Pallet Garden: The Crop

Now that you know what a pallet garden is, you may want to know if it was successful. Well, success is defined by Google as: The accomplishment of an aim or purpose. And, now that the growing season is over, I TOTALLY feel like I can apply that to word to our pallet garden.

Oh. My. Goodness. Can I ever.  Let me start with what we planted.

Early in the year, Ashley and her son planted one of the gardens with cold crop vegetables. They planted: snow peas, broccoli, and cauliflower.  We were gonna plant some cabbage, but the dogs ate the babies before they got planted...

 These are the cold crop babies :)

After a month or so....

Peas galore!!! Ash even put up a little stick and twin trellis up for them! The broccoli also produced, but.... not in the typical grocery store fashion. I think she may have purchased a florette plant, cause that's about the size of the broccoli heads that came off it. They were sweet and delicious! Again, nothing like that store bought junk. The cauliflowers... those were duds... but hey! We'll take 2 out of 3!

Ok, so the garden was at that state at about mid-June. Our growing season here is a bit unpredictable, but I figured that was pretty close to the time we should plant out summer crops. So into the other garden went 3 bell pepper plants, a jalapeno plant (or two), and a tomatillo plant... that I grew at my house from a seed. At this time we also supplmented our garden space with a couple 5 gallon buckets with some holes drilled into the bottom for drainage (remember, we were on a budget!). In one bucket went a tomato plant and in the other another tomoatillo. We also threw in some leek and carrot seeds, just to see what would happen.

 

Second garden planted!! 

Well.... it happened to be a late season start.... and the plants (especially the peppers) looked all but dead... and then we forgot to water the tomatillo in the bucket... and I arrived one day to the top 8 inches of it hanging on its tiny trellis totally detached from the 4 inches of stem still in the dirt.... Ok... we weren't off to a good start....

But then something borderline miraculous happened - summer came! The next thing I knew, I was getting texts from Ash "you have baby peppers!!" and "the tomatillo is taking over the whole garden!!" She wasn't exaggerating... not in the least... here are a couple pictures she sent me:

 Baby peppers!

Huge tomatillo plant!!

All this in literally a month. As soon as it got warm the plants just exploded! So now, here we were, mid-September. I'd been letting them grow and get as big as possible before the freezing nights started... One evening it was warm and  t-shirt weather and the next I was walking around my house in a sweater and slippers. I figured it was time to pick... though I knew it was a bit too early for the plants... but either pick now, or loose the plants to the frost...

The day we picked with an almost 4-year-old in the picture for size reference :)

Here is what we got!

The harvest was insane!!! Eight pounds of tomatillos, 5 bell peppers, 2 tomatoes and a jalapeno (from a plant I thought had been smothered by the tomatillo and died!). It was amazing! I couldn't BELIEVE how prolific these plants were! So, as one could assume... we ate a lot of chile verde and green enchiladas....

So, that was what I thought was that.... but then... it started getting warm again. Like really warm. The nights were still cool, but not in the danger of freeze zone. Come to find out we were having an Indian summer. So, today, I decided to visit our little garden again and this is what I got:

That's right. That is another FIVE POUNDS of tomatillos, two bell peppers, two TINY jalapenos, a tomato and a skinny leek. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? 

This garden was the most fun thing ever. But the best part, was Ash's son excited about the veggies growing. He wanted nothing more than to show me the little tomatillo lanterns and that there was something inside them! or to pick snow peas and just eat them right off the vine. I wish I had gone over a bit more often and helped Ash with the tending of it - maybe caught the tomatillo before it took over and smothered everything else and weeded. But, it seemed to do just fine without us, just  being watered a couple times a week.

I attribute the awesome-ness of this garden to my construction skills and Ashley's green thumb. She attributes the success to her neighbor's soil that we used. I donno, and quite frankly, I don't care. This garden was a group effort and ended up being awesome in just about every way!

This was fun and I can't wait to do it again!

Trails of Slime, Everywhere!

One evening, very soon after we moved here, Chad and I were walking along Clear Creek Trail. We had done it a few times by this point - so it was nothing special... or so we thought!

Chad was looking around, I was looking at the ground, and all the sudden I got really angry - angry at all those dog owners who refuse to pick up after their dogs! What the heck! Leaving gooey poops right in the middle of the path! What is wrong with people!!

Then Chad looked down. He didn't see any poops - he saw HUGE SLUGS!

