the patio garden that is about to NOT be a patio garden :(

cucumber seedling

pepper plants

pepper plant in foreground... irises in back were transplanted from our old house in Woodstock

Big Boy, tomaters, cucumbers and peppers

So here's the thing about living in a condo. 

One, you gotta get pretty creative if you want to grow stuff. And I have done that. The community, as I have mentioned before, provides a community growing area but it gets terrible sunlight. So this year I planned a very extensive Spring/Summer garden to place on my patio. To be exact I have about thirty plants. Eight pepper, eight tomato and eight - twelve pickling cucumber, some herbs and marigolds to keep them all company. I have scrimped and saved for good potting soil and to start with mostly plants although all my cucumber plants are from seed because I could not find a pickling variety as a plant. Mostly I just wanted a successful garden growing a few things, but many of them, with the intention of learning more about food preservation this year. This is my pride and joy, my baby. 

So imagine my surprise and heartbreak when the president of the HOA showed up at my door to inform me that "you have too many plants" and they will have to be moved down to the community garden or destroyed. Oh and that area leading up to your front door? That is considered "common area" and under the jurisdiction of the HOA. And any "changes" to this area must receive pre-approval from the HOA. These changes include putting plants, yes, plants out. Oh and they especially do not like the fact that they are "food plants". I was told that the wire cages I placed over the plants (though a bit early, but I do not have any other place to put them) looked "trashy". It was the unanimous consensus of the Board that they looked "trashy" and needed to be moved or destroyed.

The last few days I have been trying to be sweet and kind to the person I am working with, and respectful, as I didn't realize that these were "the rules". I am most confronted with the fact that I have very little freedom here to do the very thing I look forward to and love, something so central to our values and I think widely regarded by gardeners and non-gardeners alike as a skill that every human being ought to know - the ability to grow one's own food. It is a learning opportunity for my kids. It is a life enriching activity. It is an investment not just financially but emotionally and spiritually. To think that all that I regard in high value is "trash" to another person, and that person has authority over me in some way, in the place where I live, well, this is very hard for me to digest. But I am trying to not be like everyone else and give them hell... though I want to, I am trying to do right.

So tomorrow, I am moving my plants down to the community garden area. I am going to plop them down in the sunniest spot I can find. I am going to leave my pepper plants on the front patio and propose that since they do not require the "trashy" wire cages that they stay so that I can monitor them, along with my herbs. If they refuse that proposal, I will try putting them on my southeast facing back patio, and use mirrors behind them to try to give them more light... not sure if that will work. Otherwise they all will be down there. The guy I've been talking to said I could leave them in their containers for now but not past fall. Which is not an issue really, since the community garden gets more light come fall than my front patio. I will transplant the cucumber seedlings into a portion of a plot assigned to me and pray that they grow. All of my tomatoes will have to go down there for sure. 

I am pretty much heartbroken. 

I am thankful for the condo. But I am very anxious to be in a house again with a big yard where I can grow whatever I darn well please. 

:(

PS: good news on the composting front... my friend Sarah of Kula Project gave me a patio composter!!! I am so thrilled! It is sitting on my back porch :)

fall patio vegetable garden

This past Monday I took advantage of my day off to do something I love but moreover something I'd been needing to do for a couple of weeks. My summer patio vegetable garden experiment had started to wind down after my cucumber and squash plants croaked and the tomato plant got all spindly. I have about 16 or 17 pots available and I wanted to try to use those so I didn't have to spend any money on anything except the components for my soil mix and maybe a couple packets of seeds. As far as I am concerned as long as I have a superior soil mix I have a good chance of success. Summer vegetables are generally BIG and the pots I had really weren't sufficient to support the big vines characteristic of a lot of the stuff I had planted. I have hope for a better fall "crop" given the fact that one 10- 12" pot should be okay for individual green leafy vegetable plants. 

Fall is my favorite time to plant anyway. It is low maintenance, and as soon as plants like collards and kale are mature you can just take what you need, leave the plant and it will continue to grow leaves that you can continue to harvest. Here in GA these hardy leafy plants fair well over winter and I can usually harvest from them until they bolt in hotter Spring weather. 

