Okra and Corn Sprouts

I had fun this afternoon after work taking pictures of all of the new sprouts.  Sadly the long awaited beans have not sprouted yet, but lots of other stuff has.

Loads more carrots have come up.

Almost all of the nasturtiums have come up.

Our first okra sprout.  You can't see it very well yet, but it's there all right.

A few painted mountain corn have come up.

The mammoth sunflowers I planted last week are already coming up.

I planted two different types of sunflowers.

My potatoes have started to bloom already.  It is only May 16th.

Here is one of my celery plants I planted from seed on March 3rd.  Celery sure does grow slowly.  I hope I actually get some celery before it frosts.

The Cinderella Pumpkin has two true leaves now. Yay!

The zucchini has a true leaf and a half.

The cucumbers almost have one true leaf opened up.

The cilantro is finally growing.  I have to say that I do not like peat pots.  I had forgotten that since last year, but I won't forget it again.  They dry out really fast, and you have to carefully rip them off your plants in several pieces before you plant them.  Don't believe anyone who says you can leave them on the plant when you plant them out.  I forgot this fact, even though I did already learn it, and plunked these cilantro in the ground.  They sat there and complained to me until I said, "what is your deal? Why aren't you growing right?"  I scooped one out of the ground to bury it deeper because it looked like it had popped up and was kinda floppy.  Lo and behold, the peat pot was still on it.  I knew right away that was the problem.  I ripped the peat pot off and planted it right back in the dirt.  Now it is happy.  I did the same thing to all four of the cilantro plants.  I have also direct seeded the next round of cilantro, but they haven't come up yet. I plan on planting more very two weeks.

My husband and I went to Lowe's to get two more bags of potting mix so I could re-pot my smaller tomato plants.  We both thought that we should buy this sweet mint plant and a pot to grow it in.  We see mojitos in our future now.  If only we could grow a lime tree here.

I also finally figured out what variety of eggplant it was that I loved so much when I grew it two years ago.  Now I know it was a Hansel.  I thought I had gotten the right kind last year, but as soon as it started growing I knew it wasn't the same.  I didn't like it as well either.  Last year I bought an Ichiban because the picture of the fruit looked similar, but the plant is totally different.  It grows with a different habit.  The Hansel grows taller and with large branches all with fruit, and it also has dark purple colored stems and spines.  It makes lots more fruit, and the fruit are delicious.

This is my eggplant I grew from seed.  It is a new kind I have not tried before.  It makes small round fruit.  The picture of the fruit that was on the seed packet looks like the eggplants that my friend Sean Stephan gave me from his garden a few years ago.  They were delicious. He also told me that they made a lot of fruit.  More than their family could eat, if I remember right.  Come to think of it, of coarse that is true, or I wouldn't have gotten so many.

This is our first pea.  It is the same one featured in a previous post.  It won't be long now before it is ripe.  My daughter checks it everyday.  She loves peas.

Looky, looky.  My graft is growing.  I grafted two branches, but one broke off in a wind storm a few weeks ago.  This one is finally growing leaves.  I am so excited.  you can still see the thick layer of wax I put on to keep it from drying out.  It is cracking off of the parts that are growing.

Here is the end bud.  The leaves are even bigger than the leaves on the main part of the tree.

The strawberries are coming along nicely.  I don't think I will get enough this first year for a batch of jam, but definitely enough for a batch of strawberry ice cream  and fresh fruit on pancakes and cereal a few times.  Yummy.  I can hardly wait.

Next post will be about insects in the garden. There is some cool stuff out there today.

Cold and Rainy Weather Can't Stop These Peas

I mentioned in my organization post last time that I had a mystery pea variety. Well, so far, the half of the row that I know the variety of is out performing the mystery one.  These are the Burpee Dark Seeded Early Perfection.  The package says that they are a particularly early and drought tolerant.  I can't wait to taste and see if they are also delicious.

This picture is looking down the row of peas from the middle showing all of the Dark Seeded Early Perfection peas that are coming up. The other half of the row has about three sprouts barely showing.

The yellow onions that I planted from "bulbs" are finally showing signs of life.  About 1/4 of them are sprouting up.

My uncle will be very excited about this discovery I made today.  There are about five radish sprouts poking their little seed leaves out of the ground.  Radishes are so rewarding to grow.  They grow very fast and you can eat every inch of them, but I still don't get very excited about planting them until my uncle Kevin reminds me.  Last time I planted radishes I gave him almost every one of them that I pulled up.  I do plan on eating some this time.  I bought three varieties of seeds: Cherry Belle (shown above), Easter Egg II Mix, and Sparkler. I have not planted the Easter Egg Mix or Sparkler yet.

