Garden 2014

I got my tomatoes in the ground before the end of March. We had a freeze warning a couple of weeks into April. I tented the plants with some old sheets.


It wasn't too bad. I think I lost one tomato plant, but it might come back.

The strawberries survived and are producing fruit.


We've eaten 4-5 so far, but some animals have discovered them and there are now bites out of the ones that are growing.

We've had a pretty cold spring. The benefit of the cooler temperatures, tomatoes already growing.


Isn't that awesome!!!!

I didn't do much with my compost this winter due to the broken wrist. I discovered that cold composting doesn't kill pumpkin seeds. After a quick screen of the compost, I tilled it into the box before planting the tomatoes.


After a week or two tons of baby pumpkin plants were going. I moved a couple and plucked the rest. I'm still plucking the rest.

I don't know if the transplants will survive, but if they do, maybe we'll get from free pumpkins for Halloween.

Garden 2014

My garden has been pretty pitiful. After breaking my wrist in November, I did zero outside chores. All dead plants were left looking dreadful until this weekend.

Even though my wrist isn't near 100%, I couldn't let my garden go this summer. This is pretty much the very last weekend to get tomatoes in the ground and hope for a decent crop. Last year we had a lot of late cold rain and I didn't get them in until mid april. We didn't even get a dozen tomatoes.

This year, since it is still pretty late, I purchased bigger plants. J & DH wanted big 2 lb tomatoes so we got some sort of beefsteak. I don't know what it was, just that it came in a big pot and it is suppose to produce big tomatoes.

I also have dreams of multitudes of Roma tomatoes so I can roast them like some blog post I recently read (but can't find because they cancelled Google Reader and feedly doesn't provide a search within your blog list or maybe they do but you have to pay for it but I can't bring myself to pay for it since I'm still so mad at the demise of Google Reader.)  I bought some Roma tomatoes. They didn't have bigger plants, so I had to buy itty-bitty ones. I don't know what will happen, but I can cross my fingers and hope for the best.


I also bought a poppy plant because I thought they looked pretty.


Three surprises in the garden.

I planted a hellebore 3 years ago and it isn't amounted to much. It stayed about the same size, but it was never eaten or trampled or killed. It just stayed the same. I looked out the window this week and noticed something white. I was happy to find it wasn't a piece of trash but a flower.


The plant doubled in size and is flowering. I guess it just needed time to establish itself.

The second surprise is strawberries. I've planted them every year for the kids and we've never gotten much out of them. The birds get to them before we do. I wasn't planning to plant them again this year. But went I went to rake the leaves out of the bed I uncovered the strawberries from last year growing and already producing!


(It is sort of hard to see but under the bright green leaf in top left are two baby green strawberries)

The third surprise. A tiny baby garter snake. It was so cute!


It was nice to pull some weeds and get some plants in the ground but I can already tell that my wrist isn't happy with me. Off to ice it down!

zucchini

We've had a day or two of rain the in past few weeks. My garden had pretty much wilted in the August & September heat. I didn't think much of it until A sent me a text with a picture of a massive zucchini.


See it was massive. 4+ lbs of zucchini. I put it on the counter intending to do something with it. In the mean time, it rained again.




Then we got these two zucchinis. 7+ lbs of zucchini total.

Finally Sunday, I had to do something about them before they went to waste. Never before have I been so glad to own a cuisinart food processor. It made quick work of those huge squash.


I froze 6 bags of the shreds. After all that work, I had to make something right away. I also had some overripe bananas on the counter. I love google. After a quick search, I had a recipe.


An hour or so later, I had zucchini-banana bread. Yum!

Goodbye to the caterpillars

So, there haven't been caterpillar updates in awhile. That's because my caterpillars are gone. I guess hungry birds got them. There were too many to count at first. Then it went down to seven, then four, then one, then none. I'm assuming that the big one went off to chryaslis somewhere and is now a pretty butterfly. Next time I'm bringing them inside. Forget leaving things to nature!

Instead of caterpillars, we're watching the flowers bloom.




And tonight I picked the first tomato!

Garden 2013

I haven't done any garden posts this year. It didn't start off very well.

My tiny baby tomato plants didn't make it through the very rainy cold first weekend of Spring Break. I came home to find a couple of shriveled up plants. I went to the store and bought more, only to lose them in a late freeze a few weeks later. I quickly replaced them and they seem to be doing well. I hope I'll get some tomatoes this year.


I planted some herbs behind the tomato box. They took a hard hit with the freeze too. The dill made a major come back (I don't like dill, it is caterpillar bait.)

 

The lone jalepeno is looking better but something is eating it, I suspect that plant eating dog of ours.


The basil is looking bad. I'm thinking it might be time to go buy another one before it gets too hot.


J planted corn again this year. B planted carrots but nothing came up. The seeds were old. I think this might be my last year for corn. I'd much rather use that box for something else.


