These are the tomato suckers this morning. They are looking sad, as you can see, but they haven’t DIED. They are still green, so I THINK that means they are producing ROOTS, the thing I need in order to transplant them into the garden in another week or so – if they live. I can snip off some of the straggly tops and plant the important part down low in the garden planter and then keep my fingers crossed they grow and thrive.
I haven’t loss everything if this experiment is a bust. I can start again, making some tweaks in my techniques, or I can try to simply plant suckers immediately into the garden when I snip them off the main plants and see if that works. It’s exciting to try something new that MIGHT work!
I just came in from weeding the garden boxes. (Phase 1)
I will harvest the head lettuce over the next week or so, depending on the weather. (Phase 2)
The last phase is finishing cleaning out the 2nd of the two boxes whose bottoms gave up so that we can rebuild them when the time seems right.
Since my spinach and head lettuce crop has gone so fast due to Mother Nature sending way too much rain, yo-yo temps and premature summer temperatures now, I’m going to think about whether I want to replant with whatever is available that looks good at the sources in town.
I brought in 3 heads of lettuce that are soaking in the sink now. I’ll clean them up in a few minutes. I’ll take two of them to give to our terrific hair stylist when we go for my husband’s haircut tomorrow. Guess who will be having some salad tonight!
Tomorrow I’ll check on the tomatoes on the opposite end of our yard and take some pics to share with you.
The super rainy, colder-than-usual weather has brought very mixed results thus far in my garden. In my survey a few minutes ago, the first thing was that I need to do some serious weeding in my veggie garden.
This is one of the head lettuce plants. It’s doing GREAT. I should be able to harvest very soon and give my friends a nice addition to their salads or sandwiches.
The spinach is looking ‘pale,’ not the deep green I think it should. I’m not sure if fertilizing it at this point would do any good, but I’ll try that. I’m also not sure if the paleness will affect the taste. I’ll see what information I can find.
Here’s the large tomato planter. The plants have exploded and there are lots of yellow blossoms showing. At this point, I’m not sure if I can handle the branches much, and may just need to try to contain them a bit, giving them as much support as I can.
This is the second tomato planter. You can barely see the green metal supports at the top of the plants now. I was going to try to tie the branches to the supports, but they have exploded now, so I’ll just try to do what I can to keep the plant inside the boundaries of the planter.
The bad news is that after several years now, one of the wooden bottoms to the veggie planters has given way. We knew it would happen one day, but it’s sad anyway. I hadn’t planted this planter yet, so we can leave it and decide how we’ll tackle making a new bottom for the planter, save as much of the Mel’s Mix as possible, and rebuild it.
Here is the part of the bottom that completely gave way and fell down.
To round out our tour of the yard, here is one of the healthier weeds I encountered. I’m not sure right now if I’ll pull it or celebrate its health…
And finally, here is some clematis that we have growing in a pot behind the large tomato planter. The picture doesn’t show how glorious the color is. It’s a real explosion of dark purple. Makes my heart happy.
Full Harvest – I’ll fix a ‘main meal salad’ this evening. :0)
I finished weeding the veggie boxes this morning before the harvest. This shows you the huge amount of little bitty weeds that I’ve been working on.
There is an equal amount of spinach and head lettuce plants in the garden so far. The tomato plants are in two brick planters on the other side of the house.
I have four of the six planter boxes planted so far. I’m hoping to get more plants in the coming week. Not sure what will be available, but I’m looking forward to it.
We have a cold front coming through this afternoon, with accompanying strong wind gusts and large hail.
The colorful blogs on the far left are zeroing in on us, the threat lasting from about 2pm to 8pm tonight.
I’m really delighted because I JUST finished putting in an entire flat of head lettuce, another flat of spinach, and 10 beautiful tomato plants. Even regular hail is deadly to new plants, and LARGE hail will be hard to deal with.
My plan is to cover my two planters of tomato plants with sheets. I have support things around the tomato plants, so hopefully those plus the sheets will keep the hail from battering them.
