Crazy Tomato!

I've been negligent in documenting my garden this year. Needless to say, it has been a year of great learning for me. I'm just about finished with my Master Gardener certification and have been reading a wide variety of gardening books. I also drool over my Flower Factory catalogue on a regular basis. I already have my list started for next spring!

Our vegetable garden has been doing well this year, despite the drought. That's in great part to Adam's attentions to watering. Here's our biggest tomato for the year. The measurement (1.642) is in pounds. We ate this beautiful brandywine in bruschetta with fresh sourdough bread from Clausen's and garlic and basil from our garden.

Front yard: before and after

I never did post pictures of how the front yard turned out. It really took all summer to kill everything, dig up the sod, till it, level it, put in the edging bricks, plant perennials, put in mulch, and plant grass. I can't wait for spring to see if everything comes back and how much it will grow.

Here's the front yard when we bought the house in 2008. Note the size of the baby cedar tree we are standing in front of. The landscaping consisted entirely of yew and juniper bushes.

 Here's what it looked like in October 2011 complete with sitting area (yes, I painted the chairs myself) and new, soft grass. The tree is now taller than the roof line. That's one of our 2 pear trees in the foreground. We're really hoping for pears in 2012.

 Here's the half of the yard that we don't have to mow anymore. Everything looks small now, but give it a few years and it should fill in nicely.

Butterfly Summer

I know this is a very belated post, but I wanted to show some of the pictures we took this summer of the butterflies in our yard and at Perrot State Park. I suspect it was a good year for butterflies because of the heat.

A dark morph female Tiger Swallowtail enjoying our butterfly bush.

 A Silver-spotted Skipper, also on the butterfly bush. Although that bush is not native, it's not super aggressive and it sure does attract butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds. My mom in Fond du Lac has had trouble with it dying after a few years, but I think Madison is just enough warmer that it's ok.

 A male Tiger Swallowtail chasing a dark morph female Swallowtail by our grapes.

Another Tiger Swallowtail on a native thistle at Perrot State Park.

 A Black Swallowtail.

 A good picture of a male Tiger Swallowtail.

 I'm pretty sure this is a Northern Crescent.

 This one is a Hackberry Emperor.

My biggest disappointment is that we also saw many Giant Swallowtails at Perrot and somehow failed to get a single picture. They are not common and I've never seen one in our yard, so that was a real treat.

Winter is on its way

With last week's snow, most of the garden is dead. All that's left is lettuce, kale, and broccoli (the small shoots it keeps producing). Apparently you can pick kale after it's covered in snow and well below freeaing. I picked the last of the rainbow swiss chard on Friday. It was so pretty that i had to take a picture before Adam chopped it.

We also brought the pot with our jalapeno plant into the sun porch and that is still alive and well. I thought about taking it into the house, but it's kind of big.  It still has around 25 mature or close to mature peppers on it.

We also got our first installment of our CSA winter storage share on Thursday. About 70 pounds of carrots, potatoes, turnip, squash, rutabaga, radish, brussel sprouts, pumpkins, garlic, and onions. We made a rule that everything we cook from here on out has to include at least 1 root vegetable or squash.

Garden 2011

This was a mixed year for our garden. Crops that did well: kale (this is the most productive crop I've ever grown), lettuce, basil (both from seed and from plants), scallions, grapes, jalapeno peppers grown in a pot, kohlrabi, and dill. Crops that struggled: swiss chard (some kind of fungus early on), broccoli (didn't thin enough), cauliflower (same thing), beets (not enough sun?), peppers that were in the garden (not enough sun), and cucumbers (died early). Everything else was in the middle, including tomatoes which got a fungus again. I guess we should move them for next year. The problem is we have a nice semi-permanent trellis installed where they currently are.

Carrots and chioggia beets:

We picked a record 50 pounds of grapes! Wollersheim also said they had a good harvest this year. Adam is currently making wine in our basement. He expects to get about 25 bottles.

A tiny fraction of my gigantic kale crop. I've made lots of soup with kale lately. Luckily it freezes well, both in soup and blanched by itself.

A salmon dish inspired by something i ate at Sardine. It includes salmon from Seafood Center, corn from the farmers market, and heirloom tomatoes and basil from our garden.

We're always open to trying something new. Let me know if you have suggestions for new crops or things that worked well for you this year.

