to see something like this as a feature in a community garden.

May

This is a collection from various sources such as Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables by Mike and Nancy Bubel and Month by Month Gardening in Utah by John Cretti to help keep me on track. I will post updates to each month as needed.

FRESH VEGGIES:

Asparagus

Sugar peas

Lettuce (leaf)

Spinach

Wild greens

Comfrey

Turnip greens

FROZEN AND CANNED VEGGIES: same as in April. Use up the last frozen vegetables from previous year and clean out freezer

SOW SEEDS INDOORS: none

PLANT OUTSIDE {according to Utah frost dates}

May 1 Savory, winter

May 7 Corn, sweet (sow directly in garden)

May 10 Sweet marjoram

May 10 Beans, bush and snap (seed directly in garden)

May 15 Parsley

May 20 Savory, summer

May 27 Cucumber

May 27 Eggplant

May 27 Muskmelon (cantaloupe)

May 27 Okra

May 27 Peppers

May 27 Pumpkins

May 27 Squash, bush or vine

May 27 Tomates

May 27 Watermelon

May 27 Basil

Thin out crowded rows of carrots, beets, endive and leaf lettuce.

A True Urban Garden

Just a little something to inspire you. You can have an amazing garden even in the heart of the city. It CAN be done! This guy is amazing!

Whipped Butter

Looking to stretch your resources just a wee bit further? Want to learn how to magically double the amount of butter you have? Then try this! It's easy as 1-2-3!

Whipped Butter

1. Take one stick softened butter
2. Whip in half cup lukewarm water until light and fluffy
3. Pour into shaped molds or decorative crock and refrigerate!

Tastes just the same as butter but you've effectively just doubled the amount you have with half the calories as before.

I put about one tablespoon into each little mold so it's easy to grab them out if you know you need a certain amount of tablespoons for a recipe. But do be careful because some recipes that depend on the fat content won't work with these. But for spreading on hot homemade bread or muffins, this works like a charm!

You can also make ahead of time honey butters or herb butters to use up some of your garden fresh herb bounty and keep them stored in containers either in the fridge or freezer.

Mmmm! Darling little herb butters for corn on the cob! Can't wait!

Putting By For Winter

This was enlightening to me.

A simple guide of how much produce to store for a truly self-sufficient winter, from one of my favorite books, Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables by Mike and Nancy Bubel based on a family size of four:

• Beets: 1-2 bushels
• Carrots: 2-3 bushels
• Cabbage: about 30 heads
• Brussels sprouts: about 10-15 plants in garden
• Chinese cabbage: 20-30 heads
• Celery: 10-20 stalks
• Turnips or rutabagas: about 1 bushel of each
• Potatoes: 6-14 bushels
• Sweet potatoes: 2 bushels
• Endive: 10-20 plants for storage, more in the row for late fall
• Squash and pumpkins: 30-40
• Onions: 1-2 bushels
• Parsnips: 1-2 bushels
• Salsify: 1/2-1 bushel
• Leeks: 15-40 plants
• Celeriac: 1/2-1 bushel
• Kale: 50-100 foot row
• Winter radishes: 1/2-1 bushel
• Kohlrabi: 1/2-1 bushel
• Garlic: as desired; a 25 foot wide row planted 4 cloves across should be plenty. Yield would be approximately 8 pounds.

Now some of these your family might not like so I wouldn't grow and store those, but if you only wanted the basics of oh, say, things like potatoes, carrots and onions, then I would definately store more of those.

Keep in mind though, that this list does not include items such as wheat, rice, flour and sugar etc that you should also be storing.

So now that I know amounts of produce I should be storing, I need to determine how much space that will require. I do have a cold storage room currently but I'm thinking the garden shed my cute hubby wants to build in the backyard might just happen to get a real live root cellar underneath it--he just doesn't know that yet!

Independence Days Challenge

I am a part of the Independence Days Challenge and here's what I've been working on:

Planted: a pot of green onions
Harvested: nothing yet
Preserved: nothing yet
Managed: working on figuring out exactly which canning equipment I have and still need to get
Cooked new: nothing yet

My garden is still sooo brand new that mostly my focus is on getting plants put in still. I hope to get even more put in on Monday since today is filled with cleaning for a family birthday party here this afternoon.

NEVER again!!!

I will never buy green onions again. Not when they're so easy to grow!

Inspired by this tutorial, today I planted the ends of my green onions that I used to just throw away. The beauty is when they're planted in a pot, they will grow back! And then the next time you want a green onion, you just go snip off the green end part and leave the bulb part in the pot to re-grow again, and again, and again!!

It's brilliant! I don't know why it never occured to me before!

Rain, rain {don't} go away

It's been raining the past few days so I haven't been able to get much done in the garden this week. But I have been researching rainbarrels.