In the square foot garden, I have four of six boxes full of plants. I’m planning to find something to put on top of the sprinkler at the center of each of the boxes and then to put tarps over each box, held down by bungee cords. Not sure of the details of all this.
I’ll go out after lunch and see what I can do. One of the things I read talked about ‘baseball-sized hail.’ If THAT happens, NOTHING will help. I hope whoever said that is wrong, wrong, WRONG!
Today is supposed to be an absolutely beautiful day, sunny with a high of about 80 this afternoon. I’m ignoring the fact that Tues – Thursday will be really rainy, with our area to receive about 3 inches of rain. I’ll make a point of walking around outside today, looking at my pretty perennial plants that are turning their faces to the sun, drinking in the weather, oblivious to what is to come.
It’s too early yet to uncover my square foot garden (earlier photo above). I’m really pleased that our idea to put weed barrier, cut to size, into the planting boxes, seems to have worked well. The carefully placed bricks held the barriers in place, and hopefully, I’ll just need to uncover the Mel’s Mix in the boxes, hook up the irrigation hoses, and be ready to plant! :0)
Yesterday my husband asked me for help on his computer. He wasn’t receiving a code and was completely frustrated. It turned out that he was looking for it in his email when he should have been looking at his phone. I had to start over in order to fix it, then showed him where to look next time. Later I helped him again when he couldn’t access his email. Then, later, when we were watching 60 Minutes, he tried to explain ‘quantum computing’ to me, but couldn’t dumb it down enough for me to understand. Hahahahahaahah.
“Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle … a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining to unfurl. And the anticipation nurtures our dream.” ~ Barbara Winkler
This won’t happen for awhile, but I’m enjoying dreaming about it. Each year I try to get head lettuce and then several other leaf lettuces to add variety to our salads. I also try to get spinach plants, and of course, tomato plants. Otherwise, I experiment. I grow radishes from seed, celery from cutting off the bottoms of celery I buy at the store and then replant when they sprout in water. I like to grow some sweet onions. My cauliflower and broccoli grow lots of leaves, but I haven’t had much success in growing the edible parts yet. I’ve had mixed results on squash. Maybe I’ll try some herbs on my kitchen counter this year, as well.
A little at a time, I’m thinking about what I want to start with this spring. I would love to be able to supply all of our friends with nice veggies straight from the garden.
I’m thinking about all this now because we can finally negotiate our driveway, and the ice is almost completely gone. We still have areas that could use more chain-saw work, but we’re able to drive up and down without a problem now.
I’ll get out my last planning sheets and see if I can figure out the best places to put the new spring plants. It seems funny to talk about ‘crop rotation’ in chest-high 4’x4′ wooden planters, but it’s just as important here as in humongous commercial farms.
This is such a cute picture. I wish that the raccoons around HERE had a better idea of what “sharing” means, and “respect for property.” Thankfully, we haven’t had any more raccoons eating us out of house and home lately, or tearing up the bird feeders. My husband actually filled the feeder the other day, and the birds came in celebration, flitting around all over the place. If the raccoons would learn to be better neighbors, we could all enjoy the seeds together.
depositphotos
Today is DAY 79 of my daily yoga practice. I’ve decided that I may NEVER build an actual “HABIT.” I’m definitely on the slow end of the spectrum on how long it takes to actually build one. Maybe I’ll just have to be satisfied that I consciously make time for my practice these days. I noticed the other day that our yellow lab, Amber, definitely does the ‘downward dog’ pose and stretch several times a day. SHE’S in good shape, so I’m glad I’m taking a page from her playbook and doing this one, too. :0)
I’m feeling energetic enough this morning that I’m planning to go out and do more work on my square foot garden boxes today. I’ll take containers of both KILLZALL and EIGHT when I go. I want to use the little rake tool to get as many weeds out as I can and smooth the Mel’s Mix out as much as possible. I’ll spray things to encourage any remaining fire ants to die a cruel death (I’m becoming quite vicious in my hate for these little guys) plus spray to kill remaining weed roots. Then I’m planning to take the wheelbarrow and gather 24 bricks to take out there. I’m going to use those to hold down the weed barrier cloth we’re planning to put down in the boxes. My husband said he’ll help me cut the cloth and get those down. Not sure how much I can get accomplished on this, but it seems the weather is perfect today for my efforts.
