We’re in the thick of planting season now that the cold weather has finally subsided. Winter had no intentions of releasing its grip on us this year. It was a long, cold, dark winter. Spring has sprung, though. Last week we had nights down into the 30’s, but today is sunny and in the mid-80’s and there are no frost warnings in the future. I wanted to post some of what’s going on in the garden at this point. This isn’t everything, though. I think I’m actually going to start doing my garden updates as vlogs instead of blog posts. I think a video would do a much better job of showing you what we have going on. The black raspberries are doing well. I planted 4 brambles 2 years ago, and 2 more last year. This one was planted the first year, and it’s the only one that has ever survived. I attribute this to the very harsh winters we have had the last couple of years. I plan to take cuttings and start new plants from this one since it’s apparently very strong. We have lots of clusters on this one plant. It’ll be a nice snack in another month or so. Not enough for jam, though. This is one of my brussel sprout plants that we purchased from the farmer’s market. I’ve never grown these before, but we’re excited about them! There are some shallots planted in this bed as well. Beets. I love beets. This is an assortment of fig trees that I purchased from Baker Creek Seeds several months ago. They’ll be transplanted into 5 gallon buckets today. […]
2015 Garden Plans – Victory Garden Style!
This year I’m doing something a little different in my garden. I’m planting it Victory Garden-style. What is a Victory Garden? A Victory Garden was used during WWI and WWII in many different countries, including America. Its purpose was twofold: to help take the pressure off of commercial food production during a time of rationing and widespread hunger (due to the wars), and also to boost morale. It plain ol’ feels GOOD to produce some or most of your family’s meals right at home. The Department of Agriculture in America put out pamphlets, walking folks through how to garden. They used crop rotation and staggered plantings in order to make the most of a small gardening space. It was expected that people would pitch in and grow some of their own fruits and veggies. Ditto for having a flock of hens for your family’s egg needs, but that’s a different blog post …. Isn’t that ironic? We live in a country today where 45+ million people live in poverty, and 14%+ households are considered “food insecure,” and people in certain areas and neighborhoods still have to fight for the right to grow and produce their own food on their own property. Have we lost touch with the reality that was so apparent to our grandparents? It wasn’t that long ago. I realize I’m probably preaching to the choir here … I really enjoyed reading through this pamphlet that was put out by the Victory Garden Committee in Pennsylvania in 1944. I live in New York, so planting times are similar with just a few slight changes. I used this vintage Victory […]
5 Ways to Create Healthy Soil in Fall
The first year that we moved into our current home, we moved in too late in summer to start a garden. There was already a 10 ft. by 17 ft. vegetable garden in place. It was a mess, though. Completely overgrown with weeds. The previous owners had used orange shag carpet as a weed barrier (not kidding). But the carpet had been there for so long that it was disintegrating, and embedded into the root systems of the weeds that had eventually grown up through after years of neglect. It was pretty rough, but at least I didn’t have to start completely from scratch. I was also extremely pregnant with baby #4 at the time, so doing a lot of that heavy lifting and shoveling was not something I was able to do. Oh yeah…this was before we’d been able to purchase a tiller. So everything had to be done by hand. I *wanted* to do something to get the soil ready for the following Spring, but I didn’t know what to do. I also didn’t have the appropriate equipment. I don’t think we even had a shovel yet… I won’t claim to know all of the tricks of the trade just yet. I still consider myself a newbie gardener having just wrapped up year 3. However, I have learned a few things that I’d like to share with you that you can do in Fall to prepare your soil for the following Spring. 1. Pull up all of the spent plants. (I do my fall/winter garden in the raised beds, so this does not pertain to them). Don’t let last year’s zucchini plant or […]
Family Updates, Gaden Notes, and Preparing for Winter
