What I did in my garden this week

Feb. 17 -22nd

I decided to start a weekly entry for now hopefully I can keep caught up this way. I believe that the more I write about what I am doing the more motivation I will have to improve and keep going. I wanted my garden to be awesome last year and it was definitely  better than the year before.  This year I want it to be enjoyable to look at as well as producing lots.

I cut down my dried up flowers in my front flower bed (between the sidewalk and the road) and cut the iris greenery down so I won't have a lot of dead matter this spring to deal with. I had covered my mums with dry cut grass in hopes that I will have them again. I know it was a long shot but it was worth a try.  Every time I clean up this flower bed the youth that walk by our house decide it is okay to walk there now, I have tried solving it various ways.  There is always a space of time when there is little there to suggest that there are still plants growing. I want to propagate a ground cover in hopes there won't be as much bare soil,  the one I planted there died back and I don't know if it is coming back this year so it is not ideal for that spot even if it survived.  I do have bulbs growing on one end but always end up with bare soil. Maybe a miniature rosebush or something of the sorts would get the message across.

I also collected dried weeds from among my bushes in front of a bedroom window and cut down all the suckers around our two trees in the front in hopes that I won't have as many problems with that this coming season.  Our flowering plum send up suckers every year. I have been trimming them before they get more than 2 ft. high or so and it has seemed to decrease how many come back. I notice them at least 2 to 3 times in a year. I  spread my columbine seeds all over the front flowerbed by our front door.I did start to trim my rose bush in the front and only got so far with that project. I have one more flowerbed in the front to clean out and make weedless.   The rosebush is in the last flowerbed in the front that I need to work on.

I know last year I got some early gardening in and I believe it did help decrease my weeds. The weeds are still not under control and it makes it so I don't enjoy my gardens as much. I tried Preen but realized that I like to grow flowers from seeds so that has not been real helpful since it is designed to make sure seeds don't grow which is great if they are weed seeds not so much if they are flower seeds. I did spread some in my garden last year when I tilled so I sprouted the seeds then planted them I believe that it helped speed up the growing process a bit. It was almost like planting a young seedling but I didn't have the plant shock and didn't have to harden the plants off it was great. I might do this instead of growing seedlings this year. I just put them in a bag with a damp paper towel. I want to make seed stripes this year because the sprouted seeds were all in a clump and hard to separate last year. I think you can do this with any seed so even plants that don't transplant well can be sprouted then buried to grow.

I will need to get my eggplant growing that is one I have to do a seedling for since the growing season is so long. I will see about my watermelons to one I believe has a shorter growing season. In two to three weeks I need to clean up my hanging baskets and plant them I hope to have them spectacular by May. They were a disappointment last year. It was my first year trying to grow seedlings myself to put in the baskets. I had better luck growing then in the basket to begin with.

One other observation about my garden and I want to make sure I continue doing this is when I dig up grass around the edges of my garden if I just flip them over so the roots dry out it doesn't grow back for a very long time. I did it in about Aug if I remember right and it still hasn't grown back in it was bare since I have done it. I hope this helps keep the grass out of my garden and raspberries better. I will do this when ever there is no danger of digging up the plants I want to grow.

Waiting

I am waiting to get my seedlings started. I wanted to start them this month but decided to wait since there is a possibility in a week or two they wouldn't get watered and that is about the time they would sprout so I didn't want to take that chance.

I am excited to get started. I did plant some peas in my garden when the ground thawed  Jan 27th, 2014.  I planted them in front of my raspberry plants. I am hoping the raspberry vines can become their support and also shade them when it warms up this spring. We will see if this works well or not. I plan on planting more since I only got about a two feet planted. I also found out that the middle of my raspberry plants didn't get weeded before the cold set in. I will have to watch this closely so the grass doesn't take over again.

Garden Musings

I have been looking out the window at my garden. I picked the spot that gets the most sun and it is partially thawed. I might go out and plant some peas if enough of the snow melts to give me some bare ground. It has were I have my raspberries planted. Just a few more of these nice warm days and I will be able to.

I have also been trying to plan what I am going to grow and how much. I hope my mom can get me some plant starts again this year for free. It was so great I got my melons and 2 cucumber plants and 4 basil plants and 2 tomato plants that grew and they were given to me for free. Love that when it happens.

