Busy, busy, busy

I have so many things I want to do and am spending many minutes a day thinking about how to do it all.

I'm starting to plan for our school next year.  My seedlings are growing fast and I need to get the containers together for planting.  We've got regular doctor visits on the calendar and speech appointments.  Soccer is about to consume our lives again.  And on and on.

Pete and I are going to be extras in a cool tv show - FBI: Crimnal Pursuit: Investigation Discovery.

Should be a lot of fun.  I originally sent the info for him to be an extra and the guy sent me a reply asking if I'd like to be one too since I have to be on set anyway.  I said sure, why not and that's how that happened.

I'm carrying my iPhone with me to get pics of the set for Pete's scrapbook that I plan to make one day...along with all the other scrapbooks I plan to make one day.

But I'll have to wait to post any pictures until after the show airs. 

Now back to being busy.

~R

Seedlings

I finally got my seeds in dirt.  I couldn't be happier.

 taken with iPhone

The boys and I did an experiment to see what birds are eating in our feeders.  They recognized the sunflower seeds, of course, but not the rest.  The results so far are in the cups behind the seeding tray.  Only one sunflower seed sprouted and the boys are diligent about watering and watching.  It'll be fun when they all flower.

~R

Garden Woes

Our garden was a total bust this year.  No cucumbers.  Five tomatoes. A handful of green beans and limas.  Oh and a couple of servings of lettuce and spinach.  No zuchinni, no peppers of any kind, and watermelons and cantaloupes that didn't ripen.

 

Look how sad this is. 

I was so disappointed that I didn't even take many pictures.  I'm not sure what happened this time around but I am seriously thinking of going back to the old row planting.  Not sure how we'll handle the moles/voles whatever they are, but this square thing isn't working for me.  I'm sure it works, I've seen other gardeners who use it, but I can't get it right.  I want to not only be able to provide food for my family during the growing season, but also be able to freeze or can items for future use.  I am so envious of the other gardeners I see or read that have been able to do this.

~R

Garden - May 2

Our internet has been down for a week.  I've had to check email and post on FB using my iPhone.  But after many dollars and frustrations with the monopoly that is our internet, we're back online.  I don't know what we'll do when we move out to the country.

Our garden is moving along.  I feel like it is taking longer than last year??

Our lettuce is growing!  I don't know how it'll end up but for now we have lettuce.  Very exciting times around here.  Of course, I'm not quite sure how and when to harvest it.

Corn is growing as expected.

Our bush beans will need string supports soon.  Plan to work on those this week.

Oh and first time for spinach too.  Again not sure how these will do with the hot weather already upon us.  But both the spinach and lettuce are heirloom varieties that are supposed to tolerate heat well.

The broccoli is growing like before but I'd actually like to see some florets this time.  Again, maybe too late.

~R

Giddy Gardener

That's me.  I love this time of year when we plant goodies in our garden.  I love sitting on my deck and admiring our work.  And watching things spring from the ground and grow.

Lots of things are coming up right now.  I love when beans and legumes come up.  The beans that we planted have split open and are growing what will eventually become the bush beans and limas.  I love how the original bean tries to cling on for as long as possible.

One of the first things to break ground this year was our corn.  It was a race against the squirrels and their voracious appetites and we won...this time.

And a little surprise was this tiny fellow.

Last year we tried to grow asparagus and we had these beautiful fern-like stalks that filled their little square.  And that was about it.  So in preparing the garden this year, I pulled the still beautiful fern-like growth out.  I thought I got all the roots but gladly, I did not.  I may have to pull out the silver to dine on this delicious little morsel.  I think I'll designate a permanent location for asparagus now that I'm learning how it grows here.

~R, the Giddy Gardener.

Gardening 2011

We are starting our third year of gardening.  Every year we learn something new and we make changes or adjustments and hope for an even better crop the next time around.


YEAR ONE
YEAR TWO

We start by rereading sections in All New Square Foot Gardening

Then we inventory our seed packets and order new ones.

We prepare our beds by cleaning and sifting out debris and adding in new compost.  Re-twining our square feet.  And then BN and I sit down and decide what to plant and where it will go in the plot.

This year BN wanted to do the planting.  It was fun to watch because he is always so precise about everything.  Every hole was 3 times the size of the seed being planted.  To each hole he added two, not three or one or five, but two seeds and finally the perfect smoothing of the dirt to cover.

And finally, we sit and wait.

~R

It's List Time

It's time for me make a list.  For whatever reason, the day goes by and I've done nothing outside the norm.

The norm being: cooking, cleaning, cooking, cleaning, running the boys to activities, cooking, cleaning, and catching up on Faceb00k.

Then I'm pooped so I sit down in my favorite spot and don't move until bedtime.

I have so many things swirling around in my head and with the nicer weather, I'm feeling like I can do anything.

So far the list is:  Knitting projects, cleaning the office closet so that I can get to all my stuff for organizing my photos to digital scrapbook, ordering gardening seeds and buying compost tea (Because as usual, I didn't make a compost.  Again.)

