The Commune No More...

The commune has moved on but we're still gardening. Find us here...

Around the Commune: Where are you guys?

I'm sure that's what you're asking yourself. What's going on with the garden? How are all the plants? Yes, yes. Here's an update.

Mx moved out. He got a great oppuetunity to go to law school and off he went. Congratulations, Mx!

When Mx moved out, Kv took is place upstairs.

Mt, not to be outdone, is getting ready to move off to India (with a quick stopover in Okinawa, Japan first). :sigh: We all hate him now because he's just soooo much cooler than us. :pout: (<3 you, Mt!)

This all means that Nk has the back apartment all to himself (soon).

Jn has a new job lined up to start soon. Congratulations, Jn!

Al, Rb, and I are just doing our everyday thing. Nothing super new or special here.

So now you know what we are all up to... you probably want to know about the garden:

Well... we live in Texas and it's ridiculously hot these days. So, being the lazy hippies we mostly are, there isn't a lot getting done with the garden. We decided to skip our July planting and wait until the heat has dispersed and we will actually do the projects we want to do.

Right now we are barely managing to water the plants we have and pick the food they give us.

Also, Jn has saved some of our cucumber and jalapeno seeds. He's going to try to plant them and see what happens. And our tomato plants that were looking bad are looking better after a treatment with ash.

Stay cool!

Plans for July 1-15th planting...

We have 3 major points to hit in the next two weeks. (Everyone was supposed to have 10$ to me by today, btw... but I only have mine so far.)

• mulch: We have a big problem with erosion and water retention, especially in our side garden. We decided at our meeting to mulch this area first, about 2-3 inches deep. We'll probably mulch the rest of the garden eventually (hopefully even the containers) but, due to being broke-ass hippies, we're going to start slow.
• compost: Our new planting area (the fence garden, as we call it) needs its soil amended to help our yummy food grow. We didn't do much towards this on our first set of gardens but want to improve our gardening awesomeness with each new step. We'll be buying enough compost to make some compost tea to spread over all the gardens and then hopefully have some of the raw stuff to mix in with out 'compost' from the pile behind the shed.
  
• planting:
• First... the fence garden (NEW!) will have eggplant, carrots, radish, marigolds, pole beans, roma tomatoes (to make into tomato paste) and some random herbs and flowers.
  
• Second... across the driveway, in our side garden, we won't be changing much. But we have a few tomato plants that aren't going to make it (oddly, the ones that are actually producing fruit). So it may behoove us to buy a few new tomatoes to replace them with. Also, a few more marigolds and a couple new bell pepper plants to fill the holes in the garden would help. We also need to take out the cilantro down the center row and plant parsley.
• Third... and finally... the front garden gets a makeover. The row of cucumbers will stay as is, but we'll pull out our bean plants to make room for MORE CUCUMBERS! In the empty space up front (which was supposed to have Brussels sprouts) we are going to plant squash plants (zukes, yellow squash, and one other variety). [The confusing drawing in the bottom right-hand corner diagrams how we plan to plant the cukes, and maybe the squashes. It's a fairly hard-to-draw recommendation by the lovely gardeners at Redenta's, one of our local gardenries. It will be explained via pictures when we actually do it. ;) ]

Yum!

Changing colors...

Our red cherry tomatoes are kicking arse. Two out of three plants already have tomatoes that are ready to eat. Several of us hippies have already noshed on some of them (and were very pleased)! There should be enough of these to give each of us a couple a week (not much, but it's something for our labor). I'd say 2 of these plants would be about right per person.

As for our other tomatoes... all of them are flowering but...
Only the purple cherokee (one of them) has made any fruit. This little guy has been hanging their green as the day it was born for well over two weeks. (I'm not great at being patient... I thought the cherry tomatoes would never turn.) I'm secretly (well, not so much anymore I guess) hoping that we'll get at least 1 hillbilly tomato. They're kind of my pet plants. :shh:
We have already eaten two delicious cucumbers and have one more on the vine that will be ready any day now (and three more babies to boot!). Our beans are still coming surely but slowly. Our jalapenos are producing with a lust that our tastebuds can't keep up with.

And finally... our bell peppers...

We still only have the one fruit to show for all our hard work but it's finally starting to turn! It's a California Wonder and it sure is wonderous! I'd love to see some Blushing Beauties or Purple Beauties but I'll take what I can get.


I have to say that (as with our other hippies) I'm torn between disappointment that our garden hasn't been more productive (partly because of laziness, partly because of being beginners, and partly because that's just how it goes sometimes) and excitement at what is getting done and what we hope to do from here on out.

I guess that's the way it goes, huh?

Bad News, Folks.

Our hardy octet was excited about a new project: CHICKENS!

We had put in much research and design, meetings, and hopefulness. But, alas, today our landlord (*play pompous trumpeting here*) banned us from being able to have them because 'it would draw attention'.

:(

Around the Commune: To work or not to work?

Imagine it's a quiet Tuesday afternoon. The Dallas weather is sweltering at best. The commune is unusually still and deserted. All it's inhabitants are at work or school.

Except two lone hippies with nothing to do.

What did our intrepid hippies choose to spend their afternoon doing?

One choose hard manual labor with old rusty (but effective) tools. The other did crossword puzzles.


It's a good... if lonely... day at the commune. :)

Plant updates!

There are limes starting to show on the lime tree.












The stevia has survived and is coming back much stronger than before.












The mint and catnip are still struggling but haven't died out.

As I mentioned last time the tomatoes, peppers, and cukes are producing. However, we are still having problems with what looks to be early blight on the tomatoes. Even though I trimmed and we've started being more careful about watering, the plants are still turning wilty and yellow.

Our herbs and lettuce are pretty much spent. (We should eat the rest of it soon!)

The beans are almost done for the season...
and we have a plan (mostly) for next season (thanks to last night's meeting).

:whew: Busy hippies!