I should go through my seeds and see what I have. Most of my seeds come from pinetree seed company.

https://www.superseeds.com

I have some heirloom ones as well that I can save seeds from. I have just started learning about that. I have a lot of seed though so I don't think I will run out of some of the basic types of garden vegetables for a while. I know I have enough corn seed. I think I am lacking in squash seeds. I want to try to grow small pumpkins this year again so I will have to order me some of those at least.

Planning 2014

With a new year ahead I am reminded that I need to start planning now so that my garden can improve and grow this coming year.

Just before it got cold I cut my raspberry plants and am looking forward with hope for a wonderfully big harvest. Too soon to tell what my extra attention to my patch will produce. Well know in July.

I started my plants in April last year I hope to start them sooner this year. I plan a month earlier to see what happens. So come March 1st I better have my peat pots bought and go through and plan what to plant and where to put it.

I am looking ahead to a bright future for me and my family. With what is going on in the world I have very little control over what the politicians do, what businesses decide. How that will affect me is talked a lot about on the radio in the news. I decided to start controlling something I have control over so I don't go insane thinking about all the other things which are out of my control. One thing for me is I have property and I can have a garden which can grow the things we eat. And also I can grow things I would like to try. Then when I produce more than we can use I can either freeze or can it for another day. If there is still too much I can serve others around me which is a win-win for me. I have even got some seeds that are heirlooms and can be harvested for seed for the coming years so for some of my seed needs can be meet by planting some to produce seeds for the next year. My garden is small so I don't use up my seeds that fast either.

The particulars of my garden

Started my seeds indoors in April. Forgot to plant my forget-me-nots in June. May 22 planted peas and pumpkins along back fence. Peas were too late and died from the heat. Pumpkins got eaten the night after I planted them. They didn't have there true leaves yet.

June 1- is when I planted sprouted corn, sprouted bean plants, zucchini & wee be little pumpkins. Also transplanted those started in April. 4 roma tomatoes, 2 Anaheim chili peppers, 2 squares of corn 5-6 bean sprouts, cantalope, squash, eggplants. One roma died and came back from the roots. I only got 4 bean plants to survive. Cantalope, eggplant, and squash got eaten by bugs.

July 3- I planted the plants that I got from my mom. Diva cucumbers, lime basil, super steak tomatoes, Juliet Hybrid tomatoes (looked like Romas tastes like cherry tomatoes) must have planted carrots in June but have no record of when it actually occurred. In a week or two after this planting I planted an eggplant that I had started in April but didn't plant yet since it was with my flower plants I did for my hanging baskets. My baskets were a bust. I planted the flowers too late so they were not as mature as I wanted by May and only 3 inpatients grew. I tried growing a few more from seed in the basket but they died. The batchelor buttons were pretty but sparse and since the inpatients didn't work out they didn't look all that well. Then I got tired of watering them around Aug or Sept and they died before the first frost.  They are still hanging up with dead plants in them.

By August sometime I was harvesting cucumbers  14-16 a week starting sometime at the beginning of Aug till the end. Ate the corn around the 25th of Aug. I need to be better about spacing my plantings instead of just doing a lot all at once. All the corn got ripe at the same time and it was a bit much. We each ate 3-5 ears a meal and served them 2 meals by the third time only one kid was willing to eat any and no one else wanted corn. The ears were half sized so we didn't get much on each ear. Also I waited to pick them too long and they were a bit old. A few Romas got ripe around the 25th of August. Juliets I got a few handfuls by 25 of Aug then they had slowed down around the end of August first of Sept.

Sept 1- The Romas were being picked a few each day. Cucumbers slowed down to 4-6 a week. The Super steak tomato plant had set one tomato by this time. This is the end of my actual record that I kept.

