Front Garden Tour

    I promised I would tell you what I have planted in each space so today I am going to talk about the front garden.
   
     As a reminder this is what it looks like:

     As far as specifics go... I have never measured. If at some point I get out the measuring tape I will certainly update everyone.

     I think  we should take it one section at a time. On the porch I  have a rubber tree from my husband's grandmother's funeral. I need to up pot it desperately, but for now it is still going. Then I have a flower garden with a few pots. One that holds beans, one with chocolate mint, and another with beans and lettuce. Below are two pictures- one from a front angle and one from the side.

     The flowers are a mix of different ones I received for mothers day and nastriums. In the back the mint is planted in a container in the middle flanked by the beans and lettuce. Side note: always keep mint in a container or closed off area or it will spread like wildfire. Though I have considered letting it take over the lawn
.. I bet it would smell nice.

     I have to be upfront... you are going to figure it out quickly anyway. My gardens have beans randomly throughout. A few on purpose, but most not. There is a story about this, but I think it is best told in its own post.

     Next are the tomatoes. We planted three varieties in the front: Red Million, Mr. Stripey, and Pink Brandywine. Also, random beans. Up until this morning there were onions in the front, but little E pulled them up. She was so proud I didn't even say anything and just threwthem in with the couple of zucchini and squash we picked. We ate them roasted in the oven as a side at dinner.

     So far we are patiently waiting to eat them I know that we will probably have a point where we have too many, but for now I just want one.

     Next up are the strawberries and brocolli. We keep the strawberries year after year, and in a few from time to time depending on how the winter goes. I typically cover the strawberries well with leaves and grass to overwinter. Sometimes I throw an old curtain over them as well. We bought stir fry broccoli and so far mostly little E has been eating them. As soon as she sees one she picks it. It is a great veggie for small kids to have in the garden because they can harvest it themselves. Oh, and a few beans plants.

     Then we have some squash plants, which will soon give us more than we bargained for. A bigger issue will occur once they take over the walkway.

     Beside the squash is an in ground potato plant. I think there were three seed potatoes planted and it seems to be growing well. It has nice leaves, blooms, and even potato berries. Apparently this is not something that always occurs and is probably due to the heat we have had. Side note: the berries look like little cherry tomatoes, are poisonous if eaten, but you can get true potatoes seeds from them.

    The leaves have leaned over into the flower bed beside them (probably reaching for sun because it is at the edge of the house). So, last but not least are more mothers day flowers with a few beans amongst them.

      We hope you enjoyed our front garden tour. Drop us a comment and let us know what your garden looks like. Happy gardening!

Wisdom Wednesday

Adopt the pace of nature, her secret is patience-Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I posted this because inside I am itching to eat all the goodies the garden is working on. I am struggling with waiting... especially with the tomatoes. Ripe tomatoes from the vine are the best tomatoes you will ever eat. I want one now! 

Luckily, my tomatoes are growing- we have a lot on the vine and it won't be too much longer. A few of the red million are starting to turn. So, I shall adopt the pace of nature, be patient, and wait

Anyone else having to remind themselves to be patient or have some of you already eaten a heavenly tomato from your garden?

E's Recipes- BlackBerry Yogurt

     We are very fortunate to have wild blackberries growing around the edge of our property. This means that if we are lucky we get some fresh picked blackberries. Today we went to check the blackberries and had the pleasure of finding a few handfuls of ripe berries amongst the red and half ripe ones.

Of cpurse, the kids were excited and wanted them right away! I knew if I just handed them a handful they would scarf them down in about 3 seconds.

So I turned to a tried and true yogurt recipe we often use with strawberries. It is so simple and quick that I can put together in minutes. They are literally 3 ingredients:

Vanilla yogurt (or yogurt of your choice)
Honey (drizzle to taste)
Fruit (obviously we used blackberries but it is delicious with strawberries, cherries, peaches etc.)

I put the yogurt in a bowl (or small container), threw in some berries and added honey.

We hope you give our recipe a try -if you do and like it or find a great addition or variation let us know in the comments.

I am back....