All God's creatures

As most of you know, Adam and I love looking out our back windows at what's in our back yard. Usually we see things like gold finches, downy woodpeckers, red bellied woodpeckers, blue jays, nuthatches, cardinals, chipping sparrows, hummingbirds (although I never do get used to these amazing birds), squirrels, rabbits, and chipmunks. Once in a while, however, we see something that startles us. Here are a few that we've captured:

That last picture is a Cooper's hawk. This was the second time we'd seen him in our yard. When we first looked out the window the other day, he was on our bird feeder. We kind of doubt he was going after birdseed - we suspect he was going after songbirds. I don't know if i should be upset about that or not. I guess it's partially my fault for providing a bird feeder.

Decktopia

Well, it's summer, and you wouldn't expect that I could go a whole month without some kind of significant project to work on, would you? This month's project is a deck.

To understand the root of this project, you have to go back 2 years.

When we moved into our house in 2008, it was labor day, so 2009 was our first full summer in the house. Our house was built in 1958, which from everything we can tell was not a decade that saw much in the way of decks or patios in back yards. So our house was no exception. We have a great 3 season room on the back of the house, and the door from that room went to a set of concrete steps that ended, basically, in the grass. Not bad, but not great for entertaining, or getting the most out of the yard.

So in 2009, we decided that we needed a patio. We started doing our research, and got some quotes, and the quotes we got were expensive. Really Expensive. More than we spent to remodel the kitchen actually. The problem is that the yard slopes about 2 feet from the house to the place where the patio would end, so there was a big retaining wall needed, and it costs a lot to pay someone else to do that kind of work for you. So the Patio was out. Enter the deck. For some reason, I had it in my head that building a deck was easier to do myself than laying a patio. So that was what we decided to do. The deck would cost us about 5% of what we were quoted for the patio, and it would give me the opportunity to learn a new skill, deck building, and rent some really cool tools, power hammer and post hole auger.

It started slowly, with destroying the top step of the concrete steps that were there. Only the top step needed to be removed. After swinging at it for a couple of hours with a sledgehammer and a chisel, I decided that the power hammer was a much better option. Picture a really big drill, or a really small jackhammer. it weighed about 20 lbs, and hammered really fast. With a chisel tip on it, I was able to get through the concrete in no time flat. Then came the permit. Always important to follow the law. I got the plans approved right away, no problem, and I was off to dig my holes. This being Wisconsin, we like to make sure to get below the frost line. Realistically, the frost line is about 2 or 3 feet down. But code says to dig 48 inches. I wasn't about to do that by hand, so I rented a post hole auger. Picture a big motor with a stick on the bottom and a large steel helix attached. Digs holes in no time flat, so long as you don't hit any roots and rocks. That's a big if. I had 4 holes to dig, and each hole hit at least 1 root and at least 2 rocks. Big rocks. Granite mostly. Big thanks to my brother in law Adam for helping with the auger and breaking his back with me on that one. Here's a picture of us with the auger on our first hole, before we hit our first root!

And This is me in a hole trying to dig up a 60 lb piece of granite before moving the hole a few inches to avoid the granite!

And after I got out of the hole.

Holes dug, I got my inspection, and then set the posts in concrete in the bottom of the holes. The following weekend, my in-laws came down to help get the project rolling. It's great having a father-in-law with a great collection of power tools and an even better collection on knowledge of how to do things like building a deck. It made the work go a lot faster to have someone who knew what he was doing, rather than me having to look everything up on google each time I got stuck. We knocked out all the framing and started on the decking while he was here, which got me headed in the right direction for sure. What a blessing having parents who are willing and able to help us whenever we get crazy ideas for new projects.

So after sending the Dvoraks off, I continued to knock this project out. The following day, my good friend Derek came over to help me out some more. What a great help that was! It was nice to have someone that could get some good progress done on the decking while I focused on cutting the 6 stair stringers I needed in order to build the steps. By the time I was done with the stringers, Derek had pretty much laid all the decking on the lower deck. Thanks buddy!

The next week saw record high temps, so I took the weekdays off, and got back to it that weekend. I was blessed again with more help from a good friend, Ed. Ed and I were able to finish off the decking on the upper portion of the deck and get the benches started in the time Ed was able to help. Again, it was a huge help having another set of hands to get this thing done quickly. By myself, it all would have taken a lot longer, and been much harder. Thanks Ed!

After Ed left, I continued to work on the benches, as well as trimming off the ends of boards to even out the edges of the deck. As of today, I am probably about 85% done. I have a few more screws to put in on the decking to secure it, some finishing touches on the last bench, and the railings on the upper portion of the deck. Not too bad, I'm hoping to knock it out this weekend, and have it ready for inspection the following week. Here are some pictures of where the deck is at today.

I think the moral of this story is that we like to take on some pretty big projects. Luckily, we have some great friends and family who are willing to help us out with those projects. Ironically, it's that help that probably makes us more likely to do this sort of thing again in the future. Thanks everybody!