The garlic is continuing to grow and look very good.

These are the onions that I planted from little sets in a bundle, Walla Walla Sweets.

We planted our lawn about three weeks ago.  We are getting discouraged by the fact that it hasn't been sprouting.  I noticed these small sprouts this morning.  Not nearly enough to make a lawn, but maybe it is just the cold weather holding them back after all.  I hope that when it warms up it takes off and fills in. 

One problem I have noticed is that there are loads of volunteer sunflowers sprouting up already.  Since we won't be able to mow the lawn for some weeks, if ever, these may cause some problems.  We didn't do anything with the yard last year and we had these weedy, branchy sunflowers everywhere.  I tried to pull them out before they spread seeds everywhere, but was not very successful.

At first I had doubts that these little guys were sunflowers, because they were sprouting so early.  It is still freezing at night here. After I saw this guy my doubts disappeared.  See the sunflower seed shell stuck on the leaf?

  

We are also having quite a few maple trees sprouting up everywhere.  I don't know what to do about this besides pulling them out whenever we see them.  I don't want maple trees everywhere.

We have loads of these beautiful violets growing in nooks and crannies, especially on the shady side of the house. I love them.  I don't want to get rid of them, but they are being infiltrated by a few weeds and grass, so I will have to at least try to do something about that.  Hopefully, they will reseed and spread all over again.

Speaking of spreading, I bought some starts of my favorite ground cover on Monday: creeping thyme.  My grandmother always used it in her gardens.  I went to her house to see if I could steel some starts a week ago, but saw that it had a lot of grass in it, so I opted to by some nursery starts. These ones had some Vinca minor growing in them.  I tried to pull them all out. The reasons I love this ground cover are that is it beautifully fragrant, step-able, flowers and attracts pollinators and looks very pretty. It is also very drought tolerant.  My grandmothers garden is in sandstone soil on the sunny side of a hill and she doesn't have to water hers at all. I am hoping it will just take off and fill in the spaces between my raised beds. I plan on adding stepping stones later to have places to step without stepping on bees.

The catnip my cousin dug up for me last year is coming back up.  I am debating weather I want to keep this or not.  It might be good in the shade garden on the shady side of the house.  I don't want to attract the neighbors cats to my yard.

These are all of my containers.  They are ready for plants.  I will grow some lettuces in them until it is time to plant the warm weather crops like eggplants.

The strawberries that I transplanted are greening up very quickly.  I hope to get a small crop this year and a big one next year.

The volunteer flowers in the mini irises are starting to bloom.

I have so many grape hyacinths that I am getting rid of a lot, but I am sure there will always be a few coming up here and there.

The tulips that I planted from bulbs in the fall are looking good.

I am getting a bit worried about whether or not I will get the pergola up in time for the hops.  They are already growing like crazy.  I think they have discovered that they have been freed from the pot and are really taking off.

I hope you enjoyed my update on the garden.  It is still very cold at night here, so things are still going slowly, but in a few weeks things are really going to start getting exciting.  Stay tuned.

February's Not Too Early for Yard Work, Right?

The weather this week, was just screaming at me to come out and work in the yard.  I was a bit sceptical about how much we could really do yet, but I decided to give it a go.  We live in USDA hardiness zone 4 so we are months away from our frost date, and in some shady places there is still snow on the ground.

I was very excited to see the dutch irises poking through.  Grow, little guys, grow!

 

I call this our glacier.  It is our last remnant of snow in our yard.

Our boxwood are still alive after late planting in the fall.  They are showing some yellowing. I will fertilize them when it warms up a little more.

The pear tree has buds on it that look pretty nice.  It isn't time for looking for blossom buds yet.

 

 This is our house from the front now.  The boxwood are small, but you can see them. We have finally moved all of the extra dirt from the front  lawn area, and are ready to plant.  We are debating what to do.  Should we buy seed? If so, what kind? Should be get sod? If so, where should we buy it? I like the new water saver blends with micro clovers and other herbs in them.  Of course, the hubby does not.  We will see what happens.

 

Here you can see the two new raised beds we added this week.  Yay! My plan has three more.  I think we will get them done before planting time.  I am very optimistic.

I leveled off enough room for at least the next two.  We just need to buy more lumber.  Next payday....

