Amazing Winter continues to grow

Having been here, in Seattle for about 2,5 years now I am still amazed at things that I learn every day. I would never have thought that I would have a veggie garden in winter. Thanks to Seattle Tilth who taught me how to have a winter garden in this amazing maritime weather of Seattle. Winter garden means in fact that you start sowing and planting between end of July till end of October/beginning of November for your fall, winter and early spring crop. 

I sowed carrots, onions, spinach, fava beans, snow peas, mustard greens, lettuce, kale, broccoli, radishes and purple sprouting broccoli, garlic and shallots. We started to eat the radishes and spinach already. Take a look!

  Closest to you, in the corner is the fava beans. We still have arugula which decorates our salads.

Under the left covered area are the snow peas. I can't wait to have carrots by spring/summer. This is so much fun!!! 

Winter Garden!

Yes, you read the title correct. For the first time in my life I will have a winter garden. AMAZIIINNGGGG.
You may wonder how can that happen. Well the answer is very easy: Thanks to maritime climate that we get here in Seattle!!!!
Wohooooo. I am so excited. This time I am going a step forward and starting the veggies all from scratch.

So yesterday MLF helped to extend the garden.
He was awesome as always. He put the extension and sure enough his analytic brain worked things like a charm in a very short time.

When he was done, it was my turn to sheet mulch the area before we could put the soil. I put wet cardboard and newspaper so that the grass won't grow into the veggie bed but just break down and be organic material for the yard. Thanks again for all this info to Seattle Tilth. I am so inspired and excited to have a winter garden. 

Bed is ready for the soil that is being dumped in the background

   

Is there anything like life without pests in a garden?

Hah! In your dreams may be!!!! It was a dream of mine too. I have been taking care of the plants like babies and making sure they were healthy. I was thinking that the soil was so healthy, and we were trying our best to nurture those lovely veggies.
Aaaaand one day I saw slimy disgusting creatures on my lettuce. Yuuuccckkkk!!!!! was what I screamed and of course MLF was out thinking I am in trouble in some way. Well I wasn't but the garden was.
So I wore my gloves and MLF didn't even bother and we started to pick up those slimy, disgusting creatures. How have they been gotten in there? The next weekend the side of the bed was surrounded by copper shield. Yes, yees I know, they were in there already but that would stop more coming in. After that every single day at dawn and dusk I was out picking out those disgusting creatures and smashing them.

As I was thinking woow this was great OK no more slugs on the leaves and in the bed. Great job. The next week I started to see wholes on the broccoli yet there were no slugs. This was even worse : Cabbage Worm. That white butterfly with purple dots on each wing had laid its eggs . So many of them Ughh. You can see below. removing the eggs under the leaves and removing the green larva (caterpillar) helped controlling. Yet, I think I am lucky to have only these two pests this year. Hopefully with more protection, there won't be any next year.

The Eggs of Cabbage Worm under the broccoli leaf

The Larva (caterpillar)


This is the stage that damages the leaves. You can see dark green, black droplets on the leaves too.

Summer has arrived and about to leave

They say summer has come and about to leave. However, I haven't seen it here. I have been thinking that it is still Spring, end of Spring until we started to have peppers and tomatoes already. Well the garden has done great. Tomatoes have lost control and trying to reach the sky. We started to get peppers and I can't tell you the amount of lettuce, and squash we had. Broccoli has already gone and last weekend I pulled out the lettuce as well.  We had great leeks too.

Having said all the above and looking at the dates. You can sure tell I have been lazy and haven't updated much here. I am guilty! On the other hand, I didn't forget to get pics each time we had new crop. The newest harvets was the eggplant and lemon cucumber. You can take a look at them all yourself:

First Harvest of the Season

Woow. We had our first harvest of the season today. With the weather cooperating and being in the conditions that lettuce like, we harvested our first leaves and made a salad. It was amazing, delicious and of course so much fun. We had to add   some leaves  of baby spinach that we picked up from our farmers' market on Sunday, but the majority of it was our own lettuce variety and we enjoyed every bit of it. Hope you friends out there can visit us this summer and taste some of our veggies as well. In fact it was a historical day for MLF. Usually, when there is salad for dinner, I am the one who gets the most and he eats by BT's force. However, tonight was not the case. After having a generous portion, he joined me to get some more. In the end, he got it all and didn't leave any for me. When we sat back, he said "Sorry, I didn't leave any for you, did you REALLY want some more?" Well what do you say, no I didn't want some more, I can always make more in a week or so.  It made me very happy that he was eating greens without any outside force :) :) :)

Our first harvest. It doesn't look much but it made a lot of salad.

The Bed after harvesting some lettuce

Two Weeks Old

It has been two weeks since all the veggies found their homes in the bed. It is amazing how much they grew.
I was gone for a whole week and when I got back I couldn't believe how much the lettuce has grown. The eggplants and tomatoes have gotten taller and I have a Thai pepper plant that has it's first bud on it :) MLF will be very happy once those hot peppers start to come out.

The only loss I have is the shallots. Most of them didn't make so I am going to sow from seed and see how it goes. Most likely, the weather was too cold for them after living in the greenhouse. The other onions, and leeks however, made just fine. (Knock on wood :)) I am glad the tomatoes and the eggplant didn't have the same problem even though I was worried about them.

Look at these, they look bigger in person.

First .... Then ...

Everything is ready. So exciting :)

First all the plants find their homes in the grid!

Then they are all planted. Onions and leeks!!!! The most difficult to plant. So little, so many, not enough space.

Finally, every one of them are tucked in. Ready to grow

And here is MLF's corner. He planted the strawberries and the edible flowers in the bed on the parking strip

 Noow we will be taking care of these seedlings. Can't wait to start harvesting. 

