An evening walk through the garden

 

Hello there!

It's only been a month since my last garden update, but things have been springing up and growing by leaps and bounds! Maybe it's the heat that brings it out. :) There's so much to see, I thought I'd take you for a little stroll and show you what's new.

 

Preface. I love having it all on the drip system! First of all, it would be way too much to water by hand. But secondly, it is pretty self sustaining at this point. Every morning, I just go out and check on things really quickly. Make sure there's no new bugs or any large catastrophes to take care of. And then I let it alone to work it's magic. My favorite thing lately has been to walk through and find these new surprises that I'm about to share. It's like going for a treasure hunt!

Here is our second bed as it looked in the last update.

 

 

And here it is now!

 

The zucchini plants have completely taken over! They are HUUUUGE. If I knew how big they were going to get, I would've given them a lot more room, but as it is now, they are crowding out the other plants in the bed: cucumbers and beans. Oh well. We'll see how they all produce anyway...

 

The pole beans in the back there are getting a little out of control. At one point a couple weeks ago, I didn't have time to trellis them but they were like 4 feet tall, so in a moment of panic, I pulled some large branches from the brush pile in our yard and stuck them in the ground for them to climb. Now I need to figure out a way to turn the branches into a trellis. I'm thinking I might rig something like this but on a smaller scale.

 

 

Here is a photo of both beds this evening:

Speaking of zucchinis, I was pleasantly surprised to find these blossoms on the plants today:

 

 I snapped that picture earlier this afternoon and when I went back this evening, I realized I didn't even see this big squash that's out there! Woohoo!

 

And many more on the way:

 

 

I was a little worried about my garbanzo. It started yellowing and I thought I might have lost it. But it has new flowers on it, which is a good sign and I found this yesterday: my first pod!

 

 

 

Here is another fun surprise I found yesterday as well.

I think I'll let it get a little bigger before I pick it. :)

 

 

Caleb's pumpkins seem to be doing well:

 

 

These are my POTATO plants! They are kind of an experiment. Usually I reserach a new thing a little bit before try it, but in this case, I'm trying it first. It was all kinda thrown together last minute. My neighbor threw some potato cuts over the fence. First, I let them rot a little by accident before I planted them. Now, I have trouble keeping them as "mounded" as I think they probably should be, but... I dunno. If there's anything edible, it will just be a nice surprise. :)

DON'T EAT GREEN POTATOES.

 

 

It seemed my kale had "plateaued" so to speak. I left it alone a little too long, the outer leaves were getting too old to eat probably and it had kinda stopped producing. So I finally pruned it one night and harvested some of the inner leaves and it thanked me by giving me more! :)

 

 

Even though I'm majorly running out of room at this point, I transplanted my artichoke out of the pot, and it seems to be loving life right now. I was wondering if it would produce anything this year. I had heard it takes two years before they flower. But I kept hoping for something exciting to happen. Well, then I happen to catch a segment of Lidia Bastianich's show where she goes out into an artichoke field and I realized how BIG the plants get before they start to produce.

We have a long way to go, I think!

 

 

 

 

These are the tomatoes last month:

 

 

 

And the tomatoes now:

 

They need some support big time. (But who doesn't? hahaha).

I have some aerial wire I'm thinking of making my own cages with.

Just because I like doing things the hard way, you know.

 

 

Tomatoes are kinda funny. When they're green, they blend right in

and you can hardly see them unless you look very closely

 

I have FIFTEEN tomato plants this year. Who's idea was that??

Over 9 varieties of tomato! I will be excited to see how they all compare.

This one is called simply "Matt's Wild Cherry Tomato" and it is the first one to start ripening!

 

 

This is one of three thornless blackberry plants my neighbor gifted me (maybe you're starting to notice I have a very generous neighbor, don't I?) I haven't transplanted it yet because I know it will get pretty big so I want to make sure I figure out a good place for it. Also, my number one spot choice is occupied by junk that needs to be cleared first.

But who has time for THAT?! So it says in the pot for now...  

 

Blueberry plant. Waiting for me to get some Mycor from the feed store.

Gnome. Tending my garden.

Silhouette. Me and the baby taking pictures.

Oh, you thought I was alone? I'm a breastfeeding mama, I'm never alone. ;)

 

 Papa gnome, watching over the wildflowers, which are just starting to bloom.

 

 Isn't he cute? I got him for mother's day, along with a 6 foot tall apricot tree,

who has also asked very politely if it may be added to the waiting list for transplanting.

 

And here is a lovely Gardenia that I just got a couple days ago. It looks pretty mellow now, but I have high hopes.
And the blooms smell SO NICE!

 

 

 

Well, it's late. And tomorrow is Monday. So I better get to bed.

 

Thanks for visiting! :D

 

 

 

 

 

Wordless Weekend

A fun garden idea:

My First Robot

Since we've been working so much in the yard, we haven't gotten very much done inside the house lately, but here is one of the few updates we did do recently:

From April 17th:

www.instagram.com/charitychain

 

We now have AI in the house. I do not take this lightly.