I don't remember if it was a few weeks into Sept or the first part of October when the first frost hit and killed my plants. I am thinking the first or second week in October. I was able to pull in all the Roma tomatoes and Juliets. Just before the first frost the Super steak had set a few more tomatoes and they were close to starting to turn red; about 6-8. I also picked about 12-18 peppers. I put the tomatoes downstairs to ripen in  cardboard boxes on a sheet. I put some romas on the sheet since I didn't have enough room for all in the two boxes I had.
They were in bloom and were beautiful then the
Oct 30
Most of my tomatoes have ripened. I didn't watch them close enough and have lost about 2 pounds of romas and some of the beef steaks. As well as some of the Juliets. I ate 1 of the beef steaks. I like the juiciness of them. The flavor is good. There two more waiting to ripen. I went and checked on them and one is ready to eat and the other is an orange color.  The rest either rotted before they ripened or were too ripe and were thrown out or buried in the garden as fertilizer.  I have been trying to bury cucumber peels and the peels from canning in the garden. I just threw out the peaches since the pits were mixed in and they mainly consisted of pits not good as a fertilizer since they don't break down. And the tomatoes that were wrinkly before they ripened or got wrinkly before I could use them. I have made 2-3 batches of salsa with the peppers and roma tomatoes. I have gotten at least 4 handfulls of Juliets to ripen and we have eaten them yum. I eat them and one other child does. Sometimes I think my husband pops a few in his mouth so one plant is more than enough for us. I possible need to find a home for some of the others unless I can get them into a salad. I fear they will end up as compost which isn't so bad but I like to see them eaten. I did throw out 4-6 of the peppers because they became wrinkly and old before I could use them. I was going to freeze them but was unable to.

I also tried to plant Viola's and forget-me-nots in the front flowerbed. I also planted Morning glory in the back flower bed; but I planted it too late for any flowers. Only one of the three I planted grew at all. I was able to bring home home some flowers when we cleaned up the cemetery the day after memorial day. Most thrived a few in the back died. Most of them were mums. I got three geraniums two lived the other died. Then I got some other ones I don't remember the name of that were red. The geraniums and other red flowers bloomed all summer. One of the red ones I don't remember died as well. Also all the mums I planted in the backyard died off. The mums I planted in the front finished blooming and survived the summer and have just bloomed again. They are so colorful and I am glad I got a second bloom out of them. I don't expect them to come back next year but have heard they can if they aren't the flower shop variety but are bought from a nursery and mulched well in the winter. I plan on mulching them once it freezes and see what happens next year.

Looking back on my harvest

Have no idea when this first entry was written I believe it was 2010 or 2011.

I have been thinking about my garden and how successful it has been. I have had some challenges at first and I still need to do more weeding but over all my garden has been a success. I spent every day in July almost picking raspberries. I froze a quart and we ate at least that much or more. My zucchini started off slow.

2013
My garden has never been as successful as this year. Still have some weeding problems. I spent more time this spring tilling the ground and increasing the size of my garden. So my garden was a bit later than most in my area. When there plants stopped my were just getting started.

 I got tomatoes 3 different variates, corn (enough for 3 meals), anaheim chili peppers , green beans (enough for  a few snacks for me and some for 2 of my kids that have finally declared they like them. Not as much as they hoped for since I only planted for me I did good.) Got some lime basil and used it a few times before it flowered I used it a few times after it flowered. Used my chives more this year in a few dishes. Have always grown chives but I don't use them. Guess I forget I have them or something. Got some melons they were a variety of honeydews. Shared a few and ate about 3 of them. I was the only one who would eat them so I am not planting them again. I also got some eggplants. I got enough for 3 meals for the family and I got to share them with three other families; gave each family 2 since they were small.

The jewel of my garden was the 4 cucumber plants. I planted 2 varieties and the smooth skinned ones that are similar to english cucumbers called Diva were the favourite. We got about 14-16 a week and we did go through that many for about 2 months then towards the end the plants slowed down and we weren't as enthusiastic about them either. I made 3 cucumber salads through out the season. And I made some refrigerator pickles out of some of them. They were eaten in larger quantities and more quickly when I made them into a salad or pickles.  Most plants survived until the cold spell killed them at the first of October.

I also got one carrot which is more than I usually get, I might get 2-3 more. That are still in the ground. I planted some beets in about Aug.  as well and got about 6-8 of them. I pickled them they were very good.

2012

I decided to take 2012 off. My garden and life went through some changes and I became too busy with the kids to do much else. I was trying to work part time, garden, have a baby, help my youngest daughter through medical problems, etc. I had no time to do any of it real well. We muddled through and survived and learned and grew.

This year my plans are to have the best garden ever for real. I planned and prepared and dug up the ground. It is my biggest garden yet. I have flowers growing in the flowerbeds and have no room for anything else other than what I have now. There are a few spots I think I will plant with more carrots and I want to see how a fall crop of peas does which I will plant among the corn for protection while it is hot then cut down the corn when it starts to cool off.