The Obsessive Gardener

I Love Bread

2012-01-04T10:04:00.015-06:00

I have been working on developing my bread making skills over the last few months and it is starting to pay off.

My Very Own Yeast

I had always wanted to start my own wild yeast culture, but had never been successful. It always seemed to get to a stage where it was smelling wonderful, and then the next day or two it went completely wrong and kept going more wrong.

Then I found this great recipe for a starter at The Fresh Loaf. The secret ingredients are whole grains and pineapple juice. The yeast lives on the surface of the grain, so by using whole grains and grinding them yourself, you increase the amount of yeast that your mixture will have. The pineapple juice makes the environment of the mixture such that bios other than yeast do not find it appealing. I did not follow their recipe exactly. Here's what I did:

1/2 ground rye grain
1/2 pineapple juice from canned pineapple (I made an upside-down cake with the fruit)
mixed in a pint jar I had a lid for - just set it loosely on top.

I checked it and stirred it every day, but really did nothing else to it. In less than 2 weeks, I got the bubbles and yeast smell I was looking for.
At this point I watched for liquid buildup on the top, then proceeded with the dividing and adding steps - pour off the liquid, take some of the mixture out, add wheat flour, add equal amount of filtered water (you don't want tap water chemicals in the mix). In another week, my yeast was strong enough to make a loaf.
My yeast is now over 2 months old and I have made many loaves with it. Yummy sourdough loaves.

Don't worry if you don't like rye. After a bit of dividing and adding, it all becomes wheat. And I have found that when I want to make bread, I can just pour the entire mixture into my recipe, swish the jar with some filtered water, add equal amounts of flour, and the yeast that was in the residue just takes right off again. I occasionally switch jars for cleaning, in which case I swish the water around then pour it into a clean jar and add flour.

<- see how fluffy the dough gets!

Chewy, Crusty Bread

I became hooked on crusty bread when I was traveling Scotland. It was damp and cold, so every so often, I would find a nice coffee shop and enjoy a mocha and crusty bread. Heaven! Since coming back to the States, the only bread that has compared to that bread has been the New French Bakery baguette. Since first finding it though, it has been hit and miss to obtain. So I have been trying to recreate the bread.

For months I have been reading bread making article on the web describing how to get the crusty crust from steam. I tried spraying the dough while baking and leaving a pan of water in the oven - it works best to use both. I also read about the need to develop the gluten. There are many different techniques, and I have tried and failed at a lot of them. Then I ran into this seemingly too-good-to-be-true technique: No Knead Bread.

Let me assure you, it is NOT too good to be true! I just baked my first loaf last night using the recipe and technique. Other than the fact that I burned it due to the fact that I was baking while also watching a very funny, and strangely appropriate to the situation show - The Worst Week of My Life - it came out beautifully. The technique calls for a cast iron dutch oven or Pyrex, of which I had neither. BUT, I had read in comments on other no-knead sites (see the New York Times YouTube video) that some had used a clay pot cooker.

I have several of those! And it works! Soak the pot as you would whenever you are cooking something in it. Oil it. Add the shaped dough to the pre-heated clay pot. Cover it for 30 min, then bake uncovered for 15 (not another 30 like I did!).

The crust was perfectly crusty. The interior had that perfect crumb that crusty bread should have. And it was delicious!!

<- This is not the loaf I burnt, and was even more delicious :p

No New Tulips?!

2011-12-19T19:06:00.002-06:00

I just realized that it is now nearly the end of the year and I did not plant any new tulips! This is a first in 14 years. The fall bulb buying season just sneaked past me.

That's OK though. I still have at least a hundred bulbs in pots that I didn't get around to actually getting into the ground this spring. That will still give me lots to do in the flower garden next spring.

A Strange Coincidence

2011-12-11T19:21:00.007-06:00

For this weekend, I had on my "to do" list obtaining a piece of 4" piping to extend my downspouts since I had taken down the full length of downspout and installed shorter pieces to accommodate the rain barrels I had purchased a few years back. I usually take the short pieces off and reinstall the normal lengths, but I thought it might be easier to just get extenders.

My husband and I had made plans to go shopping on Saturday for the material.

On Friday, as I sat parked waiting for my son to come out of his dorm so I could take him home for the weekend, I noticed that the construction dumpster next to me had a piece of piping laying on top - the very diameter that I was looking for. I jumped out of the car and checked the length. It looked like it was the perfect length!

I climbed up on the dumpster in my dress clothes as my son was approaching the car. "Mom?"

"I can't believe my luck!" I shouted happily back at him. "They're just throwing this away. I'm taking it!"

He just shook his head laughing.

Turns out it was exactly the diameter and length that I needed. No waste and it freed up more time I could spend with my son this weekend. Win-win-win!

Planning Big for Next Year

2011-11-28T22:53:00.003-06:00

And by big, I mean tall and wide. I want to increase the amount of perennial fruit that I have growing so that I can put up more preserves for the winter - and even have some to give away or sell.

I need a second pear to pollinate the Luscious that I have right now. Luscious is a very crisp, non-grainy, candy-sweet, pear with wonderful floral notes that is best eaten right off the tree. I need a good second pear. I like really sweet pears and would also like one that keeps fairly well. Any suggestions?

I also want to start growing my own apples. I love Honey Gold, Honey Crisp, Fuigi and Golden Delicious. I also had some Chestnut Crabs that were awesome. Sweet, crisp, juicy apples are my thing. I would also like my apples to be maggot resistant - but who doesn't.

My blackberries were not very good this year. Tart and not very blackberry. I'm hoping that they will be better next year as this was still only their second year. But if they don't drastically improve, I may be having a give-away on this blog!

I really couldn't ask more of my raspberries. I'm not a huge fan of raspberries, but I really like these. I had more than enough to make several pint jars of jam, as well as having plenty for fresh eating and giving away - and that is just from a 4x8 bed.

I want to build an arbor over my raspberry bed next year to help shade the area a little, and to grow kiwis! I ate some cold hardy kiwis recently and LOVE THEM! Hardy Anna and Ken's Red are supposed to be good. If any of you have experience with these plants please let me know. I have read that they can be stubborn to fruit and that under the right conditions, they can grow 25 feet a year. Not sure I know what I am getting into with that.

Of the two blueberry plants I got last year, one is still alive and doing well, and who knows, maybe I will have some berries next year. But I LOVE blueberries and a small handful off one bush will not suffice - so I need to get more bushes. I bought Friendship last time since it is a wild Wisconsin native. If they are like the wild blueberries I used to pick as a kid in the North Woods, I will be happy. They were small, but sweet, with amazing flavor! But, I'm thinking that I would like to get one or two other varieties. I like lots of flavor and sweet (sensing a pattern here?).

That's all I have planned so far. I already know where I will plant everything, which puts me way ahead of the game as I usually buy the plants and THEN try to figure out where to put them (which is why I only have one of the two Friendship blueberries that I originally purchased). If any of you have suggestions on which varieties to get, or even warnings against, let me know.

Like the Gardening Season Never Happened

2011-10-17T01:46:00.004-05:00

I lost nearly the whole growing season. I've been more than a bit preoccupied with other things this year. But I still managed to do some things.

My raspberries produced two batches of berries this year. And I thought planting them in November would kill them :) I have been able to make two jars of jam from them so far. The berries have a very good flavor and produce a lot. I have no idea what variety they are.

My blackberries produced one berry. So far I am not impressed with the flavor. A bit too tart. I will give them another year or two, but if their flavor does not improve, I am replacing them. I know someone who has wonderful blackberries that are in zone 3 so they should do just fine here. They aren't thornless, but neither are my raspberries.

