Category Archives: Green Thumb
Rooftop Garden Update
Just got back after a month away, and was pleasantly surprised to find that even though summer apparently deserted Vienna for most of the time that I was gone, my plants did just fine! They got full sun on the roof, and the metal roofing retained whatever warmth there was available. Instant greenhouse. Leafy greens […]
How Does My Garden Grow?
Pretty well, so far. Coming up now: chard, spinach, lettuce, green beans, parsley, sage, and basil. Four pots of basil–I have a fancy new food processor and plans for making and freezing pesto! Planted today: zucchini, and garlic cloves (just to see what happens). I already thinned out the lettuce and spinach, and together with some […]
Perhaps Not the Most Elegant Garden
Our apartment, though very plain, has a terrific view and could be pretty snazzy if someone with plenty of cash and better taste than the US Government decorated it. In this very neighborhood, there are tons of home decor stores with sleek, modern furniture in the windows. But, well, you know how it is. Scratched-up […]
Puttering on the Patio
Alas, the garden often pays a price for an August R&R. The person who took care of my cat was great with animals, but with plants, not so much. To be fair, patio containers really need a LOT of water. I probably should have been more specific about that… Casualties include a zucchini plant, a […]
The Grass Is Always Greener
Ever wonder what it would be like to settle down and live in the same house for 35 years or so? I get a peek at that life every time I visit my parents’ house in Tennessee. The house was almost a teardown in an iffy neighborhood when we moved into it, back when I […]
Greens, Greens, the Edible Weed
We are a mixed marriage, you see. My husband is 100 percent Yankee, and I am 100 percent Southern. As you might imagine, he has some issues with my part of the country. Starting with the weather, and working on up to national politics, with several stops in between. Let’s just say we have settled […]
A Southern Girl Needs Her Greens
Strangely, though Austria offers perfect green-growing weather, they are just not that into greens here. I see fresh spinach sometimes, and less frequently, small bunches of kale or chard, but no great big bunches of collards, mustard or turnip greens like I could buy even in Giant Food back home. So, I’m growing greens on […]
The Gnomes Have Landed
My brother is visiting, and kindly offered to help bring home bags of garden soil and other necessities from the hardware store. So, yesterday I set about getting the terrace in order. It faces southwest, and gets full sun for several hours a day, so yay! I can plant some veggies! I’ve picked up a […]
Tidying Up My CyberSpace
A few years ago, back when life was blissfully boring out in the DC ‘burbs, I kept a gardening blog. It wasn’t fancy–just a way to keep a gardening journal and share gardening gossip and photos with my green-thumbed family. Since fall 2010, however, the blog has just been sitting there collecting spam. So, I […]
Slightly Homesick…
This week has been kind of weird. Fall weather is setting in here in Vienna, and for some reason, that was the trigger for me to feel a little homesick for the States, Virginia in particular. I don’t know why I was surprised, actually. It has happened every time we have been overseas! There just […]
Finally Getting Dirty
I haven’t had my hands in dirt for several weeks here. I realized yesterday that I missed it! We finally got some real summer sun the last couple of days. The GSO guy who came to the house yesterday called it “our Indian summer.” Gee, I thought August was real summer! But whatever, I’ll take […]
moving into fall…
The last of the summer produce is coming in, along with the first of the fall crops. I brought in cherry tomatoes, okra and hot peppers today. I have a good string of hot peppers going for later use. There are a few more coming on the plant. The okra plants are just so weird. […]
proud of my ‘maters
That’s all, really, and I wanted to get a good pic before any critters could get at them. (Something carried off a full-size eggplant the other day–wish I could have seen that!) I’m thinking Caprese salad tomorrow…
I smell venison!
One of my neighbors apparently has had enough and hired mercenaries to dust Bambi. I could not be happier about this. It could be a trend: fed-up suburbanites ditching the sprays and motion sensors and going for blood. There were THREE of the giant rats cute little critters shamelessly munching hostas in my front yard […]
coming home to my garden
My plants were slightly stressed so I think it’s possible someone wasn’t watering them very regularly while I was away for a week. August is always a shaky time to leave your garden! But they’ll survive. Here’s what I gathered today: cherry tomatoes (which the someone has been eating all week as well), eggplant, green […]
what’s growing around here
Three kinds of tomatoes are on the way, including yellow cherry tomatoes (I think that’s what I planted!) and “regular” tomatoes. The third kind I planted later, so it’s just got flowers on it now, but it’s a red cherry tomato that should be ready in September. Several yummy-looking eggplants. Banana peppers (not pictured) and […]
fall planting
Well, the fungus or whatever got to the yellow squash too, so out it came. Just too wet for some plants this year, I guess. Honestly, squash is so cheap to buy at the farmer’s market, I may just not bother trying to grow it again. So, I pulled that out, turned up and added […]
zip on the zucchini
Well, the zucchini plant was dead this morning–some kind of wilt, I think. Too much rain! The yellow squash plant next to it just had a couple of wilted leaves, but otherwise looks OK. I cleaned out all the wilt and hopefully it will last long enough to for the squash to get to eating […]
mid-july update
So, things are looking good. Lots of rain lately, which has led to a hint of wilt on the squash plants, but the tomatoes still look fine. This morning I did a little weeding, spread some more diatamaceous earth to discourage slugs, and sprayed insecticidal soap on the eggplant and okra, which were looking a […]
beans and pesto
So, two days ago I pulled in the first bush beans–the yellow ones. One container produced enough beans for one meal. This weekend I’ll bring in the second batch, which are regular green beans. And last night I made a big batch of pesto which was YUMMY. This is enough for two or three meals. […]
basilbasilbasilbasil…
And now, a story of two basils. Outside the deer fence: And inside the fence: I have plans for pesto! The bush beans are coming along as well–I should be able to harvest the first of those in a week or so, with successive batches after that. There are lots of flowers on the zucchini […]
this is getting serious
So, I finished this book: Small Plot, High-Yield Gardening and was impressed with the tips for getting a lot of food out of a small space. I started thinking that maybe my garden plan should consist of more than a bunch of old seed packets stuffed in an envelope. Especially as you do actually have […]
that does it!
Last night one of the evil hooved ones deer chewed the top off my new patio cherry tomato plant. Not even the whole plant, just the top. Left it there all wounded and puny-looking. It’s one thing when they eat plants I’ve grown from cheap seed, but I paid three whole dollars for that tomato […]
chardicide
Well, even though I sprayed Not Tonight Deer all over the place yesterday, the deer came back to finish off the chard. So, this morning I salvaged some of the baby chard that they didn’t get to, harvested the last of the lettuce, and planted yellow beans and chives in those containers. Also picked up […]
%*&#* deer…
Well, all that chard had just been sitting there for days, so I guess the deer figured I didn’t need it. Good thing they don’t like basil! I had better get out there this morning with the deer spray before they get a hankering for bean or tomato plants. Yesterday, I went ahead and bought […]
