Tag Archives: onions

August 10, 2021 · 9:19 am

Keepin’ on “Keepin’ On”

Ranker

I’m keepin’ on keepin’ on regarding my efforts to lose the lard. My old body is stubborn, but I’m eating right, exercising, either going by my routine or working outside in the garden. I’m trying to drink all the water. My efforts vary, but yesterday was a 4-bottle day. Nothing exciting to report, but efforts continue.

This is my square foot garden. I finished the weeding of the six 4’x4′ foxes. The next step is to spray the soil alternative with EIGHT to kill the bugs and KILLzAll to take care of any weed roots I missed. Finally, I’ll cover the boxes with tarps to stay until the next planting time. The heat index today and tomorrow are supposed to be around 110 F., so I’ll do what I can in the mornings and then wait until the next day.

The onions are drying now. The sun, wind, and any rain will work together so I can put them in mesh bags and hang them on hooks in the pantry soon. I’ll check when we get back from doing errands to see if we have any ripe tomatoes to gather.

Not sure what the rest of the day will hold. As usual, I would appreciate a quiet day.

Have a wonderful Tuesday.

Leave a comment

Filed under DIET!, exercise, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds, Thoughts on a ________

Tagged as , , , , ,

May 14, 2021 · 9:32 am

Garden Progress

Raised bed square foot garden May 13th
This is cabbage. I’ve never tried to grow this before and I’m like a kid at Christmas. The center portion is where the head of cabbage is forming. I’m going to find as much information as I can. It’s FUN!
One kind of lettuce.
2nd kind of lettuce
Can you see the cute yellow crookneck squash?
I have blossoms on the tomato plants, although none show in this picture.

The forecast is for thunderstorms EVERY DAY between the 17th and the 27th. I’m going to try to get a nice harvest in, either today or tomorrow, before all the rain starts.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gardening, Healthy Eating, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

April 22, 2021 · 10:16 am

Garden Progress

Pinterest
Butter Crunch Lettuce
Spinach
Zucchini

I’ve been covering my veggie plants and tomato planters with sheets for 4 nights now, and so far, things seem to have come through the freezes all right. The Zucchini has had the most reaction. I’ve had to cut off several leaves from the plants. They blackened with the frosts and freezes. There is enough left of the plants that still looks good I think they will make it.

According to the weather website we are now past the freezes. This is really unusual here. Usually, our last frosts are April 5th, and that is even pretty late since I have been trying to grow things. We are supposed to get rain tonight and all day tomorrow.

I have the sheets spread out on the fencing around the garden, trying to dry it out during the day today so I can bag them up and put them away.

I HOPING that things will get back to normal for gardening soon.

Although the veggies seem to be doing all right, my elephant ear bulbs did not make it over wintered in the garage. I have finally given up on them and ordered more bulbs. I am hoping those will arrive soon so that I can get them into the ground.

I gathered my first harvest of the year recently, and we enjoyed a main meal salad last night, featuring our own spinach and lettuce! It’s been quite awhile since we were able to do that. I loved it!

Leave a comment

Filed under Gardening, Healthy Eating, Mother Nature, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 25, 2019 · 1:21 pm

Toward the End of Garden Harvests

I just came in from taking a quick look at the garden, and then to the other end of our house to the tomato planters. This is today’s harvest, but it’s obvious that the super-hot weather lately has brought a halt to most of the harvests now.

We have had a wonderful time this year. We had a LOT of lettuce, radishes, and tomatoes, and were able to share some of each of these with our friends. The zucchini made big plants, and we harvested several zucchini, but I’ll read about how we can do better on these next year. I also want to plant yellow crookneck squash next time.

The cantaloupe was fun, but all we have are either green or yellowish small ones, all hard as a rock with vines spreading everywhere. I have no clue if they’ll actually continue to grow and ripen or not. Another subject for a lot of reading.  The red onions are still looking good. As soon as the weather gets a bit cooler, I’ll start looking to see if any are ready to come out of the ground.

 

Beautiful World

Of course when I was the farthest away from the house, the rain started. I toweled off when I came in, but it’s a very good thing I’m not water-soluble. :0)

7 Comments

Filed under Gardening, Mother Nature, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

July 29, 2019 · 1:28 pm

Monday’s Harvest

It’s been about a week since I’ve been able to get out to the garden. Needless to say, there is a LOT to do out there now.

I did some weeding and harvested this zucchini and some tomatoes. I’ll go back out there later and prune a bunch of stuff and do more weeding.

We have some cantaloupe!  I used several plastic ‘bowls’ with holes in them that allow the cantaloupe to grow while keeping them off the soil.  I have no clue if we’ll actually get anything edible, but I’m like a kid waiting for Christmas watching them grow!

I’ll try to get some pics of the garden later to share.

2 Comments

Filed under Gardening, Healthy Eating, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds

Tagged as , , , , ,

June 6, 2019 · 3:31 pm

Eau de OFF!