I got a bunch more apples from a friend and have been canning applesauce when I get time. Two years ago I burned out the connections in my electric stove canning - I think the canning pot was too big for the burner and overheated that side of the stovetop. Apparently a pan can be too big! I got a smaller pot this year from the local hardware store. It has still been slow going since I am down to two working burners on my stove - I desperately need a new stove! I received a fairly new gas stove for free recently (Freecycle.com is awesome!), but only have electric hookup. To get a gas hookup will cost me between $280 and $360. That will have to wait for now.

I did get a couple of fruit roll-up accessories for my dehydrator. I haven't tried them yet, but when I do, I will let you know if I like them or not.

I still LOVE my electric mower. We have not had any problems with it at all and I think that it mows the lawn even better than the gas mowers that we have used in the past.

I also love my leaf vacuum/shredder. I saw it a couple years ago in a hardware store flyer for $20 so thought, "Why not?" I have not been disappointed. It sucks up the leaves, shreds them and collects them in an attached bag. I put the shredded leaves in my garden as mulch. The worms love it!

I have to plant garlic yet this year and harvest the rest of my kohlrabi and beets.

I got a volunteer tomato that has beautiful tomatoes and appears to be extremely cold hardy. The rest of my plants succumbed to an early frost; this plant didn't even seem to notice! I haven't tasted the tomatoes yet as they are still ripening, but I will update once I find out. If they are really good, I will be saving seeds to grow them again next year. Who couldn't use a cold hardy tomato? Most of my tomato volunteers have been weird Romas, so this is a really nice surprise.

I also put in another patio. There is a space next to my house that has been a bed of weeds forever. I tore out all the weeds and laid in a brick sitting area. It is perfect for drinking coffee and surfing the web in the morning as it is out of the wind and sun. And now that area doesn't look like an abandoned lot.

I did not buy hardly any plants this year, nor did I plant many vegetables. Next year, though, is going to be a stellar year. I can feel it!

Electric Mower

2011-07-30T14:45:00.003-05:00

We had tried out a reel mower for nearly a whole season. I love how quiet it is and that it is always ready to go with no start-up, but if your yard is uneven, or your grass gets too tall between mowings, the reel mower can be quite difficult to use.

So we were off to the store to find an alternative. I was very skeptical about electric mowers because I never liked managing the cord with our corded weedwhacker, and I was certain that I would either be constantly re-plugging it back in, or running the cord over all the time. But my husband was leaning hard toward an electric mower.

There were some cordless ones, but you had to plug the mower in to charge and I wasn't entirely sure that you would be able to continue using it while it charged. That would be inconvenient if you had a window of opportunity blown because your mower needed several hours to fuel up. So I was leaning hard toward a gas mower. And we had one all picked out when I changed my mind and decided I really wanted to try the electric one - cord and all. I do that. He's almost used to it.

My worries about the cord were pretty much put to rest when we started using it. It wasn't hard at all to keep track of and the very movement of turning the mower allowed for a smooth repositioning of the cord. You will see me move my leg out on the turns which moves the cord enough to keep it out of the way. And even though it may look a little awkward during some turns, it wasn't. Most of that was just the awkwardness of turning a mower in general.

The mower that we got was a Task Force 12A mower. We got it on sale at Lowes for $170, and a 100' cord for $17. It came with a 2 year warranty.

Things I loved about the mower:

The easy start. I no longer dread having to empty the bag as I know that restarting will be a snap.
This did not bog down in our tall grass; it went through like a hot knife through butter.
I didn't get vibration arm.
It is quieter than a gas mower.
It doesn't stink like fuel and neither do you!

Things I hated? Nothing. The only thing that could make it better would be no cord and that it would mow the lawn itself. But I really don't have much of a problem with either.

I feel much better about using electricity than gasoline as our electricity is local and made via water power. Clean and homegrown!

In the Vegetable Garden

2011-06-19T14:50:00.005-05:00

This weekend in the vegetable garden:

I got all 30 of my tomato plants in the ground.
I got all 16 of my pepper plants in the ground.
I got 4 broccoli plants planted.
I planted last years unused shallots - about 30 all together.
I got most of my squash/melon seeds planted.
I got some bean seeds started.
I started 3 trays of basil.
I got half my carrots planted.
I was harvesting spinach, cilantro and arugula.
I was giving out stray garlic plants that missed last fall's harvest.
I weeded the blackberry and raspberry beds.
I set up a chicken wire and marigold barrier around my peppers - eat that rabbits!!

This week in the vegetable garden:

I will finish planting the carrots.
I will pot up the eggplant.
I will plant sunflowers.
I will plant dill.
I will pot up the fennel.
I will start the rest of the beans.
I will harvest some leeks.
I will finish caging the tomatoes.
I will discover there were 1/2 dozen other seed packets I had completely forgotten about...

I Just Can't Win This Year

2011-06-08T09:41:00.004-05:00

Things are finally starting to die down around here on the home front: some of the hubbub in the state has quieted, my son is out of school, our exchange student is going home, the graduation party is over, our dog is recovering from surgery nicely...

And now it is TOO HOT TO GARDEN!! Bleh!

GBBD May 2011

2011-05-15T09:17:00.010-05:00

My first Garden Blogger Bloom Day post of 2011, and things are looking pretty good out in the garden this spring.

Bastogne's Parrot are doing well. I did try to get more, but they didn't look like these at all, they were just red without much ruffling.

Bleu Amiable and Sweetheart tulips are a great combination.

These white tipped tulips in with the Prinses Irene's came in a mixed pack. They look like Private Eyes, so I'm going with that.

Sweetheart tulips are definitely one of my favorite tulips.

These are another of my favorite: Gavota. They are very hardy and multiply.

Abba are a rich red (which you can't see very well in this picture since the light is shining through the back). They look like roses.

Here are my box bulbs in full bloom. I am planning to get some of these planted later today.

Brunnera "Kings Randsom" - a non-tulip is blooming!

Another non-tulip, Mount Hood Daffodils.

Sunrise tulips give you the most bang for your buck; they are one of the first to bloom and one of the last to die back. Plus, they are just so beautiful and change their look as they age: creamy yellow with just a slight tipping of red, to fully blushed with a more distinct red tipping.

Tulip holding pen; I plant the tulips here until spring when I can have a better idea where they should go in the garden.

Tubergen's Gem is multiplying!

Weber's Parrot... not quite what I had in mind. What do you think?

Wide shot of the garden. Lots of tulips, and always more to come :)

And an overhead shot from my upstairs window. Spring is such a great time of year!

More Tulips!

2011-05-11T15:31:00.000-05:00

Here are some more pictures from my garden. We had some 80F weather yesterday, so some of the tulips decided they had had enough. But there were plenty more to take their place.

This is a view as passerby on the street would see it. Looking good!

