Egg shell seed tray update, fall berry bushes, compost tea

Left image: So the egg shell tray experiment earlier this month was a partial success, with 9 out of 10 pak choi egg cells germinating. This isn't the most efficient way to grow seedlings, but I imagine that I'll have quite a collection of egg shells by the time spring rolls around next year!

And on the right, to get ahead of the fall online ordering rush, I sent for a Mojo Berry mulberrry bush and a yellow raspberry. When the pandemic had us all on lockdown in March, garden nurseries were either at full stop or backlogged for weeks in processing orders. I hope we never have to go through that again.

This year I also tried using compost tea for the first time. Take several generous scoops of compost, add water, allow to sit for a day or two, and pour off the liquid into a watering can. This.stuff.works! The amount of growth in everything that I used it on was utterly amazing. For instance, my potted kaffir lime tree. Note the leaves to the left: these are normal size, the same size when I first bought the tree. To the right are the leaves after fertilizing with compost tea. I gave only one application each to the kaffir lime and calamandino, and they look very healthy.

Cosmos varieties and Lilliput zinnia

The small harvests these days consist of the last of the tomatoes, pickling cucumbers, and Mara de Bois strawberries. Not a bad total yield for this year given a late start in June. Tuscan kale and kohlrabi seedlings are in the ground for winter, but the real stars now are the flowers as they continue bloom after bloom. I get so OCD about deadheading spent flowers that they don't stand a chance of reseeding until I say so.

Crimson Emperor nasturtium

August & September in the garden

Chopping down the mirabelle

Since my husband aka MotH does not read my garden blog I'm just going to come right out and say it: I'm glad he's back at work! It has been quite the extended summer what with his smartworking from home during lockdown and then the 4-day work weeks when the company finally reopened. But when the office issued a mandatory August off to use up accumulated vacation time, I knew I'd never have time to properly sit down and blog. I would never have my own space!

That's not to say August went by without incident. On the contrary, it was a big deal to get rid of the mirabelle plum. For several years it had been plagued with aphids each season and failed to produce healthy fruit, so we both decided it best to chop it down. I will miss the small yellow plums that reminded us of northeastern France (that's where we first learned of mirabelles), but what to put in its place is still up in the air.

The vegetable yields are off this year since it was only warm enough to transplant in the 2nd half of June: moderate crop of tomatoes, zero zucchini (lebanese), a handful of Parisian pickling cucumbers, and just over a pound of patty pan squash. There were loads of male flowers on the zucchini and patty pan, but hardly any females. I can't say if it had anything to do with the weather (which stopped being hot at the end of August), but all I saw was a lot of powdery mildew and slugs in the garden.

Large patty pan squash bushes. Spread is about 2' with vine length at 3'.

Now, in September, I'm in fall garden mode and hope to get good germination with some new (and old) seeds in my stash. These egg shell trays are something that I'd seen on garden blogs and am giving them a try. If the chard and turnip leaves don't come up (old seeds), the whole lot will simply go into the compost bin.

Mara de Bois strawberry stand

The Mara de Bois strawberries are doing so splendidly that Man of the House solved the problem of limited space by building a stand to start stacking up the planters.  What's nice is that some of the wood is upcycled from an Ikea mattress support board, and the paint was leftover from last year's dog house color.

I am completely sold on Mara's.  They do well in planters and so far haven't presented any health issues.  I've already potted up 10 'daughters' out of 22 plants, and as you can see, they're already putting out blossoms of their own.

Information online says that you can sever the daughters from the mother plant at 4-6 weeks, but as I potted them with roots already growing out of the base, I cut them loose after 10 days.  All of them did suffer (wilted) for a day or two, but after watering them well and placed into a cool, shaded area, they sprung back to life in no time.  The daughters are putting out new leaves (I snip off the blossoms, it's pointless to leave them on at the current growth stage) and I feed them a weak solution of fish emulsion every week.

I thought Mara de Bois produced small to medium-sized berries and they do for the most part, but every so often I get a fairly large one like this. In shortcakes, turned into jam, or eaten fresh are the ways I've been using them. Picked when perfectly ripe (I actually smell them before picking), Mara's are sublime. If I can harvest at least half a dozen large ones at once, dipping them in a variety of chocolate will be the next thing to try.

June hailstorms and a visit to a berry farm

Black and red mulberries (left), tayberries (right)

It seems like the umpteenth time this month that I've had to push, pull, drag or carry potted plants and strawberry containers under protective cover in anticipation of yet another hailstorm. Late spring/early summer is proving to be a test of patience with relentless downpours and fluctuating temperatures. With weather like this, I won't risk doing any transplanting only to have the young veggies and flowers pummeled into the ground. Oh 2020, why did you have to be such a pain in the arse!

Rant over, now to these gorgeous berries that we picked up at a berry farm last week. Searching for info on mulberry trees, I came across Azienda Agricola Martina Biraghi and was thrilled to discover that the farm grows and sells not ony mulberry fruit, but a host of other berries as well. I got the 2 varieties of mulberries (top and bottom on the left) and a couple of tayberries to supplement the small harvest from my tayberry bush at home. I've never had fresh mulberries before and these were sweet and delicious. The tayberries taste like raspberries (they are a cross between a blackberry and red raspberry) so I cooked them down with a bit of sugar into a syrup for pancakes and ice cream.

And the mulberries? Well if there's one thing that immediately comes to mind, it has to be the famous granita served in Sicily! Gelso (mulberry) granita and brioche con tuppo (a sweet dough roll with a top) is a breakfast classic. I made brioche using my sourdough starter and it has been granita, brioche, and whipped cream at any hour of the day.