     I know it has been a llloooonnnnggg time (ok.. years) since I have posted, but big E moved on from gardening to other adventures. We added little E to the family and frankly I just didn't have the energy. Now little E is 3 and she is into gardening, so since I am growing more (last few years have just been strawberries, cucumber, and tomatoes) I have decided to pick the blog back up. For this first post back I am going to talk about the space I garden in.

     Small gardening is my thing because I am gone most of the week during the summer and my husband has no interest in gardening. If it is really hot and I ask him to water he will, but otherwise it is my baby to rock. A small garden allows me to keep up with a good watering each weekend and to actually harvest food when it is ripe.

     I use only a few areas around the house to garden in, which greatly helps me water as I can do about half  it with the water hose and only have to fill up the watering can two or three times to get the rest.

     The first area is the flower garden bed in the front. The second area is along one side of my house. The picture below shows how they look today.

The front bed I grow my veggies directly in the ground, but the side bed is more prone to hard clay and gets very wet. There I do a combination of in ground plants and containers. 

The third spot is in the back. I have a small stretch for the grapevine and also a small area under the steps to the porch and up against the house.

I love to garden on small scale and see what grows and try to cram as much in as possible. Look for future posts outlying what I have in each space this year. 

Happy gardening everyone!! 

Garden Update

Well, folks we have been busy!!! Sorry about the long break, but E and I are only home on the weekends which makes it hard to get stuff done and blog. Honestly, I thought I'd have more time to blog this summer but it just hasn't happened. Soooo... here is a lil update, and we promise it won't be long until we are back to regular updates again.


Today we will update the back garden and once the tomatoes come in a lil better we will do the side, and of course we will update the circle garden soon too!!

Anyway, our lettuce grew and was eaten ;)

The peas grew and grew and grew but are finally about ready to call it quits (but we planted a succession crop so should only have a few weeks break!!)

Cucumbers have been growing and producing a few a week, but looks like they will soon ramp up to more!! (have to get a good pic later) and our zucchini plant is taking over the corner ;), and has a few growing on it!

Our grape plant has grapes on it this year!! We are so excited!! (they have grown larger since I last took a photo)

We have peas!!!!

We are so very excited that we have finally been able to successfully grow peas!!! We have tried several times and failed.... but this year we have been victorious!!!

What is crazy is that we took this picture last week- I know we've been so busy with the end of year hoopla and me getting ready to work away during the summer we hadn't posted much lately. Anyway, they have grown taller and fuller in just one week.

We hope that everyone has been doing well and that your gardens are growing!!!


-Mom and E

Sorry we have been sick..

Sorry for not posting Monday. E was sick and now I am sick. I will give you a little update though.

We have managed to dig up half of the circle garden. We were hoping to get even closer this week, but it isn't looking like it is going to happen. We made our deadline two weeks earlier than it need to be though, so we should be ok.


The early cucumbers are doing well, peas that are in the ground are doing well and so is our cool veggie crops.


Hopefully, we'll be able to post some pics soon.



Hope all is well with everyone else :)

-Mom and E

E's Recipe- Pasta Salad

E loves to eat his own mix of pasta salad. He love sit for snack and lunch. The best thing is that you can put whatever you want in there and make it fairly healthy. He loves putting ranch in there and since that packs a lot of calories, we experimented with making our own the other day.



Pasta Salad:

First you need pasta- we use whatever we feel like at the time- macaroni, bow tie, rotini, etc.This time he wanted bow tie. Cook according to directions and firmness desire then rinse with cold water.

Next you need whatever you want to put in. Usually for us this includes a mix of veggies, fruit, shredded cheese, and meat (sandwich, pepperoni (E's fav), chicken- really whatever pleases you. This time it included broccoli, apples, celery, pepperoni, shredded cheese. 

Then you need to choose what you want to put in as a flavor. As mentioned above E's favorite is Ranch, mom likes to have it with Italian sometimes, but use whatever you want. We made Ranch from a packet. To make it healthier we used plain yogurt (you can also use sour cream). E also put in some herbs (cilantro, chives and some young leaf lettuce that has a peppery taste) to jazz it up. 

Then mix it all up together...

and serve.

Now there is only one thing left to do ...ENJOY!