I had lost my map to what was planted in each of these boxes, so I had to wait until they bloomed to see where I should plant them. Turns out that it was a good thing too as some of these were falsely advertised.		This was one of the fears that I had planting the bulbs in boxes - voles. They only got into one of the boxes though, but did eat most of the bulbs in the box.
These Sweetheart tulips are in my top three of favorite tulips along with Prinses Irene and Gavota.		Weber's Parrot didn't turn out quite as I had imagined. Too pink and too yellow. Perhaps they mellow out. If they don't, these may end up being give-aways.
Blue Gem: very touchy little guys, and expensive! But they are worth it. Love them!		Turbergen's Gem: These have finally started to multiply. They are one of my favorite species tulips (tied with Blue Gem)
Abba tulips are a very rich red.		This is the garden entry from our back door.
These Salome daffodils took years to finally bloom, but now they are blooming every year.		I prefer the Gavotas when the edges are white, but they are still one of my favorites even when the edges are yellow. Very classy looking.
From left to right: Bright Parrot, Sunrise, Purrisima, Red Emperor (far background)		Odalisque tulips are very easy to grow and they give a nice punch of color without being gaudy.
I had 12 Dillenburg but many dissappeared. For the last several years only two bloomed, but this year, four decided to make an appearance.		This is a shot of the far back garden as you come around the bend. Front to back: Prinses Irene, Private Eyes, (forgot the dark purple ones), Sweetheart, Bleu Amiable (to the right of Sweetheart), Purrisima, Sunrise.
Another view from the street.		View from the yard.

Happy Mother's Day Weekend!

2011-05-07T00:59:00.007-05:00

My weekend is packed! So I will just leave you with some pics from my garden.

Bloodroot

hepatica

humilis "Odalisque"

humilis "Alba Coerlea Oculata"

The ramps I planted last year are doing great!

The front entry bed

Daffodils

Odalisque tulips and Thalia daffodils

Peony

Calypso

Sweetheart

Mount Hood w/Orange Emperor tulips in the background

Sunrise w/Purissima in the background

The Bulb Boxes

2011-04-19T19:50:00.004-05:00

I love tulips. So much so that it has become harder to find places for the new tulips that I buy every year - especially since they are sold in the fall when you can not see what is already planted. I got sick of accidentally digging up established bulbs, so I started planting the bulbs in plastic planters. That has worked out really well, but I wanted to see if cardboard boxes would work too. Verdict?

They do!

Gardening Begins for 2011

2011-04-17T01:28:00.005-05:00

I did finally get out to do some gardening this last week. And I was so excited to see that things were even starting to bloom!



Crocuses are easy multipliers.		They are the earliest bloomer.
Dutch irises are great en masse.		The Pickwick crocus are big and multiply well. I like the stripes.
And then last night it snowed.		But the hyacinth...
the tete-a-tete daffodills...		and the chionodoxa will be fine.

Garden at the Wayside

2011-03-11T10:19:00.003-06:00

I just want to update on what is going on with my gardening - nothing! I have been so busy the last month preparing two rental units for new tenants. I pulled up carpeting to find an oak floor in the house and proceeded to refinish all 650sqft by hand, as in with a belt sander! Hard work, but worth it. It is beautiful! Maybe I will post on the results.

AND, of course, there is the huge hubbub going on in Wisconsin which you would basically have to not watch the news to not know about it. I have been kept VERY busy with that, in fact, that is what I will be doing this weekend instead of starting my seeds. And when the Obsessive Gardener can't even concentrate on gardening during the growing season - you know it is pretty important. Power to the People!

I have taken the entire next week off, so I should be able to squeeze some time in to get some seeds started. So check back then!

OMG!!!

2011-01-23T22:31:00.001-06:00

THE SEEDS ARE IN THE STORES!!!
:)

Done Planting!

2010-11-09T13:35:00.003-06:00

Well, it seems to have taken forever, but I managed to get the last of my bulbs planted today. I went lazy and planted larger bunches in cardboard boxes rather than a few bulbs each in a gazillion plastic pots. I'll let you know how this works next spring. I figure that the bulbs will be easier to get at since I can just tear the cardboard away -- or even just plant the cardboard with the bulbs!

And, I managed to get my garlic planted too!

In the process of cleaning my garden for fall, which I almost never do, I even found some plants still in the pots that I bought them in. Oops! Now I have no idea where to plant them. Perhaps they can tough it out in the pots over winter.

I finally laid out my blackberry bed. Hopefully I will get some blackberries next year! The raspberries I planted out in nearly frozen ground last year did just fine and even gave us fruit this year!

I think my blueberry plants may be a lost cause. Oh, well. I can always try again next year. Besides, I plan on planting a ton of blueberries eventually. They are my favorite fruit. Then blackberries, then mangoes. Too, bad I can't grow mangoes.

I still have to pack up all my gardening supplies for a few months. I've been so busy this year, I am really looking forward to a little snowy respite.

Tulip Haul 2010

2010-10-18T01:24:00.005-05:00

I can not believe that it is already tulip time. And I was horrified to see that Menards had drastically parred down its bulb offering this year. They decided that instead of devoting a whole row of shelves to bulbs, they would put just a few out in one of their alley squares. Seriously I thought I was going to have a melt down. Where was I going to get all my bulbs and still be able to afford them?

Well, it looks like Menards is still offering a big variety of bulbs (maybe not as many as they used to), but instead of having them all out at once, they are putting them out a little at a time. The jerks. How am I supposed to plan my color, timing and texture schemes?

So, forget them. I did still buy quite a few from them (245 tulips, 12 daffodils, and 35 Dutch irises) but I refuse to run there every week just to see if they have anything new out yet. What a racket.

I decided to finally try out a couple of the other bulb companies that I have learned about since starting my blog. Thanks to many of my garden blogger friends, I chose Brent & Becky's Bulbs. Their order came fast and the bulbs look nice.

The other company I tried out was Blooming Bulbs. I had found them while looking for sites with good visual tulip indexes. They had really good prices on bulk bulbs, and they had a few that I had been having trouble finding. Their order came even faster and their bulbs look very healthy and well labeled.
Now the last test will be in the planting. I have had a few problems with tulips not being what they claim to be -- especially with ones bought on the internet. Breck's has done it to me at least three times. Unfortunately that means waiting until next spring since tulip bulbs pretty much all look the same.

Tulips purchased from Brent & Becky's Bulbs:
Rem's Favorite (10)
Sweetheart (20)
humilis 'Alba Coerulea Oculata' (5)
total 35 at $48.

Tulips purchased from Blooming Bulbs:
Cummins (25)
Rococo (25)
Weber's Parrot (25)
Persian Pearl (25)
Greenland (25)
Spring Green (25)
total 150 at $110.

Tulips purchased from Menards:
Van Eijk (28)
Purple Prince (14)
Zouave (30)
Kung Fu (45)
Odalisque (30)
Purissima (56)
Yokohama (28)
Apeldoorn (14)
total 245 at $48

So you can clearly see who wins out on bulb bargains. Also, the flowers have always been what was described on their package and the bulbs have proven to be very comparable to even Brecks.

Fine, Menards, you win. I'll be there later this week to check again...

[update: OK, so I went back today. I had a $10 rebate to cash in, so I bought Synaeda Orange (15) and Yellow Pomponette (15). I also stopped at Fleet Farm and bought Shirley (14) and Apricot Impression (30). That's 74 more tulips to my already 430. Now to find time to plant them all...]

Corpse Flower Live Feed

2010-10-11T21:41:00.008-05:00

Our university has the privileged of being home to one of the few captive corpse flowers around the world. It has been about 9 years in the making, but it has finally bloomed!

You can go HERE to see the live feed of this flower and to learn a little more about this amazing flower.

It is said to smell of rotting meat, but I have smelled rotting meat and I truly beg to differ. It smells like a diaper pail. A giant diaper pail. In fact you can smell it over 100 yards away easily, even with no breeze.

It is beautiful, and HUGE!

[update: since the flower has completed its cycle the live feed is no longer available, but they still have a few pictures and some information on this flower at THIS LINK.]

Where Did The Summer Go?

