Starting the Garden 2012

I've been a bit lax about updating my blog. Work, identity crises, work, and the need to find some time to sleep (occasionally) have kept me from thinking and writing about art. Also keeping me from art? My sudden, burning, all-consuming neeeed to garden ALL OF THE TIME.

You guys.

This years garden? Is going to be LEGEN(waitforit)DARY.

I got (almost) all my seeds this year from the Seed Savers Exchange, a company that specializes in organic and/or heirloom veggie, herb and flower seeds. They're awesome! Gaze upon my rainbow of veggies-to-be!

I'm also really excited about having a gardening buddy this year. Last year, my garden was a meditative source of solace while I was going through a season of change. This year, ROOTS difinitively. My friend Rebecca is awesomely working with me to create the best possible garden results!! 

 

Also? She usually brings beer. BONUS! We started our seeds indoors back in March.

 

I would say that this is my favorite part of the whole gardening process, that moment when the first seeds in the first seed pods start to germinate and grow... but I know from experience that I'd continue to tell  you all season long that each step was my favorite. ALL OF THE STEPS ARE MY FAVORITE.

 

Yeah, this would be why I haven't been getting very much work done lately. My studio seems to have become a temporary greenhouse. Oops? The tomatoes jiggle and sway when I use my ancient sewing machine on my rickety card table... I feel a little guilty about shaking them up so much but it makes my studio smell like tomatoes which makes me really happy.

We were lucky enough to get a bizarre heat spell in April which allowed us to get outside early and start prepping stuff.

 

I've been gathering a ton of ideas for garden designs from pinterest (my one true love). We need a ton of pots for all the annuals... Not sure what we'll do with the pallets but they were right there in the alley! We couldn't just pass them up.

 

Spray painting pots. And yes, we did establish a color scheme in advance. You better believe I've got a whole Garden 2012 sketchbook with schedules, notes, color swatches and samples. What. Once and artist, always an artist. 

:0)

 

The pots along the garage wall will hold climbing veggies like peas, beans and cucumbers. Most of the plants shown here are gonna get moved around... I'm waiting for more of my seedlings to mature before I do a bunch of moving stuff around. The raised bed (shown here housing the overly tall and ugly dusty millers that should have died off over the winter) will eventually hold root-type veggies: beets, carrots, leeks aaaand chard, I think. 

 

This project is Rebecca's baby: a potato condo!! The idea is, as the potato plants grow taller and taller you can add boards up the side of the frame so that the container gets deeper and deeper. Bonus? If you get impatient, you can pry off the lowest board mid-season and pull out a couple of fingerlings. Haha, genius! She built the frame out of reclaimed wood purchased at The Rebuilding Exchange which is why they are already so lovely and weathered-looking.  She planted three types of potatoes... red, white and blue! NOM. 

In the interest of making my first blog entry inlikeforevs a reasonable length, I won't make you look at aaaallll of the pictures of my plant babies I can't seem to stop taking. (They're like babies or cats! I can't seem to stop photographing them! They're just so darn cute!) HOWEVER, there are a bunch- and will definitely be more- on my flicker. Gaze upon their visage !

Stay tuned! The gardening season is just beginning in earnest... we'll see if I get any sewing or art done at ALL until harvest. YEESH.

And by "yeesh," clearly I mean SWOOOOOOOOOOOON.