Wisdom Wednesday and Early cucumber update and pics

Wisdom-

Gardening is learning, learning, learning. That's the fun of them. You're always learning.-Helen Mirren

Cucumber Update-

We have been showing how fast our early cucumber starts have been growing, so thought we would update. The plan is to try and see if we can get any produce out of an early batch. We were going to plant them last weekend, but as there was a  forecast of frost Tuesday we will probably but out later in the week or this weekend. They are still going strong in our pop bottle and milk jug pots, though their roots are getting large.

We have been placing our plants outside during the nice weather to harden them off....

The space for the cucumbers is ready to go though...

Once we get the early cucumbers in the ground we will put seeds for the normal crop in. Hopefully we will have plenty of cucumbers this year. Most of the area has a good bit of sun, but the middle has a little shade. This will allow us to see if the shade helps out during the hot weather later in the seaso

Peas

So, as we mentioned in our update the other day our pea tower is not doing well.....

On the bright side our in ground peas are popping up. We attached gardening twin lines so they could grow up them. We shall see if it works :)

Yesterday mom planted some new seeds in between the pea plants growing so hopefully there will be time for a succession crop. It has been getting warm so we are not sure if they will be able to withstand the Southern heat....

Are you trying any new experiments this year?

-Mom and E

Sorry for the long hiatus...

We are sorry it has been awhile since we have posted. We have been really busy with school ramping up for the end of the year and my work getting very busy preparing for our summer program and trying to get the academic year files ready. On top of that we have a fun weekend trip and have been fighting with digging up a bush (and small tree) and digging out the roots to make room for the circle garden. Perhaps, in that respect we have bite off a huge bite.

Anyway, here is a quick update in words with a future post coming that is more in depth with pics.

Good:
We have peas growing outside.
We have kale and cabbage starting to pop up outside.
Our seed starting has gone well.
Ethan's school cabbage is growing well.


Bad:
Pea tower is all but dead..... :(
We planted our cucumber and zucchini way too early and didn't realize just how quick they grow.. but they may be salvageable. We are starting the hardening off process and going to see if we can get an early set going and then plant seeds when it is a lil warmer. It will either work or not, but it is a fun experiment.

Not Sure Yet:
Wintersow hasn't popped up yet, so we plopped a few more seeds down in there- so it will either turn out that we get the ones we just put in to grow or we'll have A LOT and have to give some away. Time will tell.

 Frustrating:
How long it is taking to get the dadgum bush out. Well, it did turn into one huge bush and a bunch of smaller ones. Also whoever planted there had planted over nails and broken glass.... le sigh so it is taking forever. Dig, dig, dig- sift through dirt to remove copious amount of roots, broken bits of glass, and nails. Then shovel dirt to a pile on the side, to used later. Positive note- once all that stuff is removed the soil looks good.


What projects does everyone else have going on?

-Mom and E

Forgotten Carrot

As we were pulling the few weeds that were pushing their way through our back garden bed, we noticed there were a few carrots left over. We ended up taking one out just to see how it was looking and if it was still good. We figured that with the polar votex it wouldn't be any good. Boy, were we wrong. Perhaps it stayed alive since it was in the ground and covered by our lasagna gardening stuff.

Here it is in the ground:

Here is what it looked like on the table- pretty good size:

Here are pics of E looking at it and showing it off- he really thought it was neat:

We did eat it-Mom hoped it would be sweet, but it must've been in there too long. It wasn't bad- very rooty tasting (more like the beet and turnip root taste), but since we like that we enjoyed it. PB and Uncle Micheal were not fans though. There is one or two more, but the tops were tore off and it's hard to find them under the leaves and such so we are going to wait and see if the tops comes back and then we can pick them.

Wisdome Wednesday

To one who does not know a small garden is a forest- Proverb

Indoor Herb Garden Update-

February:

We are going to show how the indoor herb garden has grown over time:

Feb. 1st- Some sprouts have came up. Not sure what they are yet, since we neglected to mark where we put each part and the pot has moved around a little. Probably the lettuce though.

In the end the lettuce and cilantro came up, but no parsley :(. E didn't like the sort of blank look it ended up with on half of it so we put in some radish seed (three different types).


Here is what it looks like today:

The cilantro is on the right, towards the back is the lettuce and everywhere else is the various types of radish.