2010-09-12T23:03:00.011-05:00

As you know I have been very busy, but where the heck did the summer go?! This was the summer that I was finally going to stay on top of my gardens...

Oh well, I guess they don't look that bad, and my vegetable garden is still producing a ton of stuff.

My tomatoes, strangely, are almost done giving fruit, but are still green and healthy looking plants. I got enough tomatoes to can about 10 quarts of sauce, make about 1/2 gallon of fresh salsa, and still have tomatoes for salads and fresh sauces.

I still have not harvested all my carrots. I was intending to pickle them, but that didn't go anywhere, and now they are too big. Oh well, I have lots of friends that LOVE carrots. And you never see carrots abandoned in the breakroom at work, so that will be a treat.

My Brussel sprouts might actually produce something this year.

My beets are just about ready to harvest.

My basil has slowed down in its production, but I am still getting an ice cream bucket of basil from it about every two weeks.

My pumpkins have gone wild. I grew a blue heirloom variety this year along with my favorite Triple Treat. The three blue plants that grew are far out-producing the eight Triple Treat plants. They are also steadily taking over my yard. I hope that these pumpkins are as good tasting as the description reports. They aren't much for decorating with.

I have a ton of edamame to harvest. I've actually lost track of all my beans.

My eggplants are producing through the roof! I actually got multiple eggplants from a single plant!

My squash finally decided to do something. For actual fruits, I have a couple butternut, quite a few scallop, two zucchini (thank goodness for other gardeners!), and about a half dozen delicata. I have no idea what happened to my acorn squash, but I have someone who promised to bring me in some of his extra hubbard and acorn.

I even have onions and shallots this year. The onions came from the onion parts that I planted earlier. They yielded baseball sized onions that were just as sweet as the parent onion, so I have continued to plant my onion bases throughout the garden. Even the shallots that I started from seed got to decent size. I am going to try leaving them in the ground over the winter to see if they make it -- I heard they were pretty hardy and that over-wintering is a good way to perennialize.

Then there are my turnips, which after so many years of failure I now have more than I seriously know what to do with! I would bring them to the food shelf, but most have root worms that need to be cut out. I don't have a problem with it, but not so sure about the food shelf.

Most of my pepper plants turned out to be Cherry Bombs, which I could not be happier about. Cherry Bombs rock, plus these are so hot, they could almost pass for cayenne.

My radicchio wasn't so bad. It was great chopped up in a salad and didn't cost me $4. I only harvested one head, but I only had planted two and just never got around to harvesting the other before it rotted.

I still have a fall crop to plant. Maybe I will actually get around to that this year!

Thank Goodness for Exchange Students!

2010-08-09T19:43:00.004-05:00

I finally have a moment to catch my breath, and post. About two and a half months ago my family and I agreed to host an exchange student from Brazil for the entire school year, and he will be here this Saturday!

I have a tendency to tolerate dilapidation and primitiveness, so I had about 13 years of home repairs that could not be ignored any longer. Over the last few weeks I have been painting the house, patching holes in the plaster, fixing broken interior wooden stairs, patching exterior concrete stairs, replacing screens ripped out in the hail storm of 2001, finishing a 3 year old bathroom tile project, finishing a 5 year old shelving project, finishing a 10 year old wallpaper project, repairing ragged wallpaper from an ancient roof leak (pre-us owning the house), trimming the bedroom doors (the previous owners put in new doors but didn't bother trimming them, and neither did we), cleaning the basement (because we needed storage and tools for all that fixing), putting up more shelving, fixing a dresser salvaged from the neighbor's garage (he said that it fell off a truck while his son was moving it and he was using it as a tool box since it was in too rough of shape for clothes after that - not anymore!), sorting through all our old boxes of things (trying to figure out either why we still have it or where the hell we will put it while our exchange student is here), and, of course, cleaning cleaning CLEANING!!!

I am happy to say that we are in the home stretch of preparing the house. I feel much better about offering this more improved house as a home to this young man coming all the way to the US for the first time. And I have to say that as an added benefit, I am enjoying the house much more myself. Some of it was so simple that I really wonder why we waited so long.

GBBD - July 2010

2010-07-15T10:10:00.009-05:00

July is hardly ever a good month for my garden, and this year is even worse. It just looks like a huge jungle. I really didn't even think that I would find many flowers, but SURPRISE! There are some after all.

To get more info, hover on the picture.

Visit May Dreams Garden to see what everyone else has blooming!

Garlic Braids

2010-07-14T10:48:00.009-05:00

With all that big garlic I decided that I should come up with a different way to store it. I have always like garlic braids, so I tried that.

		An hour later, I just bundled the whole batch together, tied it and called it good enough! Don't let anyone fool you, braiding is hard! But I am tenacious, so I figure I just needed to see how it was done. I visited a bunch of websites with garlic braiding instructions:
BRAIDING GARLIC by Donna Metcalfe Ok, huh? I don't get it. How to Braid Garlic by Bloomingfield Farm A little better, but still, after "illus. C" I am lost. Garlic Braiding by gardenerd1 This was the most instructive illustration/video that I found. It was the only thing I found that made me feel "I can do that."
		I ended up using the beginning braiding from Bloomingfields Farm, with the wind-around technique, and the general braiding from the Gardenerd video, "always down the middle", to take another crack at braiding with my most recent harvest (which my son was so nice to clean up purdy for me). I knew I could do it! With this braid I didn't pay too much attention to order of bulb placement. I just made sure that the new bulb's stem went down the middle and put the bulb where I thought it would fit.
But I have a long way to go before I have braids as fantastic as the people at Blue Moon Farm. In all that research, I did find this great sight from Wisconsin: We Grow Garlic. Who the heck knew that there were so many different varieties of garlic?! Especially growing in Wisconsin!

First Big Harvest 2010

2010-07-10T15:40:00.006-05:00

Although I have gotten a few things from my garden here and there this year (spinach, lettuce, peas, leeks); I am so excited about my first big harvest of 2010. The following are all things I pulled from my garden this last week.
	I planted this garlic last fall. This is the biggest that my garlic has ever gotten! I have a ton of it too. This picture only shows a fraction of what I actually have harvested. I already gave some to my neighbor who forgot to plant some herself last fall. She will be planting some of what I gave her.
	I finally grew turnips! I have tried 5 years to grow them, and I know that they are easy to grow. So what was my problem? Eh. And to those who are saying, "why the hell would you want to grow them anyway" -- try roasting them. Yum!
	Shallots were pretty easy to grow. I don't know why they charge so much for them in the store. I am going to keep the largest ones and replant all the smaller ones. Soon I should have a nice big patch of them. They are supposed to be very hardy, so I will plant them this fall.
	I have never had very much luck growing carrots... until this year! I finally got rid of my knotty carrot problem by using raised beds. The soil in the beds is perfect now. You may have noticed that some of the root tips are bent a little, that is the side effect of transplanting the seedling. Not a big deal at all, huh?

Going North for the Fourth

2010-07-01T19:42:00.013-05:00

I will be traveling about 250 miles north this holiday. My parents' town has the best firework display, and you get to stand right under them! A couple of years ago a few people got hit with smoldering ashes (I was one of them) and one lady's clothing caught on fire. Nothing serious, she was fine and even laughed about it. You know, it just isn't the Fourth of July until someone gets caught on fire.

Since I don't have time to post a bunch of pictures before I go, I thought I'd jot down some things that I learned about growing vegetables this year.