Last year I didn't really garden at all except in these containers.  I grew some tomatoes, an eggplant, loads of basil, dill and a few onions, carrots and nasturtiums.  My mother also brought me loads of strawberry starts from the old homestead, they are in the process of selling.  I was glad to have them, but wasn't quite ready, so I tucked them in these pots here and there.  I didn't get many berriesfrom them, but they multiplied themselves very well, so when I plant them this spring in a raised bed I will have plenty.

 

If you remember from my earlier posts, this part of the yard (pretty much the whole back yard) was very overgrown and piled with old logs, sticks and mulch from when we had the trees cut down.  I have cleaned it up a lot this week.  Really, take my word for it.  This is so much better than it was.

My hubby cleaned up this side of the house before the winter to keep the basement window sills from getting wet and degrading even more. We will need to replace them eventually, but it is not high on our list.  I envision a bit of a rock garden on this side of the house.  It never gets any direct sun, and is already pretty well covered in rocks.  I want to plant some decorative moss clumps, shade tolerant grasses and maybe have a small experimental shade garden to try some crops.  I am thinking like a 2 foot by 3 foot area at most.

We still have this ginormous pile of rocks that we don't know what to do with, but after two truck loads of stuff hauled away it is looking much nicer.  My aunt and uncle have given us this little Chevy S10 to haul things around in.  It was my grandfathers until he died and my aunt inherited it.  We all love it.  It has spent most of its last ten years parked, though, so it has some issues, but for just taking our seldom trips to the lumber store and the dump, it is perfect.  We bought a new battery a side mirror and a steering wheel cover for it. That's all it took to get it going, really.  It sure beats having to borrow a truck from my parents who live 20 minutes away. 

 

This is the former home of the terrible black berry bush.  It was very determined to stay, but I was more determined it should go.  I think I won in the end, but it proved to be a formidable foe. Hopefully, none of its children have survived to try to avenge their mother. I feel like I am the heroine of an epic tale that might have a sequel

This is the future site of the chicken coup.  I have bought the foundation blocks for it.  I just need to level it off and start work, but I feel like I should get the whole yard back there level first to really see what it will look like.  I would hate to get it wrong and have to move it.  My husband and I are debating what to do about this ugly wood shed.  Obviously, we can do a lot to make it look better by taking down the random wafer board and crooked two by fours, but should we just rip the whole think down? About the only part that is not ramshackle thrown together is the roof, but even the supports  for that are questionable.  The closest corner you can see in the above picture fell victim to one of the digging dogs that lived here before we bought the place.  It was dug up and then severely chewed upon.  It is no longer lending much structural support.  I am leaning towards taking the whole thing down, straitening out the garage by jacking it up on this corner, then building a new wood shed. I have been looking up simple plans.  I guess the real problem will be trying to get that all done before we need to start storing wood for next winter. we do use the wood stove a lot in the winter for heat.

 

Our neighbors are constantly stopping and giving us praise and encouragement while we work.  They are very nice. I think they are glad to see this yard getting better.  I am sorry it has taken us this long to really get things done.  Last spring we had too many projects going on inside the house, and we were exhausted from moving and tapped out financially.  We definitely didn't get as much done in the yard as we would have liked last year.  This year will be much better.  I am trying to get as much done as possible before I go back to work.  I am kind of hoping I get part time hours like I did last year so I have more time for my garden.  Even with the raised beds we have so far I will have loads of vegetables to tend to.

This concrete square is where we are going to build our grape arbour.  There will be just enough room under there for our picnic table and we have room on the outside to plant grapes and/or hops to make it cool and pretty for outdoor parties in the summer.  I am still researching what varieties of grapes do well in our area and which kinds taste good as table grapes vs. juice grapes.  I think I will plant hops along the road side this year because they grow faster.  I can dig them out when the grapes get established.

There was a huge Oregon grape plant along this corner of the house.  The tree service we hired cut it down and chipped it and hauled it away, but little pieces of it were up close to the foundation so they couldn't get at them with the stump grinder.  With all these rocks it makes it very hard to get them with the shovel now as well.  I think we may have to get out some strong herbicide this summer and kill them off that way.

My new boots I bought last year are finally getting broken in.  I am getting very used to them.  At first the heels were a bit awkward to me, never having worn boots with heels, but now I love them.  They feel great even after a whole day of digging with a shovel.  I recommend getting a good pair of boots to anyone who works outside.  It is worth the investment.

 

Have a great day. Hopefully, weather permitting, we will make enough progress to have another update in a week or so.

 

P.S. My mom and I went together and ordered our vegetable seeds last week. I am starting to plan how we will start the tomatoes and peppers indoors when they arrive.