I’m having a bit of success with drinking more water and trying not to eat anything in-between meals – except for cottage cheese after my yoga practice daily. A couple of pounds have bitten the dust, hopefully to never return. I’m hoping that their ‘friends’ will follow soon. :0)
The Guardian
This looks very much like my cat, Abby, when I do my yoga practice. (Today is DAY 64) She either tries to curl up at my head, upset with me when I put my arms over my head, or sleeps on my feet, making it almost impossible to move them. Yesterday, she curled up beside me and kept batting at me with her paw.
Medical News Today
My husband is sleeping in this morning. I’m waiting for the coffee to be ready. The morning chores have been done.
This weekend I want to spray my garden boxes with SEVEN to kill the fire ants and then KILLZALL to kill remaining weed roots. Then we’ll cover the boxes with weed barrier cloth, holding it down with bricks, and see how it does over the winter.
I just came in from spending an hour out in my veggie garden, weeding.
This was an almost-perfect time to weed. It’s sunny and pretty outside. It’s 83 – a good temperature, but the direct sun made it seem really hot. The Mel’s Mix in the planter boxes was slightly damp. The weeds were plentiful, but very tender and young and easily to root out quickly. I basically used my veggie garden fork and my baby hand-held hoe.
It took me a little longer than I figured to do the weeding. I was grateful that our automatic watering system didn’t come on when it should have, as I needed the extra time to finish weeding the boxes.
I checked the watering system on the way back to the house. It was flashing. I guess a power glitch caused it to go wonky. I was too hot and tired to do more than a cursory reset. It didn’t work, so I’ll get out the manual and see if I can get it straightened out when I’ve had a chance to rest, get my breath back, and hydrate.
My veggies are looking good. I’ll start harvesting the outer leaves of the spinach and leaf lettuce next week. I’ll try to get some pics later to share.
Hooray! We did it! We made it to spring! Whoo HOOOOO!
I was beginning to give up. In Arkansas it almost never snows after my birthday on the 9th, but we broke records in temperatures and amount of snow this year AFTER my celebration of adding another year to my personal total. I couldn’t be happier that MAYBE we’re through with frozen precipitation of any kind. I’ll continue to watch the forecasts for freezing temperatures for awhile yet.
My spring garden is mostly in now. I’ll continue to see if I can find some head lettuce, and I will plant some radishes, but the main part is in now. (The scraggly-looking things you see in this photo are red onion sets)
SpinachLeaf lettuceBroccoliCauliflowerOne of the planter boxes
My husband looked in the shop, but didn’t see our irrigation control timer yesterday. Today I’ll see if I can uncover my counter in the garage and find it. My counter has become the catch-all for everything – including my husband’s zero sugar soft drinks, zero sugar gallons of tea, plus my seed planting stuff, plus tools (garden and otherwise) and more. It is truly awful. At least I’m actually looking for something I need, rather than JUST having to label this a character-building exercise. It MAY keep me going on what will probably be an all day project…
In the meantime, let’s all give Spring a huge hug!
In innate perversity, I want to start my garden today so badly I can TASTE it – in the middle of the snow we had yesterday. If the weather were beautiful, I probably wouldn’t be feeling so antsy to start it. :0)
I looked at the weather forecast for the next 10 days here in Arkansas, though, and there are NO freezes and beautiful weather ahead, so my plans to get my early spring garden going have me chomping at the bit.
I think my husband would seriously think about having me committed if I wanted to go shopping for plants today in the middle of the snow, so I’ll wait for it to melt. Maybe we can shop Monday…
I want to look for spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, and as many kinds of lettuce as I can find to start. I’ll also start some radishes and sweet onions. Anything more would be gravy.
As soon as the snow melts, all I have to do this year is pull the tarps off, hook up the irrigation system, and plant.
This photo gives you an idea of how we’re set up. We have six 4’x4′ wooden boxes like this up on iron supports about my chest height. I’ve filled each one up to the top with Mel’s Mix (peat moss, Vermiculite, and as many different types of compost as I can find or create). This photo doesn’t show the wires we’ve strong across the boxes to create ‘squares’ for planting.
