A New Garden Tool

What's in your garden basket?

That, my friends, is a Tomita Japanese Hori Hori Garden Landscaping Digging Tool With Stainless Steel Blade. Along with my not-quite-finished garden map and an up-to-date garden book, this will be traveling into the garden with me on a daily basis.

"Specialty knife of function blade Made in Japan. Nisahu" 

Truth be told, I had never heard of this 'diggy diggy' wonder before it was taken out of its bubble wrap and presented to me by a grinning M. He had read about this Japanese favorite and its many uses a while ago and thought it might make my gardening life a little easier. As advertised, "Whether digging up pesky weeds, cutting out stubborn roots, or planting your favorite bulbs, gardening dilemmas soon disappear. With the Hori Hori, modern design is certainly the gardeners' indulgence."  Cool.


Combined with the cheerful bio-weapons that just arrived, this new tickler nearly completes my garden arsenal. Now where did I put that literature on silent .22 air rifles...?

Ladybugs

They came in a fairly innocuous box. Temporarily housed in a cheesecloth bag,

they nested snugly in a raffia matrix. 

Invited to dine, they now breakfast in Japantown (Ichiban Eggplant)

and over in the barrio (tomatillos).

At Sol's place (giant sunflower), it's catch-and-carry.

bon appétit!

Ladybirds, ladybugs

Today's mail:

Per the enclosed instructions, the ladybird beetles are resting quietly in the refrigerator before their debut this evening. It was 99 degrees when USPS dropped them at the door so they have a few hours to chill out before it's safe to release them. The garden will appreciate a little extra water as we all share a welcoming toast to our ~4500 new residents. Of course, they won't all move in tonight -- the instructions say to stagger their release over several days -- and there are more coming from a different source (comparisons will be posted). I'm hoping for some fun photo opportunities; good thing I figured out how to set up the 'continuous shoot' mode on the new camera.

"Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home; your house is on fire, your children do roam..." At least within the limits of Smallish Small City they won't have to worry about that fate.

Lawn-to-Garden Project: Before and After

When we started looking for a place to call home in Smallish Small City we were surprised at how much house our dollars could buy, at least compared to our former urban location. In the end, it wasn't about the square footage of the house, it was about how much yard we could get and still be close to M's work (his commute, on foot, is 20 minutes). The house we bought was the last one we looked at on the first of three house-hunting days; it stood out because it was cool in a pueblo revival/pueblo-deco kind of way, but it was the yard that cinched it for us.

This photo was taken in October 2010, before we knew we were going to make an offer on the house. Note the sad little tufts of pampas grass and spindly Spanish Broom* in the sea of grass and weeds. In our minds' eyes, however, we saw a big vegetable garden, flower beds and plenty of space for the cats and dog to play. This series of Lawn-to-Garden (L2G) posts are about how that came about.

Before

Why yes, that is Burmuda Grass. The first time we ran a tiller over that part of the yard it sighed and thanked us for the thatching.  "More dakka!" we cried, and returned the wimpy rent-a-scratcher. We then noted that it was 97 degrees out and opted for a Shiner and some extra time to figure out the best course of action.  M came back from work one day to find I had taken the simple path...

Progress

That's a pick in the lower right-hand corner of the plot outline. As I hewed my way across the yard I channeled my inner Tom Sawyer, "...hey, this is an intense functional activity not everyone has access to, maybe if we charged $5 per 30 minute session, the local CrossFit community could finish this quickly and cover the costs of straw and mulch as well..." Amazing what goes through your head when you're not used to doing this kind of work. We eventually got it all turned and tilled.

Fast forward to June 2011. There are fruit trees and a 1000+ sqft vegetable garden; the wall has been restuccoed; the shed torn down and another built out of our line-of-sight; there are glads and irises in the near beds; and, of course, we've added a mobile pool as an oasis for the 100 pound Chessie.

 

After

That's the short version, anyway. Next in the L2G catch-up posts: Talkin' Dirt-y.

*No plants were harmed in the making of this veggie garden; they were lovingly transplanted to a neighbor's yard.

Bugs!

It's been hot here; we're looking at 100+ degrees for the next 7 days with no moisture in the near future. We're still learning how to garden in these searing conditions so... um... I'll admit it...mistakes were made. Now we have bugs.

 

No, not beetles. That is a happy little 'infestation' at a local park today and I'm pretty sure it will clear up without intervention.

This is what we've got lurking in our sunflowers and tarragon, two potted plants that were a under-watered and over-stressed, making them easy targets for bugs and disease. Whether these are mites or aphids the treatment will be the same.

I should have known better: this unrelenting heat, combined with dessicating winds, is scorching petals on the gladiolus in a matter of hours. Fine tuning the watering schedule in this new-to-us place will take some time, I just hope there aren't any more plant casualties. In the meantime, the ladybug brigade will take a few days to arrive so I 'm off to fetch the pyrethrins.

Flowers for YouCapture

Whew! Do we  have a lot of catching up to do! Since YouCapture got me going the first time, I guess it's right that I jump back in with an offering from our yard for this week's theme: flowers.

We've been working on our backyard since the day after we bought the house in January. In late February we planted beds with plain & fancy gladiolus (from a big box store) and some irises liberated from our just-recently sold house. Despite our rough handling of them, a few of the irises flowered and -- much to our delight -- the glads came up strong and vibrant.

Part of my catching up, blog-wise, will be about the lawn-to-garden transformation that's taken up a bunch of our time. There are lots of pictures and thoughts to share. In the meantime, the tomatoes are still seedlings, the okra plants are a mere 4" tall, and the runners on the pole beans are only just reaching the bottom of their 6' climb. The veggie contribution to this week's theme is from a Japanese Eggplant (Ichiban) planted in patio pot. 

Over at I Should Be Folding Laundry, everything is coming up ro... you know. Go check it out.