Home Guides – SFGate

The rain finally stopped!  I’ve just spent an hour tying up tomato plants for better support and then weeding in our raised bed square foot garden. I used “Eau de OFF!” spraying myself heavily from stem to stern before heading outside. I forgot to wear my sweat band, but I’ll remember that for session 2 today.

I finished two more of the six wooden box planters in the garden. I still need to finish the onion box and then things will be pretty much under control again. I’m planning to take radish seed to get more started in several squares.

__________________

Finished session 2.  I’m still working on the onion box. I asked my good friend Reagan Opio from LinkedIn what I should do about the damaged onion tops. He said, “Leave the ones that are only bent. Cut off the ones that are broken.” So that’s what I’m working on now. As I type here, though, this old lady is huffing and puffing and guzzling ice water. So the rest will have to wait for session 3.

I wanted to share with you the progress on the zucchini! I’ve never grown it before, or seen it grow. The only thing I figured was that it was a vining type plant and would probably take up a lot of room.

The zucchini are almost like a ‘bouquet of bloom.’  There are actually FOUR zucchini growing on this plant.

More on another plant.

And two more here.

And three more here!

I’m about to head out to finish cleaning up the onion tops a bit, and then that’ll be it outside for the day.

I hope YOU are having a fine day, too!

 

2 Comments

Filed under Gardening, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds

Tagged as , , ,

May 23, 2018 · 12:55 pm

Yesterday’s Harvest

I’m grateful for the harvest yesterday. In the picture above you can see that my spinach plants are not enjoying the heat. Lettuce and spinach are cool weather plants and I usually enjoy quite a harvest before the too-hot begins. I’ll harvest as much spinach as possible because I can freeze it.

 

The head lettuce leaves are still okay, but looking a bit stressed. These plants are happier than anything else, with the exception of the radishes, in the square foot garden right now.

 

I’m sad because the really hot-too-soon in the season weather we’ve been having is causing the romaine lettuce to bolt. I’m not sure how much more I can harvest before the leaves taste bitter and I have to compost the plants.

 

We’ll enjoy the fresh lettuce and spinach for salad each day for as long as possible. I’m not sure whether I’ll get more broccoli, but the hope is that I’ll get more from the shoots from the main plant after the center has been harvested. The radishes and onions are doing fine, although some of the green tops of the onions are shooting up and trying to make seeds. The tomato plants on the other side of the house are growing rapidly. They like the heat. I have a few blossoms, so I’m hopeful we’ll enjoy a nice crop this year.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Arkansas, Challenges, DIET!, Favorite Things, getting the lard off, Greenwood, Healthy Eating, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds, taking care of yourself

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

April 26, 2018 · 10:36 am

Square Foot Garden Progress – April

 

Yesterday I showed you the first harvest from our spring veggie garden. I’m delighted that everything seems to be happy so far.

The raised bed square foot garden consists of six 4’x4′ wooden boxes about my chest level filled with Mel’s Mix (a combination of peat moss, vermiculite, and three or more kinds of compost.) The boxes are divided into ‘squares’ by stretched string. I have opted to space things out a lot more this year because I lost a lot of produce by having the plants growing into each other. I decided to opt for a lot more air and space for each plant and see what happens.

We also have tomato plants in two converted brick planters on the other side of the house. We’ll plant another group of tomato plants soon so that we can space out our harvest and extend it as much as possible.

In the picture above you can see broccoli plants, spinach, iceberg head lettuce, romaine lettuce, and onions. I’ll add some radish seeds soon (as soon as I get the squares weeded) and also celery (when the ones I started in the house are large enough.)

Each box has a sprinkler in the center that are connected by pieces of hose. These are all tied to a main hose that connects to a rural type outside faucet. We put a timer on it so that the garden is irrigated each morning.

I’m going to wash spinach, romaine, and iceberg lettuce for our salad today harvested yesterday from the garden. I hope that one day we can eat our own broccoli!

Leave a comment

Filed under Arkansas, DIET!, Greenwood, Healthy Eating, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

March 30, 2018 · 3:07 pm

Between Deluges

The Nourished Soul

I almost didn’t recognize the huge orb in the sky this morning. It’s been at least a week since we’ve seen it, and it was truly a glorious sight. On one of the many ‘walk-the-doggies’ trips I’ve taken today, I took some pictures of my veggie garden.

 

We built our raised bed veggie boxes with drain holes, but we’ve been getting SO much rain relentlessly, I was afraid I would find the boxes washed out and the veggies on the ground. Happily, everything seems to be doing well.

 

Here is iceberg lettuce and some onions.

 

This is the north side of the garden. You can see broccoli, spinach, onions, iceburg lettuce, and romaine lettuce.

 

Here’s a better pic of some spinach and some romaine lettuce, plus some onions.

 

This is the south side of the garden.

And here is the first group of tomato plants. I plan to plant more in a couple of weeks to extend our harvesting season.

Leave a comment

Filed under Healthy Eating, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds

Tagged as , , , , , ,

March 13, 2018 · 6:57 pm

The Spring Garden is Started!