The idea is to alternate plantings so you get the benefits of crop rotation, disease prevention, and weed control. For example, I could plant one broccoli plant in the middle of a square, skip the adjoining squares, and then plant another. You can plant 4 spinach plants in a square, but I choose to only plant one, giving it plenty of room. The picture also doesn’t show the hose that runs down the middle of three boxes, with a sprinkler in the middle of each box, for irrigation. We connect the hoses to a timer.
There is a fence around the six planter boxes to protect the garden from deer. We have chicken wire around the bottom to discourage rabbits, etc.
We’ve also converted a couple of brick planters on the other side of the yard to square foot planters for growing tomatoes.
I’ll post pics when I get the garden started. Ooh! I can’t wait!!!!
We came through the night – with threatened severe storms – just fine. The cold front came through and now it’s 31 degrees F. We have another chance at a ‘wintry mix’ Friday, but I’m really hoping the back of winter has been broken and that we’re moving on to spring. I’m also hopeful that Mother Nature receives the memo and acknowledges the official beginning of spring on the 20th, if not unofficially, before.
My spring garden of veggies is still only a bright spark in my mind. I’ve decided to wait out this week and see what happens Friday. I want to uncover at least some of my raised bed square foot planters and fill them with early spring plants of spinach, lettuce, and broccoli, if not more. (Ours looks much like those in this photo, except we built them up at my chest level, on metal table-like supports, so I don’t have to bend over double or get up and down from my knees.
Meanwhile, our daffodils are determined to put on bold, happy faces no matter what our weather is doing. I’ll gather some more to bring in the house today. Free Arts
I’m definitely starting to have ideas rattling around about playing in my art room. I’ve been finding artwork all over the net that is getting my juices flowing, particularly involving mixed media stuff.
Have a safe, happy beginning to your brand, spanking-new week.
I’m itching to start working in the yard, cleaning up, and planting early spring veggie plants in our square foot garden. I just walked around the yard between sessions of rain and was so excited to see more daffodils blooming here and there.
Then, as I was getting ready to come in, I saw our tulip tree has a gazillion buds plus some that are showing color!
We’ll still get more freezes before we can officially say goodbye to winter, but it really brings up my spirits to see the plants bursting forth.
I’m keeping an eye on the 10-day forecasts to see when I can get serious about looking for early spring veggie plants. All I need to do is pull off the tarps and grab my trowel! (If you’ll pardon the expression…) :0)
We turned off our irrigation system to the yard, and the one to the garden a few weeks ago because of threatened freezes. It always makes me a bit sad because things start to wilt almost immediately when we do.
Our elephant ear plants did really well this year, giving us many hours of pleasure. They are looking quite sad right now. As soon as they are completely down, leaves brown and hanging down, I’ll cut them off as close to the soil surface as possible and lay thick layers of mulch as tightly as I can to see if they’ll over winter in place this time, as digging them up and storing them in the garage in peat moss last year was unsuccessful.
We had kind of a weird growing season this time. Our lettuce did well, giving us lots of nice salads. Our spinach was nice, too. Then things warmed up really quickly, causing all my spring garden to bolt at once. We had nice tomatoes, but due to the weather changes, they weren’t ‘pretty’ this year. Thankfully, our stomachs don’t care about that a bit! :0) This is the way we winter over our raised bed, square foot garden. I carefully weeded, then topped off the 4’x4′ wooden boxes with fresh Mel’s Mix (peat moss, vermiculite, and 3 kinds of compost (I used mushroom, barnyard, and cotton). Hopefully, I won’t have a whole lot to do to prepare the boxes for planting in the spring. I’m already itching to get the plants in as soon as they are available.
I’m going to start getting serious about pruning flower planters and readying things for winter very soon.
The sum total of my ‘harvest’ today. With the over 100 degree F. heat, even with our irrigation system, the tomatoes are boiling right on the vines. I’m afraid we’re almost finished for the year.