The garlic I planted last winter is surviving the dog, I hope. He keeps running back there and walking all over it.  Again, I think he is eating the clover that I haven't bothered to weed out yet.


The strawberry plants already have fruit on them. Maybe this is the year we get something out of our strawberries.


We planted some squash, zucchini and spaghetti. There are sunflowers growing behind. I think I'm going to have to move them around. B planted them quite close together. I wonder if you can transplant sunflowers. Will they survive?


In addition to vegetables, I planted a heuchera.


It is looking spindly, but I'm hoping it will grow into a pretty plant like this one I planted two year ago.


Speaking of plants I put years ago, this gerbera daisy bloomed for the first time since I planted it for DH's 40th birthday party 2.5 year ago.


The bloom is fading and the picture's out of focus but I had to include it because I was so excited about the flower. I was surprised by the yellow-orange color too. It should have been red like this one.


The red gerberas are growing like gang busters.  I guess it is a good year for gerbers!

Tomatoes for Christmas

My mom took a trip to Lancaster, PA with her quilting friends this fall to check out Amish quilting or whatever is it you do on a quilting trip. She also found my Christmas present, heirloom tomato seeds.


I've never grown tomato plants from seed before but decided to give it shot. I looked up some information on my favorite gardening blog and headed to amazon.  A few days later a greenhouse and some popup seed pods arrived on my neighbor's front porch. (We're having house number issues and our stuff keeps getting delivered to their house. I'm ready to go paint their numbers on the curb to put an end to it!) After two days, I realized I hadn't received my packages so I went looking for them. (The neighbors rarely go out their front door so they didn't realize they were there, but she did call me right after I picked them up to let me know.)


Greenhouse and seed pods in hand, I set out to grow some tomatoes last Friday. Watching the seed pods pop up was cool, I should have waiting and let the kids do that part.




Tomato seeds are tiny. I needed a quarter in the picture to give size perspective.


I planted the seed and then I peeked every 10 minutes or so. I'm not sure why, I knew they wouldn't grow in 10 minutes. I was a just little excited.


I didn't have to wait long. Five days later, I had this. See those tiny green plants growing!

garden cleanup

Today 'clean the garden' was at the top of my to do list. After some relatively cool days, today was not the day for cleaning out the garden.  It was humid and rained a bit, then the sun came out and it got hot. Nasty, sticky, sweaty hot. Nice description, huh? It wasn't pleasant. With a few breaks for the heavier rain, I managed to get about 2/3 of the garden clean up done.

Here is what it looks like after a few months of neglect.

The dead tomatoes


Giant Turks Cap taking over the dead cucumber/watermelon/corn/green bean patches. It was massive.


It was nice to find some plants still growing under all that mess.

Jalapenos & basil


A tiny watermelon or two


B's little red impatiens.


The gerbera daisies


Here is vegetable half of the bed cleared out.


And the pile for bulk trash


You can see how massive that turks cap was. Some of the branches are close to 8 feet.


After all that work, I got to enjoy a treat, the baby watermelon.



I only got about 2/3 of the work done. I need to finish trimming back the turks caps. I need to shift the compost and add it to the raised beds. I'd love to get a big delivery of mulch and cover the bed well. I need to move the grass clippings from the side of the house into the mulch pile and get it cooking for the spring. Plus the vines are starting to take over the non-vegetable half of the bed. I need to attack them soon before they take over again.

I do feel good about the work I did get done and I crossed it off my to do list for now.

since the weekend

We've been busy.  Of course, we've been busy. We're always busy. I checked, I have 66 blog posts with the word "busy".

Here's what's been happening since the weekend.

Friday night, J played baseball and I got to go watch. Here he is at bat and taking his walk.




Saturday night, A baked a cake to celebrate DH's birthday with the family.


The crazy cousin dog Chinook ate part of it. We ate around the dog slobber while enjoying the ND/MichSt game with the cousins and friends.

Today was Big Green Egg Day!


DH is excited. Wowa is excited. I don't know who is more excited. Of course, we were too busy to try it out today but I think we're going to make something on Friday.

While picking up the big green egg, I bought myself an anniversary present.


Yes, we got married 14 years ago today. Of course, we were too busy to celebrate tonight. J had a baseball game and I had a meeting at school for 7th grade parents regarding high school. I thought it was too early for that meeting. I think I was right. DH & I did celebrate with a nice lunch out and then the 'pick up the big green egg' errand.

While photographing the big green egg, I noticed my serious neglect of the garden.


I really need to clean it up. I've been avoiding it with the excuse of avoiding west nile. Too many mosquitos and too hot. Well, the heat has cool off so I think I need to get back too it.  Speaking of west nile.


I had the garden trifecta of a hummingbird, a butterfly and a bee all at the same time on my turk's cap. I can only see the butterfly but you have to believe me when I say the others were there too. I haven't seen too many bees since they sprayed for west nile. I'm glad to see they are back. We had a discussing with my mom on Sunday about hummingbirds so it was cool to see one.