I got my plants in this afternoon. This picture gives you an idea of where the garden is in relation to our shop.

 

We have six 4’x4’x8″ raised bed boxes in our garden. It is surrounded by fencing, with chicken wire also around the bottom. I’ll run some bright surveyor’s tape around the perimeter about chest high and also down each of the guy wires at the corners to warn critters that there is a structure here.

 

I’m planting fewer things this year, with wider spacing. I planted 12 broccoli plants, 12 romaine plants, 12 spinach plants, and 12 iceburg lettuce plants. I had already planted two bunches of onion sets. I have several empty squares. I’ll plant some radishes, plus celery transplanted from plants started in the house later.  I’m going to play with growing some gourds because my friend Kay brought some seeds to Lunch Bunch recently. :0) I also have a six pack of tomato plants still in the greenhouse. I’ll wait a couple of weeks to plant them.

 

Last year I  lost some produce because the plants got too large and crowded each other out in the squares. This year I’m only planting one plant per square (other than the onions) and we’ll see how that works.

 

In this picture you can see the line of trash cans along the back of the shop, plus the blue tarp, etc. The light gray trash cans are filled with the components of Mel’s Mix (peat moss, vermiculite, mushroom compost, barnyard compost, and cotton burr compost.) I have our personal composter toward the house. The darker gray trash cans hold supplies for planting.

I had some trouble with the end of one of the irrigation hoses being messed up. My good husband came out and replaced the messed up end of hose with a new end and then we could water the garden! We won’t put the system on a timer until we’re sure all chance of frost and  freezing are past.

3 Comments

Filed under DIET!, Healthy Eating, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds

Tagged as , , , , , ,

March 16, 2017 · 2:46 pm

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Ashevillage

 

Here is one row of our garden. You can see three ‘boxes’ from front to back tied together by the irrigation system, which is on a timer we can control. Most of the garden is in now.

 

This is the second row of the garden with another three boxes.

I just went over and hugged my husband again, thanking him (1) for the idea of our building a raised garden (when he saw how very hot, tired, and achy I got getting up and down, planting, weeding, and harvesting the garden on the ground), (2) for all the time and energy he spent building and installing the boxes, cutting and welding the support tables that hold up the wooden boxes, designing the irrigation system, (3) for encouraging me to spend what I needed to get – and keep – things going in the garden.

 

I visit the garden at least once a day – covering or uncovering the plants in protecting them from freezes, pulling the weeds that install themselves even up in the air, pulling off dead leaves on the plants, taking pics, and – the best part – when I can actually start harvesting what we’ve grown!

 

I’ve planted Georgia Sweet Onions, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Red Lettuce, Romaine Lettuce, Spinach, Radishes, celery, and spaghetti squash. Probably next month, when the stores have a good selection, I’ll get three tomato plants. In another three weeks, I’ll get three more, making a total of six. We have two brick planters on the east side of the house converted to square foot gardens, filled with Mel’s Mix, ready to receive the plants.

 

We’re off to a good start!

Do you like to grow veggies? I would love to hear from you, comparing notes on how you do it.  I would love to hear about tips you have on getting a healthy crop, suggestions you have so that I can do a better job. I’m a real novice and appreciate all the help I can get. :0)

4 Comments

Filed under Arkansas, DIET!, Gardening, Greenwood, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

March 8, 2017 · 6:08 pm

Our Garden is Officially Started!

This is the first time we’ve had all six raised bed square foot garden boxes in our garden! We have SIX 4′ x 4′ x 8″ boxes on legs connected by an irrigation system so that we can water everything on a timer. Each box has a sprinkler in the center. The timer is between the house and the garden, and we can either just turn it on to water manually, or use the timer so that all gets watered for a specific amount of time daily.

 

We have fencing plus chicken wire around the garden to keep critters out. The pink tape is to keep deer from running into the fencing at night. We can put bird netting and shade fabric over the top of the garden, if needed.

 

I found SPINACH plants!  Hooray!!!!!!!

 

 

These are romaine lettuce plants.

 

This is red leaf lettuce.

 

Georgia sweet onions.

 

Cauliflower.

 

Broccoli.

I have moved some of my window sill plants to the back porch in preparation for moving them out to the garden. I have some celery plants and some spaghetti squash plants. My spinach seeds have tiny sprouts on the window sill now. I may have some more spaghetti squash plants.

I’ll probably get more plants tomorrow. I want the local co-op guy to REALLY know how much I appreciate his getting spinach plants this year.

We have some issues with water pressure right now on the irrigation system. After messing with things for quite awhile this afternoon, we think we must have a hose blowout somewhere between the well house and the garden, but we were too tired to tackle the problem today. Tomorrow is another day…

 

6 Comments

Filed under Arkansas, Challenges, Changes, DIET!, Gardening, Greenwood, Healthy Eating, Square Foot Gardening - Raised Beds

Tagged as , , , , , , ,