I do have some tomatoes from the last harvest in the fridge. They are getting soft, though, so I’ll cut them up and freeze them for stews later on.
I told you before that I still need to harvest our sweet onions from our raised bed, square foot garden so they can start drying. “I” tend to “boil right on the vine” in this heat, too, so I’ve been putting the task off.
We’re supposed to have a cold front moving through this Sunday, so hopefully I can do this, plus start to clean up the garden for the season. Right now it looks like no one cares. :0(
On a happier note, here are the some of the elephant ear plants –
Isn’t this bird wonderful? I want to try to cheer him up.
We are having a quiet day so far today, and I am grateful.
Summer is definitely here now with an afternoon actual temperature of 96 and a heat index at 100+. Little or no rain in the forecast until further notice. UGH
CorvSport.com
The wonderful news is that my husband got the repaired part back in the Corvette yesterday and the vehicle is now sitting in our garage! WOO HOOOOO! After paying the service department at the Chevrolet place in Ft. Smith $85.00 to look at it and tell us the part we needed had been discontinued, we spent $10 for a tool. We didn’t need to buy the replacement part we found on the net – though it was good to know we could have. My husband got the part out, pried the top off the ‘module,’ soldered 4 wires, put it back in the car to test it, and IT WORKED. He took it back out, sealed the top back on, put it back in again (able to get 5 of the 6 screws in) and all the warning lights disappeared.
We were going to take it out for a test run, but he’s going to call the shots on that. He is really sore – particularly the rib muscles on his left side – from lying on the car, stretched as far as he could to reach and fight with recalcitrant parts for HOURS over a three-day period. He has bruises bungs, gouges and scrapes over the backs of both hands and one arm. I’m trying to get him to rest as much as possible over the next several days.
Popular Mechanics
Since he’s like the Energizer Bunny, even when he’s hurting, he got out right before dark and used the riding mower to mow the back yard. Then it was too dark for him to see. He’ll probably finish the yard today, but I’m HOPING he’ll wait until right before dark again. I’ll get out and do the weed whacking today.
The “refurbishing-of-the-critters” project is ongoing. I’ve cleaned and repainted 12 yard critters so far, and am currently repainting a pair of critters we call “Mama Snail and Her Baby” in the shop. I should finish those in the next day or two and will post a picture. The next larger critter is a “peacock” I’ll start after that.
I’m considering shaving Amber, our 95-pound yellow lab. Yesterday I vacuumed the tiled area on our first floor (utility room, dining area, kitchen, pantry, and two half-baths) and easily got an entire dog’s worth of hair in the vacuum canister. I’m due to vacuum the carpeted areas today (foyer, office, and living room) and will probably get another complete dog’s worth. Her hair, as you can see, is short. It amazes me that she can shed that much and still be covered with the normal complement of hair!
It is SO hot here now, that it doesn’t matter that we have an irrigation system on our raised bed, square foot garden. The only thing doing well out there right now is our onions. This has been a really weird growing season. We still have our planters of tomatoes. They aren’t pretty this year, but they are really delicious. I’m going to start trying to pull the onions, spreading them out to dry on a trailer we have with a grilled bed on it, perfect for lots of drainage. I’ll then clean out the garden bit by bit, trying to work in the morning or just before dark to avoid a heat stroke. :0) Right now it looks like no one cares about it. I’ll take pics when it’s more under control.
So far, so good on my garden veggies. We are due for rain this evening-into THURSDAY, with some possibly severe, so fingers are crossed again.
This is the whole garden, except for the two brick planters of tomato plants on the other side of the house and yard.
As you can see here, the zucchini and yellow crookneck squash didn’t like the recent freezes. I’m hoping that the main plants are healthy and that they will put on more leaves now that we have supposedly passed the danger of freezes and frosts.
The spinach is happy.
Buttercrunch LettuceThis is cabbage. I’ve never grown it before so I have no clue what I’m doing. I’m like a little kid watching a magic show. Nook TomatoesAs you can see, these tomatoes need to be weeded.
All appendages are crossed that all my sweet veggies make it through until Thursday afternoon, when the rains are supposed to be over for a bit.