When I write that all down, it sounds so lame.  Where did my life go?  Oh well, with the sunshine comes renewed hope for more exciting adventures.

What are you doing to shake off the weather doldrums?

~R

My Little Bowl of Goodness

Here's my lima bean harvest.  There's only about 2 tablespoons of beans in the bowl and I plan to eat them one at a time!

This week's garden lesson:  This bushy plant needs more room to prosper and I'll probably need to plant more than one.

~R

The Fruits of Our Labor

We ran outside everyday to check on the progress of this watermelon.  We use the vertical method to grow viney plants and this watermelon became so heavy, the vine was choked off and the watermelon fell off before it was ripe.  We cut it open to find this..

It smelled heavenly, but was so bitter.  No sweetness yet.  It was such a disappointment.  So I decided to make hammocks for them.  My dad calls them diapers but I read this can help with the issue we had and so far so good.  Can't wait for the first one to be ready.

And cucumbers have been coming out since the first of July.  They are doing so great that I had to send four home with my dad the other day.

The exposure in my house is not conducive to indoor plants but I do have three that I bring in in the winter months.  The one in the front and back right are both from the tops of pineapples.  I planted the one in the front about three years ago and the one in the back right about a month ago.  My MIL has one she planted about three years ago and it has a tiny pineapple growing from the center.  Of course she can grow something from nothing, so I don't have high expectations for my pineapple plants.

The one on the left is a peanut plant.  We went to the Peanut Fest here in Suffolk last October and the boys were given a peanut plant.  We brought it home and BN cultivated and babied it over the winter.

Out of curiosity we dug around in the pot this past weekend and found some peanuts!  BN tasted them and they weren't quite ready.  I'm thinking since the peanut festival is in October, that's probably when peanuts should be ready, so we'll check again in a couple of months.

~R

Our 2010 Garden

This is our second year growing a garden.  And while this year hasn't been anymore profitable in terms of vegetables consumed, I think we are learning bit by bit as times goes by.

I did not start the composting bin as I wanted.  That's still on my list of garden-type things I want to do. We did change the location.  Last year's site was constantly in peril.  Boys, basketballs and gardens do not a stocked pantry make.  And that ancient Chinese proverb, out of sight out of mind, er, okay so maybe the Chinese didn't say it, but not being able to see the garden from the house made it easy to forget watering on the super hot days of summer.

But not this year.  This year, I can see the garden from both kitchen windows and the rear glass door.   With that door right off our laundry room, it is no wonder I can never forget the garden.  I spend a lot of time in the laundry room.  sigh.  Anyhoo, we can also see it from the upper deck and the lower deck.  Here's how it looks from both angles.

You are welcome to biggen these, although the lighting was horrible when I took these with my point and shoot, but please don't leave comments about the sad grass.  This is the first year we've had grass since we cut down a buttload of trees last fall and we are proud of it, no matter how pitiful.

I know there is some other proverb about not airing your dirty laundry but since this is clean, I'm free to share it with the world.  We also switched from untreated lumber, which the termites LOVED! to concrete blocks, and weed paper and chicken wire for the base.

What we're growing:  (all seeds are from Heirloom Acres Seeds)

• Eggplant - currently growing, no fruit.
• Watermelon - many fruits growing, none edible yet
• Cucumbers - haven't had to buy one since the first of July - yipee
• Zuchinni - RIP
• Broccoli - RIP
• Roma tomatoes - one tomato so far, bushes are beautiful and flowering
• Cherokee purple tomatoes - no fruit, but beautious and flowering
• Cantaloupe - currently one fruit on the vine - anticipation!
• Asparagus - shoots above the ground, have no idea if anything below ??
• Lima beans - huge flowering bush, one bean, was so excited and then it turned brown and fell off

We also planted strawberries, lettuces of all kinds, spinach, green beans and peppers all of which never showed up for the party.   We'll try the cold varieties again soon when we plant the pumpkins.

Tomorrow, I'll show pics of some of the fruits of our labor. 

~R

My Wee Garden

the "back nine"

the "front nine"

Timidly, BN and I started a garden this year. We constructed two 4x4 raised beds and planted according to the Square Foot Gardening techniques and it has been a learning experience.

First, we planted everything from seed (against my better judgement) and some of it worked. Actually, everything grew something, but not everything produced.

The melons were the most puzzling. They both literally fell off the vines when ripened.

That watermelon was the size of a large navel orange. It was ripe and delicious but I was only able to scoop about a cup of fruit from the rind. The seed packet, "Moon and Stars" shows an oblong melon of up to 40 pounds!

Those cantaloupes? Not much bigger than the very large eggs we get from the farm. I used a 1/4 teaspoon measuring spoon to scoop out the wondrous 1/3 cup fruit. The seed packet, "Hearts of Gold", shows a melon the size of a child's head.

Both types of melons produced very tasty flesh. Both looked exactly like their much (did I say much) bigger cousins in the stores, but why so little? Hmmm.

Farmer error of some sort.. Do you think Mel will return my calls?

~R