No News, Is Good News

Not necessarily in this case.  I have had several previous commitments which have kept me from the garden.  I am so far behind.  I have Friday off and I hope to get to most, if not all, of my seeds started and in the greenhouse.  Next will be getting the vegetable beds prepared. Last, but not least, is the weeding of the flower beds.  That is my least favorite task.  But when all is done, it is quite rewarding to see the beautiful weed free beds.  But don't blink because before you know it those little devils are popping up all over again.

Spring chores

Peaceful Gardeners!!
hope you are having a great spring, getting those veggies and flowers planted or just admiring the spring flowers that are already blooming. Spent some time getting the greenhouse cleaned up and organized. Added more gravel over the whole floor - looks great! Hope it keeps the grass and blackberries down better!
I've gotten quite a bit planted in small pots in the greenhouse - peas, lettuce, corn, cabbages. Yesterday I planted tomato seeds in the greenhouse and New Zealand spinach seeds outside in one of the beds. I will post some pics soon. Thanks, Anna, for jump-starting us again!

Spring Is In The Air

The days are getting longer and slightly warmer.  It looks to be a decent spring.  I have not posted here in 2 years.  So I thought it was time to get BUSY.   I am going to change up my garden a bit this year.  Things I need to do in April are:

1.  Get lettuce started and in the greenhouse.  I have a warming mat and plan on buying a grow light within the next week.
2.  Turn the soil and get the snow peas in. (its alittle late but what the heck)
3.  Find a permanent spot for the raspberries and get them situated.
4.  Prep the soil for the pumpkin patch.

That's a good start.   My Tulips are up and about to bloom.  I will post pictures as soon as they have bloomed. I will also include some pictures of the garden area, when I get it turned and the soil prepped. 

Something new this year is I am looking into canning some veggies this year.  I am thinking of doing tomatos, jalepenos, garlic and pears.  I may take a trip to Eastern WA to get some of these items, since the growing season here is always a crap shoot.

Let me know what you are up to in the garden!

Anna

Spring is Here! 

It has been along time since I have posted.  I am a little behind in my garden prep.  Verdelle brought me 3 raspberry plants last week.  Now I need to get out to the garden and clean up the new spot for the raspberries.  I am making a few changes to the garden area this year.  I, with the help of Marty, have made the pumpkin patch larger.  I am planting corn this year - but it will not be for eating, it will be for the corn stocks.  I am giving up on corn.  I can stop by Carpinitos during corn season and get fresh picked good sweet corn every day.  I'm trying to concentrate on things that work well in my garden.  Also this year,  I would like to do some canning.  I make about 12 to 18 jars of raspberry jam every year and have decided that I would like to try canning pears, tomatoes, jalapenos and maybe garlic.  It sounds pretty ambitious, we''ll see how much I can get done.  My tulips are just about to bloom.  I took pictures today,  I'll try and get those posted and also  more when they bloom.  This week I hope to get some lettuce seeds started and out in the green house.   It is Easter this weekend.  God Bless all of you. 
He Is Risen . . .  He is Risen Indeed!

Garden update

So here are some photos of our garden in August - lots more vegetation than what I posted in May!!

We are eating corn, so GOOD! Most everything is going crazy (except tomatoes, darn it!). See for yourself. Top pic is corn, green beans in the back box, kohlrabi, dill, parsley, basil, broccoli and cabbage totally being taken over by 3 plants of Cinderella pumpkin. The bottom pic shows lettuce, spinach and leeks being totally overtaken by golden hubbard squash plants.

here are the "aliens" in the garden - multi-rooted carrots (still delicious!) and creepy looking close-up of purple kohlrabi that Roger planted. Hope it tastes good, will be trying it in a week or so. And soon I will have to be digging up my compost pile again to rescue potatoes that insist on growing there. Thought I got them all out of there last year, but guess not, the plants were bigger than ever this year.

If You Go to the Puyallup Fair...

Look for my sister's entry in the Christmas Tree decorating competition. Her theme is "My Garden" and she has made, by hand, carrots, pea pods, tomatos, pears, roses, peonies, strawberries, cherries, and I don't know what all. A big bunch of grapes may be the topper. We helped her with it during our "sisters retreat" at Ocean Shores. Not everything on it is hand-made, but I think at least half will be. This is the mock-up we made at our "sister's week" at Ocean Shores.