Mara de Bois: 13 weeks later

First Mara de Bois strawberries

Actually 13 weeks and a day since the bare root plants were tucked into potting soil. These two could've stayed on the plant another day or so, but I didn't want to wait any further for our first taste test. Result? Very good! They taste a little bit like the tiny alpine strawberries that grow wild here, only sweeter and juicier. The size is small to medium, and the shapes range from heart-like to oblong or roundish. I'll try my best to wait for the others to fully ripen and see if there's much of a difference in the level of sweetness. I always figured these would be great for morning breakfast, but after tasting them in the late afternoon after a full day of sun, the warmth and sweet strawberry flavor made Mara de Bois, literally, melt-in-your-mouth delicious.

Several days ago


Strawberry plants all along the railing (super easy pickings!)

Happy Iris Day!

Iris Day on May 8th

It's now day 5 of easing up on lockdown restrictions enforced since March 10th, but the reality of it all is that while some people get to return to work, others may not even have a job to go back to. My husband continues to smart-work from home (down to 2 days a week with the other 3 paid in Italy's version of unemployment benefits) and will do so until his employer has jumped through every single hoop to make the workplace environment as safe as possible. If all goes according to plan, he returns to a sterile office at the end of the month.

But enough of Covid-19 woes. As I said, restrictions have eased a bit, and now we can venture beyond the 150 meter limit from our home! I know, that edict was so maddening and frustrating for the past 2 months, but now we've got the go ahead to walk about as long as we're within the confines of our municipality. We make sure to have our masks ready as a precaution, in the (unlikely) event that a bunch of neighbors might get out for a stroll themselves.

It was a beautiful full moon the other night and having moon on the brain, I took some photos of white and violet lunaria annua (common name, honesty). They grow like weeds on the side of the road; can't believe my favorite garden catalog actually sells seeds. I was aware that the Latin name had something to do with the moon, but I had no idea that in other countries, the plant is associated with moola. Silver dollars? Money plant? Coins of Judas? Wikipedia: Lunaria_annua

Lunaria annua, known as honesty or annual honesty in English


Lunaria annua in the 1st week of May

Just mossing around

Moss in my yard

Oh how time flies when you've been sidelined by a pandemic. 🦠😷 One moment I'm planting strawberries and the next I'm checking statistics for COVID-19 like how I check the weather - every day and without fail.

But enough coronavirus talk. Spring has definitely arrived and slowly but surely, my store of bulbs, seedlings, and plants are either going into the ground or growing bigger. A few of the Mara de Bois strawberries have flowers on them, and the nashi pear tree is absolutely exploding in blossoms. No April showers yet, but early morning dew seems to be adequate in keeping the greenery lush and happy, and it couldn't be more obvious than by looking at the mossy patches around the yard.

My first kokedama project

Having maybe more than I care to keep around, I made a small kokedama to put in the bathroom. Such an easy project, and there are so many helpful tutorials online. I tucked in several pothos cuttings and a single monstera, but the pothos didn't take well to the constantly moist soil (the leaves yellowed). Now it's just the monstera sticking out of the top. Love that it's low-maintenance. I give it a brief soak in a bowl of rainwater when it feels a little light, allow it to drain, and back on the saucer it goes - that's it!

Mara de Bois strawberry chronicles

I have to confess, in previous years I buy one or two strawberry plants from the nursery, set them in the ground, and pretty much let them fend for themselves. There is no fussing over them, no diligent watering routine, and maybe only a sprinkle of guano if it happens to cross my mind. But after reading so much about the popularity of Mara de Bois strawberries, I figured it was high time I got serious about growing this luscious fruit. First plan of action, get ourselves to Ingegnoli (in Milan) where they had bare root Mara de Bois (an everbearing type) among the varieties on offer. I picked up 25 (19,50€) and a box of fertilizer designated for berries.

On the way home it occurred to me that those fancy french Maras might appreciate a potting soil specifically made for their kind, so we bought 6 (20 liter) bags at the next nursery on the drive back. The following day I spent all morning planting them in window boxes, along with a handful of Framberry runners that I saved from last year. I'm dreaming of berries all summer long but better to not get ahead of myself. I'll track their progress and update in future posts.

Houseplant Appreciation Day

My only claim to owning a true 'houseplant' is the pothos in the center. Everything else (the potted citrus) go outdoors as soon as its warm enough to set them out.

Happy belated new year! New year, new garden plans. And if you've arrived here via instagram, welcome to The Proud Garden. The blog used to be a place where I would document the harvests from the growing season, but seeing that I want to break out of the mold and cultivate different, if not unusual plants, the year 2020 seems right for that line of thinking.

These are just a few of the plants I have marked in the nursery catalog:

Miss Pink grapes: attractive and tasty seedless grape, with long, loose clusters. Medium pink-colored, crisp and juicy pulp, with an excellent aroma.

Akebia 'Chocolate Vine': semi-evergreen, rustic, cold-resistant climbing shrub with green leaves made up of 5 leaflets. It produces both female (fragrant) and male flowers on the same plant between April and May. The fruit's pulp has a sweet flavor, with a light melon aftertaste.

Passionfruit: would like to try this in a large vase that I can place in the greenhouse during winter.

Hortblue Petite® blueberry: The first double fruiting blueberry in the world! The first harvest is in July while the second in September. As indicated in its name it has compact growth, reaching a height of 80/100 cm. Particularly suitable for pot cultivation.

Cosmos 'Cupcakes White' 'Sweet Sixteen' and 'Sea Shells': this will be a first-time experience growing these.

And in the vegetable patch (along with the usual suspects):

Celtuce
Lime basil
Lebanese white zucchini
Okinawa bittermelon
Okra 'Blondy'
Uchiki Kuri squash
Yellow Cutie watermelon