 Tell me that doesn't look like a poop!

These things were entire inches long! Almost an inch thick! Some green-ish, some brown, some with stripes. The biggest, most awesome slugs I have ever seen!

So that's when the obsession started - I needed to know what it was called, why it was so big, where they are usually found. This is what my research uncovered:

  * Its a Banana Slug - Ariolimax columbiana - named after a compound of two Greek-derived words for slugs

  * They grow up to 6 - 8 inches long, variable in color from yellow to drab green-brown, some with darker spots.

  * Like snails, they have two tentacles on their head, which tapers to a long body and pointed tail.

  *This species, the Olympic species occupies forests from western Oregon north to southwestern Alaska.

  * They live in damp, lowland forests.

  * They eat a variety of plant and animal foods: lichens, leaves (including those of poison oak), mushrooms, animal carcasses and droppings.

HOW COOL IS THAT!? Though... apparently I am the only one who thinks this around here... Most people hate them... BUT! There has to be, at least, a small constituent of slug lovers - because at this little store on the Bremerton  pier they sell little glass banana slug figurines (though... they are probably for tourists...)! Awwww, I love this place.

Guess Who's Talking Today!?

So this is the man of the house speaking today. Gracing you with my ever expanding knowledge and words of wisdom from which you young grasshoppers might learn a thing or two. Besides making it a personal goal of ours to try every beer and wine and other local spirits in Washington, we have noticed that their definition of Pale Ale, and Amber beers are vastly different from the rest of the country. Their Pale Ales are more of an amber with a distinctly smooth flavor yet each one has a very distinct flavor, and are stronger than the everyday mass-produced beers. While their Ambers are more of a paler color with a kick of hops that could have you guessing if you ordered the correct beer or if the server misplaced your order with an IPA or ESB. But all in all, these people have by far some of the best beers around.

Secondly, our cat Joule... our oddly astute, somewhat retarded, smart, fast-learning, and expression filled cat. From looks that say "I have been here all day, where the hell have you two been?" to looks of self-pity and "can I please have some of your food?" To even the now more apparent looks of, "Can't you two sit still!? I am trying to nap on you," looks. The slight retardation...yes, I recently got a bird feeder which has brought in some local birds, but also the attention of Joule who at first just watched them, then tried, more than once mind you, to burst through the sliding door only to have the birds look at him. Now he has resorted back to bird watching again, apparently running full force into a window hurts.

On the other side, I managed to turn on the natural gas fireplace yesterday and the little retard decided to lick the end of the butane lighter only to invoke a funny looking gag reflex and then a look of "ok, that sucked, what next?" Then, oh yes, the fire was ignited....THIS, had Joule's full attention and he intently watched every flame.





So some time passed, and then we caught him basking in the full heat of the fire, loving every minute of it. He was there for at least 30 minutes while we saw him, and then we left. We came back a while later and he was still there albeit in a different position. It was time to turn the fire off...and this...this, completely bummed Joule out, left him there wondering where all the fire went. That was pretty funny, as you can see by the pictures.



Well, I am done for now. Have to drink the rest of my beer, which isn't local, but still a good one. We have only gone to 4 breweries and we have so much more to go too, hehe.

Welcome to Silverdale!

Welcome to Silverdale! That's what the sign said as we exited the freeway and turned onto Silverdale Way - the light at the end of the tunnel... a very long tunnel. It meant we were finally *almost* home.

That was two weeks ago.

Now, here I am, in my new, on-the-way-to-being-a-home, on Granite Ln NW. A quite little road on the "ridge-tops" of Silverdale. A nice family filled neighborhood of townhouses and groomed lawns. As a-million-miles away as you can get from the quintessential Seattle life, everyone thinks you will be living when you say you're moving to Washington - and I love it.

Silverdale is located in Kitsap County, on the Kitsap Peninsula, a sub-peninsula on the east side of the Olympic Peninsula, due west of Seattle. They entire peninsula has about 15 towns/cities on it, all within a 20-30 minute drive from our driveway (Silverdale is conveniently located somewhere near the middle of everything).

Now that you know a little bit about where we are, I am going to spend the rest of these posts telling you about what we're doing. Current projects around our home, some interesting pieces of trivia about the area, the places we have found and would like to share. This is going to be the easiest way to keep everyone in the loop - and for me to provide some useful information to others coming into this area.

Smile.