I was hoping my first household robot would be the kind that vacuums. ;)

But who knows, maybe this one will save us enough money to buy the other one.

 

This is the Nest "smart" thermostat, put out by some of the geeks over at Apple. The coolest AND creepiest thing about this guy is that he *learns our habits* and starts to program himself around our schedules. Also, he has a motion sensor and if he detects you are Away, he lets the temp get lower/higher than usual to conserve energy, then automatically resets himself when he *sees* that we are home. Also, he is connected to wifi, so I can change the settings from my phone no matter where I am, he's able to see weather forecasts, and potentially receive software updates automatically. He shows what the temperature in my home will be in 10 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, etc., based on the current settings and the weather outside.

 

Big brother is totally watching. No really. This is his eyeball.

 

But I guess it was inevitable, right?

 

P.S. I just creeped myself out by calling it a "he" for this entire post.

 

Anyway... next time we get a robot, I want a Rosey Jetson or at the very least a Roomba. ;)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Video here ,if you're interested.

 

 

 

 

Springtime update

Dear friends,

So much to catch you up on! I remember reading recently, "when you feel like you have 'too much' remember to be thankful you have SO much." Sometimes I am overwhelmed by all there is to do or be or plan or cook or clean... but, while I am trying to learn to prioritize and let go of the lesser things, I am simultaneously thanking God that I have SO MUCH in my life.

Caleb is wrapping up his year in preschool. Part of me wants to plan fun, creative, educational things for the summer. And a second part of me laughs at the first part and says Give it a rest, woman, and enjoy the break! They only get like 2 months off for summer nowadays anyway. I think I will just appreciate those two months for what they are, and look forward to not having to drive him twice a week, or lug the carseat in and out and in and out, or finding Shares or doing homework or packing snack. I think this summer, more than any, both mommy and Caleb are ready for a break.

Little baby Ben is 6 months old now and quite a handful. I won't even attempt to fill you in on him right now. But you'll be seeing him here more often, for sure. :)

Right now, I am very excited about the garden! I have lots and lots of things to share so I plan to post quite a bit the next few days just trying to catch up with myself. HaHA! Be prepared! ;)

So, about two months ago, I took this photo of my seed babies in the sun and thought about sharing it with you.

 

But before I had a chance to do that, a week later I took this photo of my pea plants shooting up and thought I might post it also:

 

A couple weeks later, I still hadn't blogged yet and didn't have time to because my peas were begging to be transplanted and I needed to have a trellis built to support them. Keep in mind, I have to do all these projects in about 15 minute increments, since that's about how long the baby will afford me at a time. He *really* prefers to be held all day. :P

 

 

 

And so it went on and on. There are so many photos I was gonna share of our progress, but now here we are at pretty much the end of the winter garden and I'm just getting here... oh well!!

 

Maybe you remember when I began this garden a couple of months ago, I had a very scientific mindset. I was going to take meticulous notes for my future reference. I was going to practice crop rotation and moon gardening and learn how to start my seeds indoors and do fun experiments to see which plants grew better and...and...and... how often things do not go as planned!

At this point, I've lost track of when I transplanted this or that. I have carrots in three different places, including intermingled with my lettuces (a mistake, I know!), I started some seeds much too early and I'm thinking some of them are going to be very late,  the irrigation system I was hoping would be set in place for less than $40 ended up costing about twice that and took me nearly two weeks to complete in itself (post on that in the future, I'm sure!). I'm starting to think my neighbors view on gardening might be much more healthy. She says Why can't we just throw seeds on the ground and see what grows? She has been an inspiration to me not to STRESS too much about it, not to over analyze, like a can do sometimes. But work with the earth and just see what happens.

So at this point, I think I will just give you a little tour of the garden as it is now. Maybe with a few older pics mixed in just for fun. Hang in there! ;)
_____

This is the same bed you just saw, but a few days later, with some more seed babies transplanted into it: lettuces, broccoli and onions. Also, carrots, onions and garlic were directly sowed.

 

 

This is actually a photo of the brush pile we made when we cut a couple trees down. But to the side there, you can see the thrifty way I covered my babies to help protect them from bugs. Not a 100% seal, of course, but it seemed to be effective against most things that fly. I kept it on for a good month or so - only taking it off when the plants started outgrowing it. It let in sunlight and the irrigation was underneath it, so it worked out well.

Do you know what I used? It's wedding tulle! It was like $2 a yard on sale, so it was much cheaper than agribon and seemed to work fine for my purposes.

 

 

 

 Happy broccoli under tulle:

 

 

Same bed two weeks later!  

 

 

 

And this is that same bed just this morning! 

Notice the pea plants in the background, climbing the trellis.

The Big Thing in front is my broccoli. Right now it is all leaves and no fruit, so I think I must've accidentally bought some kind of "flamboyant" species.
 

 This is the other side of the same bed today - Carrots, onions, spinach (which is going to seed) and one kale plant to the left there that I received as a gift. :-) More on that later.