Carrots seedlings can be transplanted. I tried the seed mats with some luck, but it was far easier to sprinkle the seeds into the soil, wait until they got big enough, and transplant them the distance apart that I wanted them. I used a butter knife to dig them out, then and I used a chop stick to make a deep, thin hole and held the carrot in place while I gentle back filled. No thinning waste. I do this with beets, rutabaga, and turnips too.

Brussel Sprouts are slow growers. They are fairly easy to sprout, but don't do much after that. They have been in the ground for two months and have barely made any progress! It's barely even a crime when a rabbit decides to try one out, because I can get the same size plant in about two weeks. Ugh!

Tomatoes are easy to grow from seed. I have no idea why I ever bought tomato plants. These things are like weeds.

Peppers are a pain in the ass. They are hard to germinate, they love to damp off, they grow slow, and every thing eats them. But I love them, so I will keep trying.

Milk jug greenhouses are great for nightshades. The nightshades were easiest by far to start and get to a good size in milk jug greenhouses. They are the only reason that I have any peppers at all.

Only transplant big peppers to the garden. Ugh, yeah, peppers again. I have noticed that the bigger the pepper plant is, the less things eat it. So now I am holding onto a huge bunch of pepper plants until they are big enough to be out in the real world.

Always fence in edamame. Seriously, rabbits can't resist it and they will eat it to the ground.

Fennel is easy to transplant. I had the most success with fennel planting a bunch of fennel seeds in a rectangular deck planter then transplanting the plants to their final area. This also works great for basil, rutabaga and beets.

Eggplants need heat. They might produce without a lot of heat, but if you really want them to grow and produce, plant them someplace that gets and stays pretty warm.

Keep a few plants in waiting. It's good to have a few extra plants that you can plunk in if your other plants fail or get eaten. I just keep them in some bigger pots I kept from perennials. If I end up not needing them in the garden, I just keep growing them in the pots.

Some plants are best planted in summer. My pak choi and Chinese cabbage did well for a while then bolted. I started reading about their care, and it turns out that it is recommended to plant them in July-September. Huh, who knew?

Plant your corn then beans then squash . The three sisters idea seems like a good idea, but if you don't time it right, your beans won't have anything to climb and your corn and beans will be drowned out by the squash. I would recommend waiting a couple weeks between corn and beans and again between beans and squash to give everything a fighting chance.

Kohlrabi is best started in cell packs in early summer. I have tried to grow kohlrabi for 10 years with no luck. All the packages and gardeners tell me it is easy to grow, but for me, not so much. They didn't even take to the tp starter envelopes. I planted some in cell packs at the end of June - sprouted right away and have been growing well ever since -- maybe another of those summer vegetables?

So, I'm going to start planting those summer plants, find room for my extras in waiting that still haven't found homes, and hope that I remember all this for next year!

--I decided that I would like to add to this list as I find more tips so I made added a Vegetable Garden Tips post which can be found HERE.

Vegetable Garden Tour

2010-06-23T09:41:00.008-05:00

My vegetable garden had a somewhat rocky start this year as I decided that I was not going to buy any plants this year - they would all be started by seed by me. I mostly was able to accomplish that. The following are pictures from ten days ago and the same area this morning so you can see the growth over that time.


The tomato bed I built last year was filled with compost and topped off with compost/soil from another bed. I planted the tomatoes on the far end at the end of April and had the rest planted by the middle of May. Last year I had my tomatoes planted by the middle of May and they did great. I use cold hardier varieties, like Early Girl, so they don't even seem to be slowed down by the cool weather.

So many things want to eat my peppers this year - and they eat them down to a stick in the ground - if I'm lucky they leave that much. For the slugs I tried lava pebbles, cayenne pepper, coffee grounds, sand, and mullein leaves. So far the mullein leaves have worked the best. I put a little skirt around each plant with the mullein leaves facing up. The slugs do not like to crawl across it because of all the hairs on the leaves. One did cross and died a dried-up horrible death on the pepper plant it reached -- even though it was quite moist that day. For the rabbits I have been trying coffee grounds. I thought if they could throw off the tracking capabilities of trained drug dogs, they might work with our mutant rabbits. So far, so good. It has even worked on the beets that they have been mowing down.

The squash is hidden somewhere behind all this garlic. My squash falls victim to the squash borer every year, so this year I threw every bit of companion planting deterrent that I could get my hands on: icicle radishes, borage, garlic, onions, and nasturtiums. Something has got to work, right?

This bed was built last year for growing pumpkins. Instead of crop rotation, I am just going to switch out the soil every so often as this will be the only bed big enough to house the big squash. What I have labeled as muskmelon actually turned out to be pickling cucumbers. Where did I plant that muskmelon??

I'm hoping that the plants that I have labeled as muskmelon in this picture really are muskmelon! You can see that my leek bed has gotten really full. Nope. Pickling cucumbers.

These are just two extra shots of my vegetable garden ten days ago. I have had to use a lot of chicken wire this year due to the evil bunnies. But I think I may have a better solution: higher raised beds!

GBBD - June 2010

2010-06-15T09:28:00.021-05:00

Nothing seems to be cooperating with me for this Garden Blogger Bloom Day post. It was raining when I wanted to take pictures and Blogger was having issues with uploading the pictures. And now, as I am writing this, the sun has finally come out after days of hiding and I can't seem to type. Ugh.

But I did it! A GBBD post on GBBD! Yay. I am trying something new this month. Instead of writing the post and plopping the pictures into it, I am using hovertext to label -- so, if you'd like to know more about a picture, just hover!

As always, thanks so much to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for creating and hosting GBBD. If you'd like to see more blooms and maybe even share in the fun, go to her June post and include your blooms!

The Bad Economy Is Good For Something

2010-06-07T16:20:00.002-05:00

I remember when I moved here that I thought that there should be more gardens in town. Since I have been gardening, I noticed an increase in the number of flower gardens in our neighborhood, and eventually, all over town. I really like to think that I made it look so appealing that people couldn't help themselves, but I have this feeling that it is more than that.

Vegetable gardens aren't normally popular due to their tendency to be non-aesthetic. However, over the last two years, I have witnessed a drastic increase in the number of backyard vegetable gardens. I'm pretty sure that thanks to our lousy economy and growing concern over the safety of our food sources, more people are saying "to heck" with looks and "hurray" to less mowing and more cheap, healthy produce. And I couldn't be happier. I am an advocate of self-sufficiency and producing locally, and what could be more local than food from your own backyard?

And these backyard gardeners must be realizing the true value in it as our city is poised to change a very old law that restricts backyard production. Tomorrow the city council will be hearing a report and proposal of a change in the livestock ordinance to allow urban chicken keeping!

I am so stoked! Although I may be a long way from actually keeping my own hens, I am excited that it could finally become a possibility for me and others. Tonight, I am emailing all the council members to let them know how I feel about this proposal. I have a good feeling about it passing. We were told that it wouldn't matter if we went to the council to get them to say no to Walmart, but 5 years later, we still are Walmart-free. And you know what? Our town didn't go bankrupt because of it.

If you have any posts/stories or websites that you think might help our cause, please leave the address in your comment. Although I would like anything you could give me before I send out the emails tonight, the council isn't scheduled to vote on it until the 22nd, so you can keep sending me info even after tonight. Every little bit helps :)

Wish us luck!!

OMG! It Finally Bloomed!!