My veggies are going ok except for the green beans. (they are in the box in the background on the left, barely visible so far.) They obviously need a lot more sun and warmth to get going well. Potatoes, beets and spinach are all doing very well, especially the potatoes. I think they grew 6 inches since Sunday!! I've planted quite a few tomatoes and peppers in my greenhouse - they are doing well too. Remember me whining about my shallots failing last year? Well . . . this year, after being covered by leaves (brought over by the youth group) the whole winter, and uncovered earlier this spring, they seem to be growing like they should. I'll get a picture of them here soon.
Praying for more sun!

Flower wall

Here is a "flower wall" put together by Kristen - good job! Beautiful. She will describe it for us when I send her the link to do so . . .

 The strawberries are in a raised bed, hoping to keep the slugs out. First picture was taken around April 29th, before we left for two weeks on Kauai.

Second picture two weeks later on May 15th. They've grown! Berries are now developing and we'll have to install bird netting soon. Not a big patch, but enough to snack on when we're outside, or maybe enough for morning cereal.

Hellebores rule!

Here is this year's pic of my hellebore. Love it!! (It's other name is Lenten Rose - because it blooms so early in the year. Appropriate that Lent is just around the corner) It has resided on my front porch since last early spring. Because it isn't out in the weather, and still in a big pot, I have had to water it all year - not a problem! I checked last year's post of it and this year is about a week earlier than then....love the color. I also have 3 small new plants of hellebore, but they aren't blooming yet. I might have to wait for next year for them. I bought them at the end of last season on sale from Gurney's, so they were fairly small, and still are.I have hopes they are different colors than this big blooming one.
Anybody have any daffodils or other early bulbs popping up? Mine are about an inch above the dirt. I had mulched them with some leaves the Youth Group brought over, but the wind storms before the snow and after have taken them all away. I think the warmer 2 weeks after the snow encouraged them to sprout above ground. I hope it doesn't freeze hard before they can get to full size.

Seeds are on sale already!

Here is a picture of my first 2012 seed purchase (maybe I'll buy more later, not sure). They are on sale this week at Fred Meyer with a coupon for 40% off. I remarked to the checker that they used to have 50% off sales - he just laughed. Guess that means I should be happy with the sale now.
I am getting itchy to start gardening - ever since the snow was covering everything. Just too dang cold though. I tried to weed a bit on Sunday, but it was windy and cold, so that didn't last very long.

Bunnies 2012

Our infestation of rabbits from last summer seems to have diminished somewhat. There were at least a dozen. We haven't heard the local owl lately, so I'm guessing most of the rabbits are history.

We now identify two that show up here regularly. Here is one of them. Neither one has any fear. He hopped right up while I was photographing him and chewed on my shoes. The other day I was visiting my neighbor in her front yard and the two of them hopped right up and sat on her feet. Neither one of us had a camera with us.

It doesn't help that my neighbor feeds him. He can be found between our house and theirs among the bushes.

If he is still hungry, he prunes my ground-cover. It is vinca minor that has been growing next to the house for about 20 years, and was a mound a foot high, six feet long, and about three feet wide growing out into the grass. We trim it when we mow the grass. The rabbit has it trimmed a foot back from the grass line. He keeps it pretty even, although it is about half the size it once was.

Lately we've only been seeing one of them at a time. Can it be that more bunnies are in our future? Time will tell.

Beets

Here is Roger harvesting beets with me.

me holding the mother of all beets - it's bigger than my hand!

Results of the cutting of the beets to fit in jars. Chiogga is the name of the white/red rings beet and in the other bowl are Bull's Blood, Early Wonder, and Detroit Dark Red. The chiogga ones look pale in the jars, but I'm sure they will taste just as good. I've cooked them together with the more red ones for dinners and they absorb the dark red color - I think we'll do that if we can pickled beets again next year. We also planted Golden Touchstone which are a beautiful yellow, but there was only enough for one jar. We'd eaten the rest before today - they are delicious!!

Here are the finished jars - we (Sheila and I) got 12 pints and 28 half pints of pickled beets. Some we put cloves in with the pickling liquid. We tested this last year and it was very good. The one yellow jar is on the far right. The harvesting took a couple hours on Monday: digging, washing, chopping off roots and tops. The peeling, chopping and canning took 5 hours today. All well worth it!! yum!

Late Season photos

Here are some of my beautiful rainbow carrots - see the one with a little one hugging it? Cute! they were delicious too!