I already started thinking of the winter garden. 

Isn't math all over our lives? Thankfully I have MLF, otherwise.....

With all these plants, herbs, fruits (just strawberries) and some flowers to be planted, of course you need to consider a lot!


First of call crop rotation, and companion plants. (Can you tell I took COG ? :) )


Then what goes where, how about the micro climate, where is the shade, think about natural pest control (for instance, onions with tomatoes and pepper so some pests will be repelled by the odor of onion)




However, these are not enough. Even though all the plants are very small, in time they will become sooo big. This is the part where you need to use your math or, if you are math challenged, like me, hope you have a MLF in your life too :))

See what I mean?

The planting grid is being created 

         

Our Bed, in the Middle of our Yard.......

After an intensive start, there came the Seattle Tilth plant sale. I was in heaven again. I added new challenges to apply what I learnt in COG. Besides getting my usual herbs like basil, parsley and mint, I added thyme, sage and their varieties and more veggies like broccoli, eggplant, onions, leeks  and squash. 

MLF built me 4X12 veggie bed and we had 30 cubic feet soil delivered yesterday. Of course, in every culture being a man is difficult :)

He moved the soil from the side walk into the bed. 

Even though I helped him, he still did the hard work!

Since I was the one taking all these pics, you can't see me help him.

Almost there, not much left!

AAaaaand meet the Seattle Tilth!

After years of walking in dark, with the big yard I wanted to do things the right way. Since I was trying to figure out the best and efficient ways to garden in sandy soil with a climate where there is no rain all summer ( 2 months straight), I needed help.


I started reading blogs, talking with friends who have cute, edible yards. I wanted one of hose but how?
MLF, as always was there to help me. The walking MLFogle (derived from google), was there for me again :) He had heard of Seattle Tilth, a non-profit educational organization dedicated to educating people to garden organically and conserve natural resources. There was my answer, right on their website.




I was so intrigued by what I read and got so excited. I had a HUGE resource now. As I was looking the classes that they offered, I saw the one that was just the right one for my needs. COG, comprehensive organic gardening. A multi session course that would help me to build my foundation. The day I called the office, they told me the class was cancelled due to low registration. Then I got a call, the class was going to be on WOHOOOO. I was so excited. 

It was a smaller class than their usual enrollment but everybody was so excited to be there. We started with how to develop a healthy soil and ended up with saving seeds. We had hands on experience on Saturdays and as a beginner group we even managed to impress the Master Composter of Bradner Gardens, Jim! Our compost had heated up so well in our first shot and he repeated many times, that we were the first Tilth group to start a good compost!!! The whole process and COG deserves many many pages of blogging :)

However, thanks to everyone at Tilth as I learnt so much in 7 sessions that I am really proud of myself. I will continue to volunteer at every opportunity as I can.  They helped me to build such a great foundation that I would like to give back!

New Place!!!

Even though living in the apartment was efficient, we both craved for a house with a yard. MLF missed multiple floors, more space and I missed some actual garden. I have always wanted to live in a house with some yard around and my parents moved in to a corner unit town home 2 years after I moved to DC. How fare was that!!!

We started our house hunt. Loooong, tedious and feels like you will never find that "perfect" house. And one rainy April day, we walked into this house. Little but big enough for us. Inside was cute, it was the neighborhood that we wanted close to everything walking distance, exactly how we have been describing to our agent. Moreover, as a bonus it had HUUUGGGEEEEE yard. I mean HUGE!!!!. Were were both in love with the house and I am so happy we got it. We have lived in it for a year now and we love every second of it. Yes, despite some casualties we LOVE it here!!!!!

Now my gardening could get serious. However, I didn't have enough knowledge to maintain this big of a yard and I still didn't know gardening in this climate. Therefore, year one went by settling in and some yard work and some container gardening again. (Now that I know more, I am glad I worked in containers last year too)

How it all started

I always tell my family that they picked up the wrong baby from the hospital. Even though I grew up in Turkey, I have always felt so different there and wanted move abroad. One day (ab
out 12 years ago) I managed that. Now I miss them a lot but in general, I am really happy where I am.

I grew up in an apartment complex. We had only 2 balconies and neither mom nor dad were interested in container planting. We don't have the P-patch concept there either. However, I have always liked dirt, water and sun combination :)

When I first moved to DC, I had an efficiency (a studio apartment) yet I had two three small pots where I had herbs only. I didn't have a balcony then. After living 5 years there, I moved to another apartment complex, it was closer to my new job and some great friends who were always like a family to me. I was so lucky as I had a balcony there, soooo I had bigger pots with one tomato plant and some herbs and flowers.

My third place was even better. Even though it was an apartment complex, I was in a corner unit on ground level. Therefore, it felt like a townhouse. I had a mini yard but I still did container planting and flowers went into the little yard. Two years went by so fast and I had another dream come true. I moved in with MLF who had a town house with a little yard at the back and a little yard at the front. Since he hadn't done much, he surrendered them to me. Yeeyyy!!! I had a yard now. It was small but I grew tomatoes and peppers and some herbs. We planted roses, strawberry and azaleas at the front yard. Wooww amaazing!!!! I thought I was in heaven. (I wasn't aware of a bigger heaven then)

Then 2 years ago we moved to PacNW. Woow very different climate but very very moderate. It took some acclimation but now we LOVE it. We spent the first year in an apartment, with two big balconies where I did container gardening. Basil, pepper and tomatoes. One balcony was like an open greenhouse. The front one for the flowers again. Oh and I forgot I grew catnip for Pete and Pixel at the front too and they loved going out to munch on fresh catnip. Of course the joy of watching them after couple of leaves was priceless!!!!