 

 

Here is a picture I took of my son's "Giant Pumpkin" he got at the seed swap.

I took this about a week ago - it's already twice this size.

 

We decided to put strawberries in the tops of the cinder block bed walls. We'll see how it goes. They were neglected for a little while and I lost a couple of them, but I'm trying to nurse them back to health.  

And here is my SECOND veggie bed! We just started planting in this one so I'm very excited (again)
Left to right: zucchini, market cucumbers, and "green fingers" (small cucumbers) These were all just planted last week, so I'm surprised to see how big they are.

 

This is my lone garbanzo bush (another gift) and I am stoked about that little white flower bud you might be able to see in there.

 

We have planted three types of beans. This is a purple pole bean.

 

 

Somehow I ended up with FIFTEEN tomato plants and almost all of them are of a different variety! It will be so neat to see their various fruits (assuming they live that long. haha)

Here are five of them, along with some marigold buddies. The mari's aren't too happy, I might need to get replacements. :(

 

 

 

and these are some of the other tomatoes, begging me to get them in the ground.

 

 

My neighbor had some surplus, so she brought these over for me today:

two watermelon plants and two LUFFA plants!

"Like the kind of luffa you use in the shower?!" you ask. Apparently! She got the seeds here.

 

This is my boogin...

bouga...

bog...

This is my pink plant:  

 

 

I didn't plant these but they are pretty nonetheless, aren't they? :) 

 

 

And I will end this LOOOOOOOONG post on a hopeful note. This is my first sort-of-decent harvest that I just brought in this morning from those pea plants you saw.

There are sugar snap (which were SO good with lunch) and a few regular peas. :)

 

 

 

 

Believe it or not, there is much more to share! Back soon!

 

Easter Wheatgrass

I remember seeing in a magazine one time these Easter baskets with live grass in them. And I thought, "Oh that's cute and folksy and eco-friendly and old-fashioned. And I'd probably love to do that but who knows if I ever will." In other words, I filed it away in my mind. I don't even think I had kids then. And Easter has never really been a very "big" holiday in our family, so I had no need to use it right away.

A couple of years ago my mother-in-law gave my older son a basket with real grass and I told her how much I loved it. The mental file was brought to the front of my mind.

This year, we are going to be visiting some of my nieces and nephews for Easter. So my basket tally went from maybe 2 to a possible 6. Obviously I started thinking about what kinds of things I would want to include in these baskets, the first I have ever made, by the way: healthy treats and small books are a nice alternative to too much candy. Maybe a toy or two but I like to keep things simple in the baskets so that it doesn't distract too much from the meaning we find in the holiday. 

Then there was the grass! I finally had a reason to attempt it, but I wasn't sure where to begin. A quick call to my mother-in-law revealed that she had bought a whole bag (albeit the smallest one available) of actual lawn grass from the home improvement store. She figured she could always use the extra in their landscaping. Well... I would've been down for that. Except the smallest bag I could find was $15 and I knew I could figure something else out. Also, I wasn't in the market for leftover lawn grass at the moment.

I researched other grasses, and I finally decided on wheatgrass. If you are interested in doing something like this, you can easily buy wheatgrass at your health food store already grown and just pop it in. Easy peasy! But it was gonna cost me about $5 a pop so maybe $30 for all. Plus, you know I like doing things the hard way. Haha. So anyway, I decided I could probably grow my own. I walked around the corner to the next aisle over in the health food store and found hard wheat berries or wheatgrass berries in their bulk food section. Grabbed a few scoops full, up the the register and bam - 65 cents! That's more like it...

I found several versions of how to grow wheatgrass, but I went with the instructions I found here.

Here's how we did it:

Soak berries overnight. I read to make sure you don't soak longer than 24 hours as they may go rancid after that.

Line a basket. You can use an old plastic grocery bag or saran wrap. Or anything else that's water proof. If your basket is somewhat loosley woven, you can lay some fabric down first to hide the plastic. Add a layer of soil to about 1/3 the height of the basket. You don't want too much dirt, because it will make the basket heavy.

Spread seeds (or "berries") in a single layer across the top of the basket. I found a handsome helper to assist me with this step.

Then we soaked the seeds with a water bottle and left them in a sunny spot with a little saran lid to keep the moisture in. I'm told the trick the first few days is to keep the seeds moist.


Boy, you know what? If anyone ever feels like they have a black thumb or gets discouraged in their gardening endeavors, growing something quick like wheatgrass sure is encouraging. :)

We were very excited to see this is what we had on day 3:

And only one week from when we planted the seeds:

Ten days old here:

 

Wow, that grew faster than I thought! At this rate, my problem is too much grass! I will have to trim it before Easter and I hope it will still keep growing in green and lush and not turn yellow on me or something! That would figure. If I do it again next year, I will wait a bit later, like 2 weeks before Easter instead of 4 weeks.

But, that also means that you still have plenty of time to try this out if you want to. ;)