2010-05-27T07:41:00.004-05:00


I was so excited that this azalea finally bloomed in all its spectacular glory that I almost started hyperventilating. I have had this azalea for 6-7 years. It only boomed the first two years I had it and was hobbling along every year since. The last two years I have been giving it grey water a few times a week, sometimes every day. I also dumped a bunch of peat moss and coffee grounds on it. Last fall, it had set six flower buds. I was so excited, but stupidly forgot to protect it from rabbits. The rabbit pruned five of the buds off early this spring and left them on the ground. Bastard. I was sure that was the end of this shrub. But I was wrong. This year it is looking the best it ever has! I'm putting a cage around it so that maybe next year it will have more than this lone flower cluster. This one has definitely been worth all the hard work :) When I bought this it had two labels on it: Silver Sword and Fireball. It is neither. I did a search, and it does appear to be an Exbury, but not Fireball. I think it is Cannon's Double.
I bought this iris last year. Uh, I forgot what it was called because I didn't keep the list of what I bought at Funkie Gardens. I have the tag somewhere and will update it then. 06/26/10--I think it is "Smart".	Woolly yarrow. I got this last year, so I don't know how aggressive it is yet. It is very low growing, so it shouldn't pose a problem in my garden if it does spread.
Lime Frost columbine -- bought last year at Shopko. Ionly got to see the foliage last year, so the flowers were a nice surprise. Blueberry ruffle!	Delphinium. I started to grow these because they were a favorite flower of a friend. Now I grow them because they are one of my favorite flowers.
Oriental poppies. These were originally a peachy patch. Now all orange. I have another peach poppy patch doing the same thing. I give up.	One of my new moss phlox. I got hooked on them when I saw what Zoey at Perennial Passion was doing with them in her garden. I now have five different colors. My favorite is Candy Stripe (not shown). It smells like maple syrup!
Blue Ravine clematis. I bought these because I had one from K-Mart years ago that was drop-dead gorgeous. These are not as pretty, but I still like them. They do not know how to use a trellis though! I have to redirect them all the time. Comtesse de Bouchard knows what she is doing.	Mr. Fokker anemone. Still blooming! I'm loving this one. The flowers are a mix of singles and doubles. It is really long blooming too. Hope it survives. I had anemones ages ago, but lost them to the hail storm.

Cheryl at 33 Barefoot Lane found herself with extra seeds this spring and decided to give them away to her blogger commenters. I got this. Cappuccino! YUM! Thanks Cheryl! Happy Gardening everyone!

Enjoy Some Vicarious Weeding

2010-05-22T22:33:00.005-05:00

Last year the CobraHead company was giving away CobraHead weeders through a contest at May Dreams Garden blog. I was one of the lucky winners! If you have never used a CobraHead, it may not look like much, but believe me, it is the best garden tool that I have ever used. It is especially good at getting break-away weeds, even in tight spaces. It digs out dandelions easily. It even gets out weeds that have thick, tough crowns. It gets through hard, rocky soil. It can dig up the plants for transplanting, and dig the hole to put them in.
And, the most fun part -- you can pretend that you are a pirate gardener!

Aye, mateys!

I loved this tool so much that I bought one for both of my parents this year for Mother's Day and Father's Day.

Today, I took on weeding the front tree beds. In the first picture, you can barely even see the plants I want to keep. The rest is almost all creeping charlie.

Usually I end up pretty frustrated with this weed, but after less than ten minutes I had the entire bed completely weeded.

Wow. There's actually space for more plants!

Planted!

2010-05-18T22:39:00.005-05:00

I was feeling so far behind, but today I feel ahead of the game.
I got so much planted!

Cucumber starts: Armenian and Boston Pickling
Melon starts: Piel de Sapo (saved seeds) and Burpee Hybrid cantaloupe
Squash seeds: Delicata, Buttercup, Waltham Butternut, Table Queen acorn, Early Prolific Straightneck, White Bush Scallop Patty Pan, Burpee's Fordhook Zucchini, Spaghetti, Jaradale pumpkin, Triple Treat pumpkin
Passion vine seeds

Things I already had planted :
Edamame: starts and sprouted seeds
Melting Sugar snow peas: sprouted seeds and direct seeded
Bloomsdale Long-Standing spinach (saved seeds): seeded last fall
Imperator, Little Finger and Danvers Half Long carrots: direct seeded (some on seed mats)
Detroit Dark Red beet: sprouted seeds and direct seeded
Hollow Crown parsnips: sprouted seeds and direct seeded
White Icicle radishes: direct seeded
Long Island Improved brussel sprouts: starts
Radicchio: starts
Packman and Romanesco broccoli: starts
American Purple Flag rutabaga: starts and direct seeded
Bonsai Hybrid pak choi: starts
Blue Curled Vates kale: direct seeded
Borage: direct seeded
White Half Runner Mountaineer and Slenderette beans: starts
Early Girl Hybrid and Pink Brandywine tomato: starts
French marigolds: plants
Cilantro (saved seeds): direct seeded
Garlic, shallots, Mayan sweet onions: bulbs
Leeks (saved seeds): direct seeded last fall
Mixed lettuces: direct seeded

I grew all my own starts and all of the seeds that I planted before today have already sprouted. And the other seeds should be up and running before Memorial Day, our official safe date. I'm not too worried about my plants though. Last year I planted much of these same things in the middle of May and they did fine - and it was much cooler last year. It is supposed to stay unseasonably warm for the next two weeks. Perfect.

GBBD - May 2010

2010-05-15T10:52:00.007-05:00

World Expression tulip	I'm not sure that this Sunrise tulip will ever decide to bloom.
	Tulipa saxillis OR tulipa bakeri Lilac Wonder -- these two look the same to me and I don't remember what I planted where.
Texas Flame tulip and ...	Centurarea
Rutabaga	Raspberry Splash pulmonaria
	pink sea thrift
Mrs. Moon pulmonaria	Mint Chocolate foam flower
Maureen tulip	Golden Queen globeflower
Greenland, World Expression, Queen of the Night tulips, and fern peony	Greenland tulip
Fern peony	Flaming Parrot tulip and lilac
	Elegant Lady lily tulip
Blue Heron tulip, Mr. Fokker anenome, Bright Parrot tulip	Bergenia
Pink azalea	Alpine strawberries
creeping phlox	Aladdin lily tulip

See what else is blooming around the world at May Dreams Garden's Garden Blogger Bloom Day.

How Could I Say No?

2010-05-12T23:12:00.002-05:00

My parents visited this last weekend, and since it was raining on Friday, we decided to go to Menards so I could return some things. We were there for over three hours and I spent more money than I got back from the returns.

But... they had $2 quart perennials!!! How could I say no?

I got some great stuff. I even got some things that I have been meaning to try, and, of course, I got some things that I didn't even know I wanted; but $2, no reason not to.

Menards haul
$2 plants:
Dusseldorfer Stolz sea thrift (2)
foxglove (2)
Lucifer crocissima (2)
Ritz Blue pincushion
Amethyst Myst heuchera
Gold Dust basket of gold
Little Leo leopard's bane (2)
Pink Diamond pincushion
english daisy (2)
alpine forget me not (2)
Blue Clips carpathian harebell
candytuft
$4 plants:
June hosta (2)
Thundercloud sedum
Diane Claire pulmonaria

I also hit the Home Depot:
American Halo hosta
Paul's Glory hosta

And dad needed socks at Shopko:
Dream Queen hosta (got this one for $3.50!)

And the biggest treat of all...Funkie Gardens!

When we heard that Funkie Gardens was closing its doors for good last fall, we were devastated. Where would we go to get all our local grown funky plants?

I cried a little.

I pouted all winter.