We had rain and a cool front come through overnight. It’s 44 degrees F. outside right now with a bit of a wind, so it feels pretty chilly.
The wonderful fiber optic people came through recently hanging wire for the future. They had to cut branches out of a couple of trees in our side yard that were encroaching on the lines. When they finished, it looked like the trees had exploded or had been hit by lightning, with broken branches hanging down. They said they would neaten things up. I don’t think they decide where they go or what they do each day, so they haven’t been back.
My husband disappeared, and I went to find him. He was coming back from the shop with the chain saw – just the thing I had been trying to avoid. We are a bit long-in-the-tooth now for activities such as chain sawing and hauling big branches around. Since he was determined to handle it, I dropped what I was doing and helped him.
We worked about an hour, but made some headway. At least it looks now as if someone might have had a plan. I’m still hoping that the guys will come back and cut both of the trees down, but I won’t hold my breath.
This is part of what we cut down. This is part of what’s left.This is the rest of what remains
The other thing we did recently was to prepare our raised bed, square foot planters for the winter.
Audrey Hepburn – keepinspiring.me
(We built six 4’x4’x8″ wooden planters and put them on metal supports, kind of like tables, at about my chest level.)
I harvested the remaining onions very carefully, since the fire ants had taken up residence in the planters. It amazes me that they wanted a home so high up off the ground. Unfortunately, they were aggressive about defending what they considered their home. I had to keep hosing the planters down with bug killer, then harvesting as much as I could or weeding until they started to swarm again, over and over until the job was done.
We then re-filled the planters with Mel’s Mix – a combination of peat moss, vermiculite, and as many different kinds of compost as you can find or make. The level of this had really gone down, so it was quite a job to mix up the mix needed to top them off.
We have made this alternative soil process as seamless as possible, with big trash cans holding the ingredients of the mix, and then a used cement mixer to combine things.
We strung some wires across the remaining two planters not used this year to create the ‘squares’ we use for spacing the plants. We decided to wait until spring to replace the wooden strips that we put along the middle of each trio of planters that hold the sprinkler for the middle of each box and connect the irrigation hoses.
We put a pail in the middle of each of the boxes and then covered each box with a tarp. We are hoping this will cut way down on the weeds in the planters for when we uncover things and get ready for spring planting.
I pulled these out of the garden – only a few at a time due to an infestation of fire ants living in my raised bed, square foot planters. I spread them to dry on a trailer that has a nice metal mesh bed perfect for this.
Yesterday my husband cleaned them off with a hose while I was weed whacking. I will finish cleaning them up today, putting them in mesh bags to hang from hooks in our pantry.
I’ve told you that my priority has shifted from ONLY trying to grind through my endless to-do list to making SURE I have some fun each day and getting exercise. This is the latest therapy to come from my art room. I wish you could see the sparkly nature of it. The leaves are done with clear glitter glue, but on the blue tee the paint turns a really nice, sparkly green.
I will earn my second gold star for the week, doing a nice long session of ‘old lady’ yoga stretching this afternoon. Since I sloughed off for so long, I have essentially started over, (starting again last week) but I AM beginning to feel a bit looser. I’m particularly feeling it in my mid-section (!) when I walk. My husband sits in his recliner reading as I practice my stretches. We both laugh at my ‘Rice Krispies body’ – with all the audible snap, crackling and popping as I change positions.
I am MUCH happier since I decided that life is too short to only do fun things ONLY when the list has been accomplished. Now I’m accomplishing a reasonable number of things, but also feeling better health-wise and happier in my heart.
I have told you that our son is here, having traveled to be with us from Thailand where he lives and works. He is helping us find our new normal since my husband’s stroke in July. Even with the health scare, it’s a joyful time when he is here. I love our talks, his wonderful sense of humor, and his gold-medal-winning hugs that fill my heart to overflowing.
