Long Overdue Uptdate

So, that $5 garden from 2012?

It definitely succeeded, but I ran out of time to update the blog. I will post pictures later, but wanted to jump on now, years later to explain why I stopped writing. Simplest reason: I got pregnant, with twins, and the pregnancy went south about 20 weeks in. . .which was in the summer of 2012.

In the early fall, I was diagnosed with IC, and put on bed rest in the hopes the pregnancy would last until viability. The worry and fear knocked EVERYthing out of my brain. My garden flourished, and the plants over grew. Fortunately, we lived in a neighborhood without fences, and the neighbors harvested a bunch of the plants so they didn't go to waste.

By some miracle, I made it to 22 weeks, and got admitted to the hospital. At 24 weeks, my beautiful twins were born. . .and spent the next 4 months in the NICU, which meant (again) not a single part of my brain was available to think about gardens or blogging or anything except being beside them as often as possible. The twins survived SO many impossible things, and they continued to grow and thrive in the NICU because of the amazing care they were getting. I felt fortunate beyond belief, but I wasn't thinking about the garden.

Our financial situation went from tight to dire. I skipped 2 months of mortgage because it was either go visit my babies or pay the mortgage (we had good insurance but the transportation costs were the equivalent of a full month's mortgage).

I took a work at home position that made good money by the hour, but it took me hours (plural) to do a single hour of work and I didn't have child care, so that was awful. I started blogging for a great parenting blog.

Unsurprisingly, I fell into ppd, which went untreated because (again) the focus of every part of my being was these babies, and no one else was paying attention to my well-being enough to notice it. I was doing my best to hang on, to love on these twins, and to make it to their endless doctor/specialist appointments.

A full year went by and the garden just didn't happen in 2013.

In January of 2014, I started thinking of the garden again. We were moving to a new duty station in the fall, but I missed the way gardening made me feel accomplished and grounded (hah! pun!). I knew that I was accomplishing a lot raising my babies, but often it didn't FEEL like a lot. It felt exhausting, and frustrating, and I was always worried. All. The. Time.  Plus there was that undiagnosed PPD thing.

I started a garden again, this time with the extra seeds a neighbor happened to offer up on the neighborhood page -- she had planted what she wanted and was getting rid of the rest. So, I planted them in the small garden plot and tended them.

The twins were crawling, and absolutely LOVED squishing and throwing cherry tomatoes. The loved the mud of watering the garden and messing around in it and I loved having them in there with me -- getting dirty and loving it. I loved being outdoors. I loved when the first plants came. The garden didn't do as well because of my helpers, but oh my lord did I love having those helpers beside me.

In late August, we'd harvested the early plants. I pulled the remaining plants out of the garden, and seeded it with grass.

We moved to a new duty station in the PNW that fall (2014), and that military housing did not have spaces to grow things. So I failed at container gardening, but learned some valuable lessons about the lovely long growing season here and the less than lovely lack of sun in the winter. Our financial situation was a little better -- I had a part time job stocking shelves at the NEX in the evenings (which was SO much fun though it didn't pay well).

The twins got stronger and healthier, and doctor's appointments went from 6+ per week, to specialists every 6 months and OT/PT/Speech weekly. I went in for a check up and was brutally honest about how I was feeling, and got a dx for ppd and anxiety, and began a course of therapy, which was an immense help.

And then we moved to a house with a yard and amazing landlords in spring 2015, and I started a garden with clearance rack plants and items from freecycle. That summer, it was clear -- the twins were healthy enough that I could work a regular day job. For me that always meant teaching, and in this state getting a teaching certificate isn't so impossible.

I started teaching in 2016. . .and have been there since. I love love love it. I continued to garden, but spent more like $50 on the garden that year. Since then, we have moved again but this time the house is MY house, and MY yard, and I can gradually transform it into something wonderful.

And that's where we are now, and that's what happened to my garden.

Invasion from Within: The Squash Borers Attack "Alien" style

My exploding foamy squash vine

Squash Borers.  I hate them.  I've only just met them, and I already hate them.

Yesterday, I went to weed around the squash and saw that the vines near the soil looked like something out of a science fiction movie.  The insides had turned into foam and burst from the confines of the vine walls.  It was creepy, and I wondered what bacteria could do that.  They were beautiful, and everything was growing well one day, and the next, it was like they'd dissolved into creepy foam.

I googled "squash vine foam" and discovered pictures that looked exactly like my squash:  I had vine borers.  According to the University of Minnesota's extension website page on Managing Vine Borers in Home Gardens, all of this destruction was caused by the nasty larvae of a kind of a funky looking clearwing moth.  I knew nothing about this thing, so all the information below is from them.  You should check out their full article for a more detailed explanation, and read more for my short one.

Growing Pumpkins Up

The pumpkin is engaged in a hostile takeover of the garden. . .and the yard.  Having crowded out the peppers, it's now marching across the lawn toward the road and the neighbor's hedge. 

This is a problem because we live in rental military housing, and our lawn isn't technically "ours."  There are no fences between the houses, and every space except for our porches is communal.  That's part of why I made a raised bed--the defined edges to the garden ensured that the neighborhood kids that run around don't also run OVER the garden. 

Cooking our First Summer Squash

The squash is growing!  We have our first actual summer squash, and it's ready to pick.  It's that glorious bright yellow and just the right size for us to eat.

I was excitedly showing it off to my husband, and he asked skeptically "so. . .you like squash?"

"Oh no," I replied, "I was kind of hoping you did.  It's from those shared seeds. . .they were free, so I grew squash."

There was a long pause, and then from beside me I heard a quiet "um, no. Never been a fan.  I don't suppose you know how to cook it."

In that moment, I realized that one of the biggest producers in my garden was a crop I'd never liked and didn't know how to cook.  My mom suggested a cool recipe, which I'll try with the next squash--goodness knows I'll have plenty of practice because there are plenty of baby squash out there growing.  If that's a success, I'll post it in a blog entry later because I don't have the ingredients for it today.

Protect Plants from Cold Without Trashing the Yard

So, you planted too early?  Now it's time to think about serious protection for plants.  Unfortunately, plant covers cost money and are typically kind of ugly.  Home made solutions make the garden look like a tornado's just strewn the contents of your laundry room or recycling bin across the garden.  And, in my case, when that garden is also the "decorative" front lawn in military housing, it is cause for annoyed neighbors and violation warnings.  Fortunately, there are ways to protect delicate plants from the cold without looking like you're also running the worlds trashiest yard sale.

I Planted too Early. . .Now to Protect Plants from the Cold

I grew up gardening in Michigan, where spring weather changes constantly.  The saying in Michigan, as it is in many states, is that if you don't like the weather you should just wait five minutes.  In the depths of a hard Michigan winter, that saying sounds like a cruel joke as weeks go by without sunlight  during short days and cold temps.  But, in spring, it rings true again, and the temperatures fluctuate wildly--rising into the seventies one day, and bumping up only slightly into the forties the next.  Night temperatures meander around like drunkards, floating around the upper 40's one night and in the low 20's another.