Long time no post

October 17, 2011 at 8:14 am (My Life, Square Foot Gardening)
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You’d think after this long hiatus I’d be giving an update on the garden.  And I plan to upload pictures and show off some of my big tomatoes and my bumper crop of strawberries…but have you ever heard a song that touched you?  I’ve become a fan of country music here lately, and every time I hear this song it makes me ponder this thing we call life. 

Listen to the words.  It’s a touching story of what’s happening with too many people these days.

The next post will be on a lighter note…promise!

Happy Gardening!  Hoping things turn around for us

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Chronicle of the Campari (Tomato)

May 11, 2011 at 10:22 pm (Square Foot Gardening)
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Remember back when we had all that snow and I was showing off the germinated seeds from the Campari tomato I bought from Aldi’s?  Well, today we have a little Campari tomato growing. 

When I first noticed the flower bud growing, I made sure I gave the plant a few thumps a few times a day (this is supposed to help release the pollen).   Out of the many I started, I’m down to four plants today.  I’ve got one in a bucket I’m going to grow upside down, one in a large pear can (this one has always had the deepest green color), and two growing in 6-inch pots.  I removed all the flowers except one from the plant that’s growing the tomato today, and I removed all the flowers from the other one growing in the 6-inch pot. 

The potted plants are a couple feet tall and very leggy, but I’m not really worried about that because I always bury my tomatoes as deep as I can…although two feet is pretty deep.   The plant that’s growing in the can has always had the most compact growth besides being the greenest, healthiest looking Campari.  The plants have been enjoying the outside air.  The acutal tomato went from being barely able to be seen to the size of a pea in less than two days. 

Here’s a little slideshow showing the progress:

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Looking forward to seeing how it tastes.

Happy Gardening!!

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The 2011 Garden

May 9, 2011 at 10:55 pm (Square Foot Gardening)
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It’s been three months, and it’s beyond time I posted something to move the last post with that depressing mountain of snow down the queue.  How about this…

Or this…

That’s my clearance sale rhododendron that I got last spring.  There were a few blooms on it when I got it, but in the fall there were tons of flower buds on the plant.  A few of them opened, but then winter set in.   When the weather started warming up, the plant just picked up where it left off last fall and bloomed beautifully.

So sorry I haven’t been a good blogger girl these past few months, but I have been doing a few things here and there gardening related.  In March when we had out first relatively warm day I planted the south bed with my seed tape.  Then the temperatures dropped…we had snow…a number of times.  I thought the seeds were dead, but low and behold one day I saw the pointy leaves of spinach.  Here’s what the bed looks like now.

I planted three or four varieties of spinach, radish and bok choi using the seed tape.  Once the seeds started growing in, I interplanted each row with lettuces.  I think this is the first time that I’m picking more than just a few leaves of spinach.  The only thing that didn’t germinate well was the bok choi, although I was pleasantly surprised to find a few plants growing today.

I did a bit of winter sowing with the spinach seeds too.  I tried to overwinter some lettuce in this big bin, but I saw bugs in it and it had to go.  But before I sat it outside on the porch, I planted some spinach seeds.  Sure enough, when the weather started warming up, the spinach started to grow.  Then I transplanted a few other plants into the bin and have been harvesting baby leaves.

Right now I’m hardening off my tomato and pepper plants.  I went the heirloom route this year.  Red and yellow brandywine, although I’ve lost most of the yellow, Cherokee Purple, Chocolate Cherry, Principe Borghese (hope I spelled that right), Lemon Pear.   I’ll be glad when the weather mellows out so I can actually put them in the ground.

So…what else is going on?  One of the flat leaf parsley plants made it through the winter and is growing great. I think all of the onions that were left last year started growing, and I’ve harvested them already to clear out the bed for the tomatoes.   I’m in the process of doing a raised bed in front of the garage where I grew the corn last year.  I’m thinking of doing white potatoes one one side and sweet potatoes on the other side.  I’ve got peas, broccoli and a couple cabbages in the ground already, although they’re growing kind of slow, and the strawberries have quite a few blooms on them

Anyway, that’s a little catch-up on what’s going on in my world…as I anxiously wait for the weather to break.

Happy Gardening!!!

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Epitome of Jumping to the Wrong Conclusion

February 7, 2011 at 8:43 pm (Campari Tomato, Square Foot Gardening)
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Okay.  Well, umm, I do believe I owe my neighbor an apology.  I do believe that I not only jumped to the wrong conclusion but I pole vaulted to the wrong conclusion that somebody she hired aimed their snow blower onto my garage (see the post prior to this one).  As the day progressed I realized when I went up her steps I had to make a path in the snow and it occurred to me that you’d probably take care of your front steps before you took care of an alley.  And when I finally started clearing the snow away from my garage I noticed that the snow had drifted much more on our side of the alley.  So, with a lot of egg on my face, my apologies, Dear Neighbor.

However, I only had to look further down the alley to see the evidence of a genuine bad mannered snow blower operator.  On the other end of the alley, somebody cleared the alley in front of a vacant house and created a hill of snow across the width of the alley.   So, the rant from the other day has been redirected to those that are truly guilty.

The day this picture was taken, the homeowner couldn’t drive out of her garage, but the alley on the other side of this snow pile was clear as can be.   Truly ill-mannered behavior. 

To take my mind off of snow I transplanted my tomato seedlings.  No, I didn’t cut the extras off at the soil level…couldn’t bring myself to kill them.  I teased them apart and repotted each and every one of them.  Now I am the caretaker of  20 tomato seedlings…from a hybird Campari tomato…that I don’t even know will produce any tomatoes…in January…with close to 20 inches of snow on the ground…still…because, lucky us, we had more snow today.

After looking outside at the mounds and mounds of snow, I feel so much better looking at this…

Happy Gardening!!

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