Zucchini

We've started some zucchini indoors, and so far are enjoying the results. We just hope we didn't start too early since we don't plan on putting them out until April... though if we up pot them maybe we'll be ok.

They began in the seedling tray:

Then we up potted or should we say up canned them (they are shown here with cucumbers):

Here is how they look now- definitely growing well:

Garden for Granny

     This Thursday we are deviating slightly from our usual E's recipes, but we think it is for a good cause. We enjoy reading both Two Men and a Little Farm and Annie's Kitchen Garden blogs. Both have been inspirational to us, and in our opinion are kind and wonderful people and fantastic bloggers.

     Granny from Annie's Kitchen Garden has always had an amazing garden with huge yields. Her posts are funny and down to earth. She honestly reminds us of our Grandma Shirley Squirrely. Sadly, Granny has had some health problems lately. It started with her not being able to use her arm. She went to the doctor thinking it was a nerve problem, only to find out it was a recurrence of cancer.

     Well, Two Men and a Little Farm are big fans of Granny's as well (and were well before we dipped our toes into the blogging world). They posted the sweetest post about Granny Gardening for Granny, which we think you should read to fully understand how wonderful she is (and you should check out her site which is linked above). In their post, they suggested we all Garden for Granny. Since she can't get out in her own garden, we should share our harvests and dedicate our gardens to her. We are all in for it and would like to encourage more bloggers to do so and link back to her to give encouragement.

     This really spoke to us as we lost our Grandpa last year to cancer. We know what a fight it is and how much courage it takes to fight it. We also know how much of a toll treatments can take on one's body and frankly their spirit. We wanted to give some encouragement, positive thoughts and love to send her (and her family's way). Just so you know, Mr. Granny we are sending lots of that to you as we know it isn't easy watching someone you love go through such a difficult thing or deal with your own fears and emotions while trying your best to be strong and brave for them.

     We do have some good news to share straight from Granny (and it was so great to see her post again!). Her family is pitching right in (we imagine that they have a spirit and determination similar to hers). The kids and gran kids are going to pitch right in with the garden, keeping the house clean, and with meals. 

     So please join us and grow a little something for her as well!!! Granny, to put you up to date with our garden, we have already planted a few things. We have put out some onions, lettuce, carrots, kale and Chinese cabbage. We shall also be putting out a few other things in the days to come. We have several things started and will be sure to keep you updated!!

Wisdom Wednesday- Proverb

Scottish Proverb

A man o' words, and no o' deeds, is like a garden fu' o' weeds

Happy St. Patty's Day!

E wanted to say:

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Don't forget to wear green!

Tips to keep your garden green:

• Start with nice rich soil- if it isn't then add some compost
• Water smart- not too much or too little
• Make sure plants get the right amount of light
• Fertilize when needed (use your method of preference)
• Harvest regularly and dead head flowers to keep plant growing and blooming
• Keep the weeds under control- we don't need them stealing nutrients
• Practice companion planting to get the good insects coming and the bad ones far away
• Check for garden pests and diseases regularly and get rid of them ASAP
• Plant a bee friendly area so they can pollinate your plants

 

Also- today is the day to plant cilantro!!!

Stay green and stay healthy! Get out and plant something... anything and we promise not only will it start you on a path of eating fresh, but also make you feel great when you are able to go out and harvest it!

-Mom and E

Pea Tower Fun Land

     I bought this planter dirt cheap at the dollar store at the end of the gardening season last year. We had yet to come up with a plan to use it that we both agreed on. Our pea seedlings needed replanted and Viola! a fantastic idea was born!

     We thought this would be a great place to put them and give them some room to spread their roots and a little support to grow upwards. If they start to outgrow it we can always place it outside and surround it with a teepee of sticks (and plant a succession crop). Here is what we did in photos.

1. Put dirt in:

2. Remove seedlings from tray (we cut ours out since our roots were so tangled up, but you can just remove them)

3. Plant leaving space between:

     E wanted to make it even cooler and made "levels" of scenes that would be hidden.

The top has Indians, the middle has ninjas and the bottom has Pokemon.


It was fun and is too cute for words.

What fun gardening projects have you done with kids?

-Mom and E