Then a month ago we got the bestest news. It was purchased, moved to just north of Stillwater MN and it was opening again this spring! We even got a coupon for $10 off a $50 purchase, for being such good past customers. Here's what we got at Funkie Gardens:
Orange Custard daylily
Thunderbolt hosta
Holy Mouse Ears hosta
Autumn Delight/Beka sedum
Red Hawk iris
King's Randsom brunnera
Sagae hosta
Mahogany heuchera
Bath's Pink dianthus

And another thing that has kept me busy...


As my parents were leaving to go back home, the neighbor came over asking if I wanted baby squirrels. The mother had died and these little guys were looking for food and water. Even though those damn squirrels are always tearing up my garden (only last week I had to cayenne pepper my carrot bed AND put up fencing to keep the squirrels from belly-flopping into the bed and making dirt angels), how could I say no? I mean, look at them! We only had to keep them for a couple days while I searched for a rescue center. The nearest one was in Minnesota. That suited me just fine. I got to save baby squirrels AND get three squirrels out of my neighborhood -- WIN-WIN.

Morel Hunting

2010-05-03T13:36:00.010-05:00

My husband and I got up early (because our son missed the bus -- thanks JD) and went to the woods near our house to see if we could find any morels near the place that I had found them last year. I know that the morels are fruiting here since they are going gangbusters in my backyard right now. I really wasn't expecting to find any, but within 20minutes in the woods we found seven medium sized morels!

There are only six pictured because we left one behind. It was in a precarious place, and I wanted to make sure to leave something to propagate more morels. I will be going back with some spores to spread around, too.
You can see which one my husband found. He is giving it the thumbs-up.

Hunting wild mushrooms can be an exciting, but risky endeavor. How do I know that they are morel mushrooms and not some dangerous look-alike?

First, there are not very many mushrooms that look like morels. In fact, there are only two: Gyromitra and Verpa bohemica. The first would only look like a morel if you were drunk. The second only resembles one kind of morel, the half-free morel, but is still easy to distinguish once it has been cut open -- which you should ALWAYS do before eating morels. By cutting the mushroom lengthwise, you can be 100% positive that the mushroom is a morel. If you aren't 100% positive that what you have is a morel - throw it out. The two look-alikes are not something you want to be eating. I used this website for great ID info.

Note the "brainy" look of the morel cap. The stem is smooth, firm and meaty.

Note the hollow stem and firmly attached cap. Although the interior of the stem may have minute bumps, it will have no filling/fibers. The cap and the stem are virtually continuous - no distinct separation. Only the half-morels have separation, and I would never feel 100% confident with those. Besides, I have read that the ones pictured here are the best tasting anyway, so why risk it?

Oh, and morels aren't something you want to be eating raw as they have a chemical in them that can cause intestinal issues. Heat breaks this chemical down, so be sure to cook them. Sauteed in butter is awesomeness.

Want to try growing your own? Well, you could wait and hope nature brings you some morel spore, try your luck with community compost (like I did), create your own morel spawn, or buy morel spawn. As far as what to do to ensure their happiness, I have no idea. I cuss my garden out a lot. You could try that.

Morel Madness

2010-05-02T17:58:00.001-05:00

I love mushrooms, especially the kind you can eat. My favorite are the morels. One of my crazy dreams for my garden was that morel mushrooms would miraculously start growing in my garden. It was just a crazy dream, I knew. I mean, as you can probably see from many of my garden pictures, I live right in the city. And morels are notorious for being elusive woodland mushrooms. But a girl can dream, right?

Three springs ago I actually found a morel in my garden -- and it was HUGE!! It was already too ripe to eat, but I was very excited for the future.

Last year, I had two HUGE morel mushroom and a regular sized one. The two huge ones, ironically enough, were too ripe to eat by the time that we found them, but my son and I ate the other - and it was delicious!

This year, I really do believe that dreams can come true. I found 15 morels! They jumped the 20 feet from the white pine shade garden to my main garden and the move really agreed with them! Most were huge again, but there were a few small ones. They mostly took up spots under shrubs, but I found a few out in the open, basking in the sun. When I find them, I keep them well watered. We have even enjoyed a few morels for snacks. Most are going to be left to spore and hopefully take over my garden.

A girl can dream, can't she?

Seed Starting With Recyclables

2010-04-30T15:53:00.002-05:00

So I have lots of seeds - and I mean LOTS of seed (see previous post). I decided that I should probably try to do something with them.

I tried to plant them in starter mix re-fill cells and peat pellets. Neither of these was working very well. I even had the fancy humidity domes. Not much luck.

What did work were the following techniques:

Milk jug starters:
I learned about using milk jugs for winter sowing while reading blogs. I even saved a bunch over the fall and winter months just for winter sowing. AND...
I never got around to it. But I thought that if they worked well for that, they might make great greenhouses for starting things like my nightshades.

They were!

Brandy Wine tomatoes

Listada de Gandia eggplant

I cut the jugs three inches from their bottoms, filled the bottoms with starter mix, planted the seeds, taped the jug back together using packaging tape, then watered with filtered water in a spray bottle. I placed them in a window and in a couple of weeks I got these beautiful little seedlings. I now have them potted up.

Other humidity domes:
Humidity domes are great for getting seeds and seedlings the constant moisture that they need. Here are a couple other items that I have used.

Mmmmm...hot fudge sundaes!

Rotisserie chicken. These containers even come with vents. All rotisserie containers are not the same. I found that some are really brittle - the best ones come from Sam's Club. And their chicken is really good too!

Pre-sprouting in coffee cake containers:
I saved these coffee cake containers because I thought that they might make nice peat pellet humidity domes. Instead, I found that they make great seed sprouters. There are two ways that I sprout. The first is the technique that I used last year: mass sprouting. I used Viva paper towels, sprinkle the seeds over one half, fold the other half over the seeds, spray with water, closed container.

Beets are easy to space when they are pre-sprouted. They also come up faster.

This year, I had more seeds that I wanted to try sprouting, but I didn't need a whole tray of them. So, I made toilet paper packets that I could label. All these seeds shown here I also tried to start in starter mix with absolutely no luck.

But this worked - really well! I planted the sprout, tp and all, into starter cells.

Most seeds germinate faster using this method, and some seeds only germinated for me using this method.

Why stop at plastics?
I buy these fantastic sweet onions during the winter, but I almost always end up not using them all before they get to this point. It's happened to you too, I know it. I have planted green onions and shallots into the garden to refresh them in the past, so why not sweet onions?

I stripped the onion to find the separate baby bulbs. I cut through the rooty base making sure to leave roots on each bulb.

They are now planted and should give me onions in a few of months. Hopefully they will be the same yummy, sweet gourmet flavor that I love.

And of course, the best part of all this is that it saves money and stretches the usefulness of things. Gotta love that!

My Amazing Seed Box

2010-04-28T17:37:00.001-05:00

I really do have a problem.

Bleeding Hearts Are Blooming

2010-04-28T17:33:00.001-05:00

Obsessive Gardener Index - TULIPS!!

2010-04-25T11:28:00.002-05:00

I finally inventoried all my tulips and created an index representing all the tulips that I currently have in my garden. That index can be found HERE. I will also be putting a link in my sidebar.

Although I knew I had a lot of different tulips I was still surprised to find that I currently have at least 49 varieties! There are 5 others that I am either still trying to figure out their variety or decide if they are present. A rough count of the tulip bulbs I did this spring came to around 1600 tulip bulbs. I buy about 300+ every year, and most do perennialize for me. In fact, I still have tulips from my very first planting that still bloom like mad!