For soil I did a modified Mel's Mix recommended for square foot gardens (SFG) which is what I had before when we lived in our house. Mel's mix is typically 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 compost and 1/3 peat moss. I chose to do 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 mushroom compost and 1/3 steer manure. When I started my SFG at my house I did this same mix but with peat moss in place of vermiculite. I had great results. I think also the higher level of nutrients in the soil with my modified mix will be beneficial given that I have things in pots and not in a larger bed. 

We still have sweet potatoes (4 big pots) growing... I am waiting a bit to harvest them. There are also 4 plants down in the community garden that I think will be decent as well. Everything else down there has been pulled out. 

All in all we have...

4 collard plants

4 red cabbage plants

8 sweet potato plants (and lots of tubers by now, just waiting a little before harvesting)

2 mustard greens from seed

2 turnips from seed (won't do much with the turnips but I can harvest the greens at least)

3 spinach from seed

tons of radishes 

2 rosemary still growing + basil is struggling along

It's not much but it's enough to keep me going. If the light is low enough and the community garden spot gets enough sun I might consider going down there to put some plants in but I'd have to redo the soil mix and that's EXPENSIVE! 

Anyway, we took some photos of the process...

here are things BEFORE... mixing the soil components and cleaning out pots

our shovel = fireplace shovel. yep.

Shiloh on camera duty...

dumping  soil mix into pots...

...and smoothing out, ready to plant

best thing in the world. wish you could see the shimmer of the vermiculite...

she's finished!

happy and dirty :)

freshly watered...

a little bit to harvest

I took these photos at the worst time of day, but the truth is I have been putting it off for too long and I just needed to get the photos of the fruit on the vine before harvesting my ONE acorn squash and my ONE cucumber... Behold, my wee little patio garden. This year I have been operating on the fly. I planted a garden in April in the community square foot garden. Let me just tell you - that has been a total flop. Bottom line is that it does not get enough sunlight. Seeds that have been in the ground since April have remained basically seedlings. I transplanted four plants from down there a week or two ago into pots and put them on the patio and they've doubled in size since then. So I am trying to make this happen on the fly. I hope to have at least a handful of something to harvest this summer. So far only tomatoes and one pepper in addition to what I harvested today. So, we'll see... I am learning about container gardening as I go... how big the containers should be, how often to water/feed, soil conditions, etc. For now, here are some photos. This fall I am hoping to have my husband build me a proper square foot raised bed that I can fit onto the patio for my favorites - collards, kale, lettuces, and radishes with the babies. <3

out of control Pothos vines...

attempting: zucchini, crookneck squash, acorn squash, sweet potatoes, two types of bell peppers, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, rosemary and basil.

pepper plants + basil from seen on the right

poor squash plant that once was crowded in a pot with another plant, now set free and seems to want to produce some fruit for me...

one squash plant doing well and two I rescued, trying to get them to do something... poor zucchini I also rescued in Monrovia pot.

mystery plant now identified as acorn squash

peppers... bad pic I know...

big ole cucumber

walking up to the front door

love these tendrils... always looking for something to hold onto

wee harvest for today... peppers were weaklings so I pulled them off... enough for a salad, right?

stuff, it groweth

squash flowers - beautiful for a day

cherry tomatoes

grape tomatoes

gardenias - oh so fragrant

more cherry tomatoes

Lantana/Miss Huff just starting to get big...

Mom's easy summer salads

When we were at the farmhouse, my mom made these two simple and DELICIOUS salads. EVERYONE was raving about them and not one morsel went uneaten.

When I went to the grocery store last, I made sure to get all of the ingredients to make them. They're great to have on hand for supplementing a meal with veggies.

Here they are and the recipes to make them - both sent to me by my mama! I hope you'll try them and enjoy them as much as I do!

Black Bean and Corn Salad

NOTE: If you plan to make this and keep it for a few days, I would add the avocado at each serving so it doesn't get mushy and brown. And I didn't use hot sauce in the dressing, just salt and pepper with the red wine vinaigrette. 

Tomato Cucumber Salad

PS: Follow me on Instagram! :) @mrshammel

mary, mary, quite contrary...

how does your garden grow?

the community garden

a row of sweet potato plants

the cucumber seeds finally decided to sprout...

...as did the squash plants :)

three bush bean plants a-growing

cherry tomatoes, strawberries and a couple of zucchini plants that snuck up on me. i planted the strawberries where I'd planted the zucchini seeds, after two weeks they hadn't sprouted so I thought they were bum seeds. fooled me!

my little garden... she grows quite well.

PS: learn how to do this yourself here.