Spring update

 

• I wish I could tell you what types of carrots I’m holding here but my daughter seems to have misplaced the package.  I keep all of my seeds in a shoe box and recently she’s decided that she wants to have her own seed box.  So she went through all the seeds and took half of them and made her own packages.  She was so excited  I  couldn’t  say no but let’s just say there’s alot of unidentified seeds at the bottom of my box and  hers. She’s a gardener in the making.

I soaked my peas in some water diluted with inoculant for about for about 24hrs.  Most of the peas sprouted.

 

 

Peas about 2 inches in the ground. BTW these are the bush type that don’t need support.

This little guy standing between my wall o’ waters is one of my regulars.  He doesn’t go for the seeds like the other guys, he’s more of a “worm” guy.  I don’t mind sharing my garden worms with them anymore, as long as they leave some for my dirt.

This is my daughters spaghetti squash living in the wall o' water.  The temperatures having been dropping to freezing and we’ve had lots of rain, snow and 60mph winds and this little guy is doing just great.   I am now a believer in wall o’ waters. The wall o’ waters in the previous pics(the red ones), I’ve sowed some tomatoes seeds, but they haven’t come up yet…not surprising.  I much prefer to  start them indoors and transfer them outside as soon as I can so they can develop a better root system.

 

We decided to make some garden labels out of rocks.  There’s my daughter’s artwork.  I think she did a pretty good job.

 

I’ve always wanted a concord grape vine… I think they produce the best tasting grapes.  So when I saw  these small vines at a local hardware store, I decided to take a bite.  The vine is a one year old vine but they grow rather quickly and I get a great sense of satisfaction when I nurture something and watch it flourish.  I keep it snuggled under a glass pitcher and so far the little bud it has has been growing.

That is all for today. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

I've sold my compost tumbler

Remember my green compost tumbler?....well, I've sold it. It was difficult letting go at first because it was a really nice one. The bin worked really well, and I thought it was cute too, except the compost it produced looked like turds ...anyways that's not why I sold it. It was just not big enough. I ended up buying two more soilsaver bins from Sam's club for 39dollars each. They were a great deal. I'm very happy with the one I already have. It is difficult to turn the contents in them once the bin starts getting full...I just aerate it with the aerating tool and make sure it's moist enough....after that I don't do anything else to it. Three years is enough time to let the compost decompose enough.

On the left is an artichoke seedling. This one is going to planted in the border that travels around the patio. I've decided to incorporate perennial vegetables in the landscape whenever I can since I don't have enough raised beds.

I have some radishes, onions, leeks,mache lettuce, curly mustard, sweet peas and echinacea in my coldframe.

Despite the temperatures dropping into the twenties at night and cloudy days, the seeds are still sprouting and growing...just at a much slower rate.

Tulips in the patio bed. I had to place a small wire border to keep Coco out of the tulip bed. I amended the soil with sheep manure and bonemeal last fall.

Left overs from Fall

Last fall I planted some cool season vegetables for my fall garden and they never really got to full size, I know I started them too late(late August)....and so by the time winter came around I also didn't bother covering them with a hoop. I thought the wind would probably blow the plastic away(we get 80mph winds)....so why bother, I thought. After so many snow storms I went outside to assess the damage....and most of the greens were dead.... brown...goners...and so I left them in their grave yard for a couple of months(It was much to cold for me to deal with them at the time)...and then I started seeing some growth. I was really excited about that.
So I cleaned off all the dead stuff and debris and covered two of the boxes with plastic....and here are some pics:

Here is one of my lolla rosas. It's still growing. The spinach in the background doesn't look good and I was thinking about leaving them in so that I may collect the seeds but then again, you want to collect seeds from healthy looking plants. So next time I get out there...they'll be gone.

The swiss chard in the background have perked up and look really good. I can't wait to taste them. They should have a nice salty flavor thanks to the cold temperatures.

The beets are also thriving...some of the roots are almost two inches across.

A picture of a tree that produces baby pinecones. I love to collect them. I like to place them in decorative bowls for the winter.

This picture is of the Fairytale Town garden across from the Sacramento Zoo. The kale in the background box are like little trees. When I first saw the vegetables in the boxes, I thought they were fake b/c they looked so vibrant in color. My daughter was like...no mom... they are real.

That is all for today and thank you for stopping by. Till next time.

Resurfacing

Hello my fellow bloggers and readers. I'm back again. For awhile there I thought I was done with the blogging business. I would check every once in a while to see if the blog was even there. I thought it might have even been deleted by now from inactivity. I just wasn't ready to get back. Writing has never come naturally to me....getting my thoughts down in a flowing and natural manner....well, has always been a struggle for me, but never the less I have a need to share what has been happening in my own backyard , along with my desires and dreams for it.

Some new stuff:

I have a new camera... a Canon rebel xs 10 pixel...quite the step up from my previous 2.o megapixel ...along with a canon compact-macro lens. I wanted this lens so that I can take close-up pictures of flowers and food...it also does awesome portrait pics. I'm delighted with it. I just need to use it more often. My problem is that my laptop is now ancient and doesn't have the memory to handle all this data. Uploading pics is a hassle because I have to delete stuff off my computer so that I can make room for pics. So I haven't bothered with the process. Hopefully a friend might be able to help me out with that. I'll keep my fingers crossed so that I may be able to enhance the experience of this blog.


I've also doubled the size of my garden(I'll have to wait till I can post some pics to show you.) So that is all I'm going to mention in that department.

Last night I went to Whole Foods and attended a seminar by Full Circle Compost on one of their products, Soil Essence elite 1:9. Everyone that attended walked away with a complimentary bag. Thank you! This fertilizer not only has all the good stuff but it also has rock dust, something I've recently learned about. Individuals involved on the edge of organic farming are trying to remineralize the earth with rock dust and are getting great results. So I'm excited about incorporating this product into my garden.
The owner of the company(also a gardener) brought along many seeds to share with everyone. I picked up some brandywine tomato seeds from his own tomatoes. You shoud have seen how big his tomato plants were....10ft tall and the tomatoes were massive. I have seeds from his tomatoes so hopefully I'll be blessed with a better crop this year.

He brought some books that he recommended: Seed to Seed by by Suzanne Ashworth. On how to harvest and save seeds. Another one is How to Grow World Record Tomatoes by Charles Wilber. The presenters tomato plants were as big as the one in the book by Charles Wilber, no kidding....and he uses organic methods.

Overall it was an informative and enjoyable evening...I even ran into a friend there. Full Circle will be having another seminar next month. Not sure what their topic will be but you can look it up on their website or the Local Whole Foods website.

Well that is all for today. Thank you for reading and sorry there's no pics.
Have a great day.