Mother Nature is still teasing us with HINTS of the coming fall, allowing us to enjoy having the doors open in the mornings to catch a wonderful breeze and then joyfully frying us like eggs in the afternoon with heat indices of around 100 degrees F. My raised bed, square foot garden is breathing its last, even with our irrigation system. It’s just too hot for them. It’s too hot to start fall plants, as well, (it’s at least a gazillion degrees in our greenhouse) so we wait for relief. My husband wants me to try to grow strawberries next spring, so I’ll start reading everything I can find on that.
I hope that YOUR Tuesday brings you something that makes you smile.
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.
We’ve gone from torrential rain, to “pea soup” humidity here. Last night a cool front came through, taking the humidity with it. Right now it’s 80 degrees F. outside, bright sunshine, and absolutely wonderful. AHHHHH!
I took a walk around the garden and yard to celebrate and wanted to share –
GARDEN
You can see the HEIGHT of the zucchini plants here – well over my head as I stand at the planters.
Lots of vines, greenery, and blossoms. No cantaloupe as yet.
The zucchini is producing nicely.
The tops of my sweet red onions were trashed during the last few storms we had. I cut off the broken tops and trimmed the bent ones. The actual onion bulbs are looking okay, though.
FLOWER PLANTERS
Lilies
Phlox
Roses and Impatiens
Roses and Phlox
Clematis
I’ll show you the deck and our view in another post.
FINALLY, signs of spring are popping up around here! I’m delighted, though I feel bad for the people still getting more snow, and the awful flooding in the midsection of the country. I just know my spirits are rising with each passing day.
I still haven’t been able to find spinach plants locally (they said call again Wednesday), so I’m going to see if I can get another batch of seeds started, using another technique and keeping all appendages crossed for success. I would really love to shed my moniker of “Serial Seed Killer” some day soon.
That said, the red onions and head lettuce plants in the garden are doing really well. I’ll see what other wonderful things I can find to plant when we go out for errands today.
I finally reached the bricklayer today, who said he was personally covered up with work, but would ask another good person to give us a call for an estimate on rebuilding the two brick planters that failed recently.
I hope you are enjoying some signs of spring, too!
Today is rainy. Tomorrow is supposed to bring thunderstorms. I’m happy that we finally seem to have passed most of the threats of freezing, but I want to get out in my garden!
So far, in my greenhouse, I’m proving to retain my well-deserved moniker of ‘Serial Seed Killer.’ I’m TRYING to get two kinds of lettuce and some spinach started so I can have healthy plants to put out in our raised bed square foot garden. The weather we’ve had makes it too cold for seeds to sprout, even in the greenhouse, and the plants that were for sale at the local stores have either all been purchased or were frozen.
Bah, humbug!
Thursday or Friday I’ll look locally again to see if there are any plants for sale. I’ll keep trying on the seeds in the greenhouse – though my confidence and optimism are waning…
I just took the doggies out, walking straight out to the garden to see if our plants made it through the night. It was due to get close to freezing this morning, and I debated whether to try to cover things up. I finally decided I had too many things to cover and would just hope for the best.
It wouldn’t have been the end of the world if the plants had frozen, but they were doing really well and I would have been very disappointed if Mother Nature had zapped everything.
Everything is good!
I hope that the weather is good where you are this morning. I wonder what the day will bring?
Okay. We were in the middle of a drought and it even caused bad problems with our water supply, making the turnovers in the lakes cause our water to have a bad odor and taste. Wildfire danger was high. Warm, windy days were worrisome. I started doing mental and physical rain dances, trying to get our area over the problem.
Mother Nature listened. I’m not sure if she saw and heard ME, or if a whole lot of people were also doing rain dances, but she delivered. Big Time. We’ve had rain, rain showers, heavy rain, storms, sleet, and more rain. I’ve definitely STOPPED even thinking about rain dances, but now I’m thinking Mother Nature is saying, “You wanted rain. Okay. Here it is!”
Today we’re due for MORE storms, particularly between 11:00 and 3 this afternoon with possible severe weather. We did a group of errands this morning, paring our list down to one appt this afternoon, in an effort to be ONLY blown away, rather than blown away and DROWNED trying to get our stuff done.