It’s been almost two months since my last post. I have good reason…promise. I mentioned in my last post that I’d been feeling ill and exhausted…leaving me feeling slightly burnt out on the ways of simple livin’. You may have guessed … Yep! Baby #5 will arrive in the Spring. I’m well into my second trimester at this point and feeling much, much better. Being able to eat again is such a gloriously glorious thing. Food. My BFF these days. I have pretty rough first trimesters. With the last two babies, I ended up in the hospital dehydrated because of the severe morning sickness. Thank goodness it wasn’t as bad this time around, but I was still feeling very lousy. Tired, moody, tired, sick, tired, moody, sick, sick, sick. You know the drill. Adding to this the fact that my husband was out of town for 3 weeks for work, and we really brought it down to survival mode in our household for the end of Summer. I did eventually start feeling well enough to can the tomatoes when they came rolling in. Our harvest wasn’t as good as it was last year, but we still got enough for lots of salsa, stewed tomatoes, and tomato sauce. I tried this recipe for my tomato sauce. It requires no boiling/peeling of the tomatoes, which I really appreciated. Being efficient with my time is essential, especially when trying to can with 4 little ones running around. There’s nothing fast about canning. Anything I can do to make it faster or more efficient, I’ll try. I know that’s a slightly controversial thing…not peeling the tomatoes. I’m […]
A North Eastern Fall Garden
It’s time to start thinking forward to cooler weather already! Most of us northern gardeners are still patiently waiting for our tomatoes to start turning red. My cabbage is just starting to form heads and I saw the tiniest little broccoli crown today. As I’ve said before, gardening in cooler climates is a true test of patience. Lots of Fall garden articles are geared toward people who live in warmer clients. But the truth is, there’s a lot that we can do in the north, too. Where I am, I don’t have time for a second crop of cabbage or broccoli. They’re typical Fall garden options, but really not practical for my climate. They just wouldn’t have enough time before a hard frost hit. Sure, I could speed things up by starting them under lamps inside, but grow lamps are expensive and I’m really a no-muss no-fuss kind of gardener anyway. I’m going to be sowing a cover crop in my large garden bed this year to try and get some nutrients back in the soil for next year. I got the Peas/Oats blend from Botanical Interests. I may block out a small patch for some carrots. I haven’t decided if I’ll do those in the raised bed or not. I’ll use my 2 4×8 raised beds to try out a winter/fall garden this year once they’ve cleared out for the summer. I have some old leftover windows that I’m excited to use over the raised beds to form a kind of green house- you know, to extend the season a bit when temps start to drop. This chart on the Mother Earth News […]
How to Get Rid of Cucumber Beetles Naturally
So, I was out in the garden one day weeding. I looked over to my left and saw this little beetle. It was quite flashy. Yellow and black stripes. Being the naive, novice gardener that I am, my reaction was, “Oh! That’s a pretty bug! Hi, little bug!.” Something in the back of my mind thought that, since I’d never seen this bug in my garden before, maybe it wasn’t really supposed to be there. I only saw one of them, though. So, I didn’t think too much of it. I made a mental note to look it up. Two days later, I saw five of them. So now I knew they were invading, and I really needed to research. I thought I might have cucurbit beetles, but wasn’t sure. Two more days … there was no denying it. I have a cucumber (cucurbit) beetle problem. Cucurbit Beetles will attack anything in the cucurbit family (squash, gourds, cucumbers, melons), which includes about 1/3 of my garden. They’ll eat the leaves of your plants, but perhaps more menacing, they carry a bacteria in their intestinal tract that can cause bacterial wilt. Bacterial wilt can wipe out an entire crop in a matter of days. Bad news! You won’t find me using invasive pesticides in my garden. So I’m always going to search for a homemade or natural remedy. First I tried a garlic hot pepper spray. I honestly only tried this for about 6 hours before I decided it wasn’t working. The beetles stayed on the leaves, totally unscathed by my spritzing them with garlic and hot pepper. Maybe I wasn’t using hot enough peppers (I […]
Simple Tips for Growing Awesome Tomatoes
(Some of my posts may contain referral links. That means that if you clink through one of my links and then purchase something, I get a small commission. Thank you so much!) “Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to garden, and the whole neighborhood gets tomatoes.” True story. By now, most of us already have our tomato plants growing in the ground. Up here in the north, I’m starting to see some beautiful little green tomatoes replacing the blossoms. Once a few of them get large enough, I’ll harvest some for fried green tomatoes. Mmmmm. Here are some of my favorite tomato growing tips. I keep it as simple as possible. Like most of you, I don’t have the time to research fancy solutions, nor the money to spend on them. So if I can find a solution using what I already have on hand, that’s the route I take. If I can’t, then it honestly probably won’t get done. I hope these tips help your maters grow and yield generously. 1. Prune the suckers: These are the small shoots that grow in the crotch between a stem and a branch. These growths will never produce fruit, so many gardeners will pinch them off. No sense in letting them use up valuable nutrients! This is especially true for indeterminate varieties of tomatoes. 2. Coffee Grounds and Egg Shells: I keep a bowl on my kitchen counter collect the used coffee grounds and egg shells from the day. At the end of each day, I carry them out to the garden and lay them at the feet of my tomato […]
