2 minute read
Garden 2.0
Boom poses with a sugar snap pea pod. That crop is doing much better than last year’s. Below, one of the two marigold blossoms I’ve spotted in the overgrowth. It sprouted from seeds last year’s blossom dropped.
Madeline Strum Photography
Flowers are blooming and vegetables are ripening... finally
So many of the plants I transplanted from indoor pots to the ground outside seemed to die. For sure, two rounds of cucumber sprouts died within three days of transfer a month apart. Meanwhile, I couldn’t tell the difference between seeds I started outdoors and weeds, so I decided to stop weeding for a long time. I downloaded an app to take a picture and confirm one giant plant was simply a weed before rooting it out. Seeing that last year’s marigold did reseed itself and I didn’t rip them all out makes me happy. Meanwhile, the only way to get my hands on a watering can in early May was to buy one that included poppy seeds. That round of seeds still hasn’t bloomed but there must have been poppies in the wild flower packet I spread because poppies are blooming back there. Compared to last year, the wild flowers are blooming months earlier and the vegetables are taking months longer. It’s wild. —MV
We didn't see much more than sparrows at our bird feeder this year, but there were so many kittens!
When nothing was really blooming, I downloaded a few plant identifi er apps. One helped me fi gure out what’s a weed, what might have come from bird seed, and what I actually planted. Top right is probably Forget-me-nots, but that's not on the wild fl ower seed packet or bird seed list. Searching the scientifi c names on the seed packet, the bottom four pictures are of fl owers most likely from a packet of wildfl ower seeds.
Madeline Strum Photography
Madeline Strum Photography
Madeline Strum Photography
Madeline Strum Photography
Madeline Strum Photography
Madeline Strum Photography
Madeline Strum Photography
Madeline Strum Photography
Madeline Strum Photography
Random vines, weeds, and sunflowers fill in all the gaps. Seeds I planted fight for sunlight (far left) while an old rake blooms (center).
Madeline Strum Photography
This year’s tomato seedlings (maybe 30 of them) all died after I transferred them outdoors, so I bought a bigger plant and only let the basil get near it for as long as I could. Last year my seeds produced three plants but those only yielded two hard green tomatoes I didn’t bother to pick. This year I left green tomatoes to ripen in the widow.
Madeline Strum Photography
The cucumbers were a lot easier to pick after I set them up to grow tall, but there were a lot fewer cucumbers.
Madeline Strum Photography