 Next photo down is my shallot bed. I planted tons of small sets and they all pretty much failed. Don't know why. There are small ones in there that developed new sets along side, so I think I will rescue as many as I can and save for spring, or clean out the whole bed and mulch after setting them back into the dirt. Maybe that will work, anyone else have any ideas? Next photo is this year's potato crop from the compost pile. We are eating some of the white ones for dinner tonight - they are in the oven and smelling almost done, so I better get this posted so I can finish the rest of dinner to go along with them. The last photo is some beets - so pretty and delicious too. These are part of the crop that Sheila helped me with last spring when I was just after surgery on my hip and couldn't do the heavy stuff. Remember she cleaned out the bed boxes and we planted peas, onion sets and these beets. We have been eating on them for a couple months, both of us - there are still some left and we are going to make pickled beets out of them. Yummm!

here are some successes and failures in my garden this year - more potatoes from the compost pile, excellent beets, carrots, and failure of shallots.

Lilies from Verdelle

Verdelle gave me these lilies this past spring. She didn't think they would bloom this year, but look! There are more buds, too.

Thank you, Verdelle!

Strawberries in August

The strawberries just keep coming. We only have a 10-foot row, so there are just enough for us to snack on in the evening.

Summer 2011

So summer (?) is in so-called full swing now. Finally I have some dahlias blooming, only about a month late - but I am grateful to get some seeing as how I finally got all the tubers planted by mid-and late July because of the weather and time restraints. Usually they should be planted by mid-May, but then it was way too cold and way too wet. Enough whining!!! Here are some pix of things going on it my garden recently.

This clematis is two years old, finally big enough to be half way across my front entry. I added a string from the post to across to the post on the other side. I planted two, one I thought was dark pink, the other this color. The "dark pink" is also just about this same color but the flowers are twice as big as this and blooms before this one starts. So that is a good thing, longer show of flowers.I have to be diligent about removing the morning glories though, they would take over everything everywhere in my garden including this lovely plant.

 Here is a bouquet of sweetpeas, white and pink baby's breath and lobelia. Finally thriving! Sweetpeas would be gone by now if it were a normal warm time of summer, but since they'd rather grow in cool weather, I'm in luck to be able to pick some this late in the year - I love sweetpeas! Their smell is so pretty!

More Roses and Other Blooms

The Cinco de Mayo rose made its debut with several blooms at once. I was expecting a dusky lavender rose but it is more red than the rose on the tag appeared. Maybe the blooms will turn darker as they age. Still for a first year rose is has nice blooms with promises of more to come.

This small rose, Happy Chappy, has also begun to bloom and I look forward to its ground hugging blooms all summer. The tea roses and climbers are still being shy, but the Queen Elizabeth is teasing me with a couple of blooms, each on a cluster of multiple buds. I can hardly wait for the clusters to open.

Meanwhile, the bees are keeping busy buzzing around the blooms at the front of the house, where the lilies, spirea and cosmos and providing plenty of nectar while they wait to harvest the roses. You can see one on the center bloom of the close-up photo. There were a dozen or so buzzing around, but they don't sit still long enough to get a shot of them at work:)

First Rose of Summer

Yesterday's warm summer sun finally opened the first rose in my garden. This Spellbound tea went from a tight bud on Sunday to a fully opened rose this afternoon. Guess it wanted to take advantage of the sun while it could. The rest of the tea roses are taking their time. Most have only tiny buds and only one other is showing any color on the bud. That's what this cool spring has brought. That and black spot--the curse of rose gardeners in the Pacific Northwest:)

The Betty Boop has several buds that are also ready to open any day. This one is the closest. I love the bi-color of this rose and the fact that it is almost always blooming. It is usually the first to bloom. I only have one other floribunda, the Cinco de Mayo, which I am looking forward to blooming as it is the newest rose in my garden. I will post pictures when it begins to bloom.

This rose was quite a surprise. It opened yesterday too. It is growing on the side of my arbor where a pale pink climber is supposed to be blooming, but isn't yet. On closer inspection, this is a shoot off the root and not the Pearly Gates rose that is grafted on to this root. The other side of the arbor has a Joseph's Coat climber which is also not doing so hot. Both these roses went gangbusters at our last house--may be they need more sun than they are getting here. I think I'll let this "wild rose" hang on and let it give a little inspiration to its showier cousins:)

Slow-Growing Peas

The peas are now knee high or so. Rather pitiful for the end of May, even considering the temperatures. Here they are, weeds and all. At least now I know they didn't rot in the ground! I hope to take care of the weeds this weekend, and prepare the beds for tomato plants I'll get from my sister.