A June Garden Update
Sometimes as a northern gardener, it can be really frustrating to see blog posts of southern gardeners harvesting zucchini as mine is only just getting its first set of true leaves. Or seeing green tomatoes being harvested, when I’m only just seeing my first tomato blossom! Ah well. Could be worse, right? I watch the show Alaska: The Last Frontier and can only imagine how difficult gardening must be up there … but they still do it, and they do it well! So here’s a picture update of what’s going on in our garden these days. I had some root maggots attack my radishes. I purchased some beneficial nematodes, diatomaceous earth, and some of this stuff and applied all three. Maybe it was overkill, but I kinda panicked. I ended up just pulling up all of the radishes. I have some beets and other veggies planted nearby that root maggots would just love. So I decided to err on the side of caution. So far I haven’t seen any evidence of them since pulling up the radishes and applying the nematodes. We’ll have to wait and see! Here we have rhubarb in a pot, peas almost ready for harvest, beets, and one of the 4 types of peppers plants I have growing: Here we have butternut squash, apples, and a little tomato blossom! And here some purple cabbage, cauliflower, and zucchini: This isn’t everything. We also have blackberries, strawberries, pumpkins, kale, broccoli, green cabbage, asparagus, cukes, cow peas, blueberries (still too young to produce at 2 years old, but growing well!), a total of 3 varieties of tomatoes (san marzano, black cherry, and brandywine), and 4 […]
2014 Garden Plan and Hopes for Spring
“The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.” ~ George Bernard Shaw Here is a list of what we will be growing in the gardens this year. In addition to this, I also have some blueberry plants and some blackberry brambles. I’d like to find a place for a dwarf peach tree, perhaps. I’ll start winter sowing sometime this week. Last year I’d already begun by now, but it’s been a crazy few weeks. Another advantage of winter sowing is that you have a little more wiggle room in your planting times. (P.S. I figured out why I couldn’t upload pictures before. Technical issue resolved. Regular stunning sub-par photography will resume moving forward.) We have had a great deal of snow and freezing temperatures this year. It’s not abnormal for New York, but I think we’ve been colder and snowier than recent years for sure! Thankfully we’ve had bits of sunshine to help keep our moods up. The children and I have enjoyed sitting by a sunny window watching the winter birds out by the feeders. We’re working on learning to identify common birds. We’ll start reading the Burgess Bird Book and following along with the Great Backyard Bird Count in a couple of weeks. Even winter has opportunities for enjoying God’s creation around us! Cool Weather Crops: Mesclun Broccoli Cauliflower Kale Radishes Carrots Cabbage Peas Warm Weather Crops: Butternut Squash Zucchini Cucumbers 3 varieties of tomatoes (a beefsteak, a paste, and a cherry) Peppers (Bell, Hungarian Hot, and Jalepeno) Herbs: Thyme Rosemary Sage Basil Lemonbalm Cilantro Flowers (these plans are still coming together): Calendula Nasturtiums Sun […]
Garden Planning Series, Day 2
***Note: That time you tried to start a blog, and then as you’re getting ready to upload pictures for your 4th blog post, your computer and/or camera goes completely wonky. And your computer says that it can’t recognize what you’ve plugged into the USB port. So then you try slipping that little SD card thingy into the front of the computer, and it does … well, it does absolutely NOTHING. Yep. That’s me right now. I’m sorry! I will remedy this ASAP. But in the meantime, here’s how I map out my garden: Last post I discussed the what, when, and how much of garden planning. Now I’m going to introduce you to my super high tech, madly complicated, highly sophisticated method of planning out my garden. Graph paper. Pencil. I know, I know. Mind. Blown. Also, this book is a wannabe homesteader’s BFF. I reference it constantly throughout the year. Everything from how/when to prune your brambles, planting dwarf fruit trees, to brewing your own beer, to gardening (soil prep through harvest!), to small scale livestock. It’s the bee’s knees. 1. Make a list of what you’re going to grow. As you order seed, put a little check mark next to it. 2. Get your graph paper and map out your garden space. This goes for you too, container gardeners. Measure your containers if you have them already and figure out how many square feet of growing space you’re working with. On the graph paper, I use 1 square for each foot of gardening space. So on my main bed, I’m working with about 12’x17’. On the graph […]