Using the average rainfall for my area (find yours here), I have calculated that we get an average of:

22.2 inches of precipitation each year.

Then to figure out the size of my total roof catchment area I measured the length x width but added 2 feet extra to each to allow for the overhangs. So I had:

47 ft x 37 ft = 1739 square feet of total roof catchment area

Since one inch of water equals roughly 600 gallons per 1000 square foot catchment area I estimate my potential gallons to catch off the roof per each inch of water to be:

600 x 1.739 = 1043.4 gallons

Now figure in the yearly rainfall to figure out the total yearly catch:

1043.4 x 22.2 = 23,163.48 potential gallons per year

So now I need to figure out how many rainbarrels that would take and what kind of system I would want {plus where on earth to put them}.

Since we don't have secondary water we have to use our municipal water for watering our lawns and garden, I wonder how much less municipal water I would use if I used rainwater for the yard instead. I still need to figure that part out. Seems like it would be nicer to be able to use what Mother Nature is already providing.

I used the calculations based from here, if I did my math wrong feel free to let me know.

Grape Options

I tried to go get some strawberries from the nursery today to plant by the apple trees but they're all out for the season. So I need to move on to the grapes since they will take a few years before they're really producing anything.

Option 1:
Along the back fence.

My backyard neighbors already started some on one end that I'm sure I will benefit from on my side of the fence. They aren't sure what type it is though. They said it was purple with a seed so I'm thinking it was probably a concord grape.

The only problem along the back fence is that I'm thinking I might want to plant some raspberry bushes along the back maybe.

.

Option 2:

On the Pergolas

Here is one of the pergolas. One of the problems with the pergolas is that the posts are about a foot away from the raised planters so the grapes would have to grow over from the planter to reach the posts with the exception of the above pergola that has count them, ONE post close to the grass where it wouldn't have to reach as far to grow from.

Here is the other one showing a little better how the posts are spaced away from the planter boxes. I was a little bummed about this when they got put in, truth be told, but in order to be able to walk in the gate with the required spacing of posts and supports this was the only way to do it.

.

A local nursery guy told me grapes don't do well on arbors but I've read of a few varieties that supposedly do well on arbors {like Steubens} so now I don't know what to do.

.

Here is an article on Grape Arbors that shows how it can be done, but written for a Texas climate, not a Utah climate.
.

.
~~~~~

.

So what do I do? Go for the arbors and just have weirdness at the bottom reaching out of the planter boxes to the posts? Ideally the arbors were my top choice but I also wonder about the grapes staining the tables and patio.

.

If anyone has ideas/recommendations I would super appreciate it!

My Belgian Fence Apple Espaliers

Still much training to be done to get the lovely diamond shapes and then the yummy apples!!! Mmmm! Can't wait!

Apple varieties include:

• Jonagold--high quality; striking appearance. Sweet but tart with juicy flesh. October.
  
• Early McIntosh--a cross between regular McIntosh and Yellow Transparent; very similar to McIntosh. For dessert and cooking. Keeps October til December.
  
• Tolman Sweet--Hardy, healthy, productive variety. Fruit attractive yellow color with a blush of red. Good quality. Best of the sweet apples. October.
  
• R.I. Greening--Green, later yellow; good for dessert or cooking. Keeps October til March.
  
• Northern Spy--Red, tender, crispy, juicy. Very good to best for cooking or dessert. Keeps November to February.
  
• Grimes Golden--Beautiful rich golden color. Firm but crisp and tender, pleasantly acifulous flavor, pleasant aroma. Very good to best. Keeps November to January.
  
• plus four more I haven't deciphered the tags of yet
  

My Raised Beds

2 feet x 8 feet
Could do 16 squares of square foot gardening

18 inches x 14 feet
I think I could only do 14 squares of square foot gardening but have 6 inches extra to put in a few more things. Perhaps something that grows up the poles of the fence behind it.

18 inches x 12 feet
Same as above but only able to do 12 squares of square foot gardening, with a little extra space for something else that is viney and goes up the fence.

Now That's a Potager!

{image via Wikipedia}

This is a large scale potager at Villandry, France. It is gorgeous! Obviously mine will be on a more modest and smaller scale.

What exactly is a potager? According to W ikipedia it is:

"The traditional kitchen garden, also known as a potager, is a seasonally used space separate from the rest of the residential garden - the ornamental plants and lawn areas. Most vegetable gardens are still miniature versions of old family farm plots, but the kitchen garden is different not only in its history, but also its design.

The kitchen garden may be a landscape feature that can be the central feature of an ornamental, all-season landscape, but can be little more than a humble vegetable plot. It is a source of herbs, vegetables, fruits, and flowers, but it is also a structured garden space, a design based on repetitive geometric patterns.

The kitchen garden has year-round visual appeal and can incorporate permanent perennials or woody plantings around (or among) the annual plants."