The doggies came and demanded that I take them out a couple of minutes ago, insisting they would blow up if I didn’t take them out NOW. I complied, then came back for my camera, to record some of the beauty I found while walking around the yard. The storm today might wreak havoc with our yard, so I wanted to try to catch Mother Nature at her BEST – first.
Every day the wisteria gets more lush and more purple.
It SMELLS wonderful, too!
We have purple iris blooming in planters, in clusters around the yard, even off the edge of the civilized part of our yard, plus down our driveway.
We have buds on the three new Rio Samba rose bushes, and now some of the buds are starting to open up!
A knock out rose bush is starting to have blooms.
This is the north side of our square foot garden.
And the south side.
The winds really picked up while I took pics and walked the dogs. We’ll probably be right in the heart of the thunderstorms this afternoon, since we have to be out at 1:30. It’s a good thing we don’t melt in the rain. We’re thankful for our warm, dry home. Our doggies have already snuggled down for a nap, and even the two cats came in with us.
I finished mulching the flower planters yesterday – finally.
We cleaned out two square planters in order to plant new Rio Samba rose bushes in the spring. We converted two brick planters to be square foot planters for tomatoes, so four of our brick planters didn’t need mulch. The other 10 did. I feel good that things are cleaned out and protected now.
I dug up the elephant ear plant, potted it, and put it in the greenhouse.
Same for the Purple Passion plant. (I put two starter plants in water beside the big one. It would be fun if I could get those to grow. )
The jugs of water are an attempt to keep the plants warm in the greenhouse during the winter. I’m hoping the water will warm up during the day and keep the plants warm at night.
The Bibb lettuce is still doing well in my square foot garden.
Here is the Simpson lettuce. Both are in the same raised bed box, so when we have a freeze coming, I just have to cover one box with a sheet and clothespins. I’m hoping I can keep these alive for at least another month, if not more, depending on Mother Nature.
I’ve started two celery plants in pots on the window sill. I’ve never tried this before, so it should be fun.
This tomato plant is also on the window sill. I’m hoping I can keep it alive for the winter and replant it in the spring. Fingers crossed!
I still need to clean out the plants on the deck, but these are much easier to handle. They can wait for another day.
I just spent an hour and a half in my raised bed square foot vegetable garden. The fact that I can work in it without having to bend over a lot, and can plant, weed, harvest, and pull – a ll at about chest level – is really, really nice. That said, I’m still old and I still get really hot working in the sun. :0)
We had a really odd combination of a cooler than usual spring with lots and lots and LOTS of rain and not much sun followed by blazing sun and 90 degree temperatures. This has resulted in my lettuce bolting, my spinach doing the same (both shooting up to about 4 feet in height and going to seed on the top.) The only thing to do with the lettuce at this point is save the little bit that I can and pull the rest of the plants. At the beginning, my plants were looking really good. Even with the best growing medium and supplements, square foot gardening, etc., some years your plants simply don’t do as well as you would hope.
The last storm also made the tops of my onions bend over and start to yellow. I looked at things today and decided to go ahead and harvest them. I pulled them all out, cut off the tops, and left them in a few piles on the planter while I came in to rest. I’ll read up on how to dry them for storage. I have 4 of the six planters cleaned up, pulled up, or pruned. I’ll try to finish in another session out there today.
It looks as if I’ll actually get at least a small spaghetti squash or two! I have a long vine with blossoms and two actual squash bulbs. I spread it out, allowing it to go where it will and do whatever it wants. I’ll take a pic later.
My celery plants are still growing, but they don’t look a thing like a bunch of celery you would buy in the store. I have no clue what I’m doing, but the plants look great! :0)
Our tomato plants on the opposite end of the house are looking good and we have lots of small green tomatoes now. We’re keeping all appendages crossed that we have a good year for red, ripe, sliced tomatoes at any meal we like…
I’m hoping we’ll get the greenhouse finished soon and ready for me to start seed for my fall plants. It’ll be such fun to try to grow plants to transplant out into the garden at the proper time. Again, I have a LOT of reading to do as to when to start the seeds in order to have them ready for the fall.
This spring I’ve learned a lot about what NOT to do next time. If I live long enough, one of these times I’ll know what I’m doing!
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