With all those bulbs in the ground, I had to come up with a different way to plant them. It is far too difficult to see what is what and where in the fall when the bulbs are virtually invisible. That is how I came up with the brilliant plan to overwinter my new arrivals in pots and plant in the spring after everything is visible again. It works beautifully! I even get regular blooms out of the tulips that spring.

Tulips are definitely my favorite flower. I have already begun my tulip list for the fall. :)

Of Course You Want More...

2010-04-20T01:40:00.012-05:00

Blue Gem Formal name: Tulipa humilis "alba coerulea oculata" - thanks to May Dreams Garden for the formal ID on this.	Tubergen's Gem Formal name: clusiana var. chrysantha
Aladdin lily tulip	Aladdin lily tulip
Gavota tulip I get more people stopping to ask about these than any other tulip.	Salome daffodil I planted these about 8 years ago and they only bloomed these last two years!
Sweetheart tulips I just LOVE these!!	White Emperor tulips with Sunrise tulips in the background
Sunrise peony tulips These have definitely multiplied.	Sunrise peony tulips Notice the red edging.
Supposed to be Margarita peony tulip. Not. They are still pretty though. I think they might be Passionale.	Thalia daffodils These are my favorite daffodils.
Fringed Elegance fringed tulip New to the garden this year. I really like them. These are a little floppy most likely because I just transplanted them from the pots I was growing them in.	Claudia lily tulip

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - April 2010

2010-04-15T22:39:00.009-05:00

A long forgotten Greigii tulip. Last bloomed in 1998! Perhaps 'Compostella'?	Raspberry Splash pulmonaria
Rembrandt tulips	Calypso greigii tulips
Azureum grape hyacinth	Album grape hyacinth
Orange Toronto greigii tulip	White Emperor tulip really enjoying the sun! These have been multiplying well.
Orange Emperor tulips - they're not as big as that first spring, but they still bloom every year	hyancinth with Thalia daffodils in the background. I love the Thalias. They are multiflower daffodils that are reliable and multiply!
Sweetheart tulips I lost a bunch since their first bloom, but the ones that survived are beautiful.	Sunrise tulips (they bloomed later in the day but I didn't have time to get a picture). These have been multiplying surprisingly well.

For those that don't know about Garden Blogger Bloom Day:
It was started by Carol at May Dreams Garden to celebrate the idea that we could have blooms in our garden all year round. It chronicles what is blooming in your garden on the 15th of every month. If you would like to join in the fun, create your post of blooms on the 15th and sign in at May Dreams Garden. Then go see what everyone else has blooming!

More Stuff That Made It, and a Wee Treat

2010-04-11T20:50:00.011-05:00

native Pasque flowers	native hepatica
White Emperor tulips	Pickwick giant crocuses
daffodil	Woodstock hyacinth
native bloodroot	tulip (I'm pretty sure these are Calypso)

wee Tete-a-tete daffodils I accidentally tricked them into being tiny by keeping them in a small pot for an entire year. I bought them as potted plants last year in the spring and just never got around to planting them. My husband planted these in the ground today still in the pot to see if they would remain small for him.

More Stuff That Made It

2010-04-07T16:03:00.016-05:00


	Bulb experiment has been very successful this year! I have already started planting!

	Various hyacinths. These on the left, Azureum, are new this year. They were part of the bulb experiment.
"Heart's Delight" tulips	Peony
Hepatica - pink. I've only seen blues/purples in the wild.	Delphiniums racing to see who will flower first!
Bleeding Heart	Oriental poppies (with squill and daffodils)
"Looking Glass" brunnera	"Pewter Moon" heuchera
Anthemis marschallianna	I have lots more coming up -- and FAST!!

This Is No Joke

2010-04-01T22:34:00.000-05:00

I thought it would be at least another week before I would see a decent amount blooming in my garden.

I was wrong.

Pickwick crocus	chionodoxa
Siberian iris "Caesar's Brother"	Pasque flower
"Remembrance" crocus	Tete-a-tete daffodils and giant yellow crocus
Apricot Beauty tulips	miscellaneous crocus with a little nibble
spicy mesclun - can't wait!

What the Duck?

2010-03-30T13:56:00.005-05:00

I was at the backend of my garden when I saw a couple of ducks flying over the roofs of the neighbors' homes toward the river. As I was wondering where they had been coming from, they landed in a tree.

What? In a tree?
Huh. I must have been wrong. Ducks don't land in trees. But I distinctly remember the way that they flew was very much like ducks. Maybe just some clumsy crows.

Upon closer inspection, they were indeed ducks. Wood ducks, to be precise. Well, now we can all see why they are named that.

Earliest Garden Start EVER!

2010-03-20T11:34:00.007-05:00

First flower of 2010 (picture taken 03/14/10).

I'm still working the two jobs, but that will be ending soon - couple more weeks maybe. Then I can really get to work!

I had a 4 day weekend last week, which between that and it being in the high 60s allowed me to get some real-life gardening done! This has to be my earliest start, ever!) My bulbs were already starting to poke up so I had to clear the fall/winter left-overs out to make a clean canvas for them. My compost bin is now stuffed full!

One of my lavender survivors! - for winter protection, I mulched with straw.

Today I decided to take my seed list to Fleet Farm to see if I could find any of it there. I found nearly all of them! and I got each packet for under $1 each, so I was able to get extras - some annual flowers, herbs, and vegetables that I didn't have on my list.

Beet – Detroit Dark red
Rutabaga – American Purple Top
Salsify – Mammoth Sandwich Island
Parsnips – Hollow Crown
Pepper – Long Red Cayenne
Chamomile – German
Dill – Mammoth
Marjoram – Sweet
Fennel – Florence
Kohlrabi – Early White Vienna
White Bush Scallop Patty Pan
Cucumber – Armenian
Cucumber – Boston Pickling
Squash – Delicata
Mesclun – Spicy Mix
Endive – Green Curled Ruffec
Pak Choi – Bonsai
Radicchio

Brussel Sprouts – Long Island Improved
Chinese Cabbage – Michihli
Arugula – Roquette
Bean – Edible Soybean
Snow Peas – Melting Sugar
Carrot – Imperator
Carrot – Danvers Half Long
Carrot – Little Finger
Bean – Slenderette
Nasturtium – Dwarf Jewel Mix
Morning Glory – Picotee Blue
Passion Flower
Cosmos – Sensation Picotee
Bachelor Button – Choice Mix
Alyssum – Carpet of Snow
Zinnia – Persian Carpet
Poppy – California Orange

Almost all of them were the varieties that I was originally intending to buy, some of these items I got in multiples, and I got it all for just a little over $40! So I'm pretty happy with the haul.

I got some potting soil and a few grow trays with extra tall tops, that even included built in sliding vents, for $4 each! I planted one with the spicy mesclun mix for early greens. I had a couple older, shorter ones that I planted with peas, parsnips, pak choi, Chinese cabbage and radicchio. I will be transplanting these to the garden once they get big enough (and I get the garden straightened out).
You can see it is still full of bulbs:

My bulb holding pen is doing good. My giant alliums and blue anemones are even coming up! As soon as the ground thaws enough to break these free, I will be moving them so that I can get started on my vegetable garden. I already planted some peas, turnips, and greens in areas that were not taken up with bulbs or semi-finished compost from last fall.

I put my cheapie greenhouse together again finally. It hadn't been used since the infamous greenhouse fire of 2005. I put the planted grow trays in there. I also made a few milk jug greenhouses and made a window shelf to put them on. In these I planted tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers. I've never done milk jug greenhouses before, so I hope it works. These kind of greenhouses are normally used for winter sowing, but I was planning to not buy veggie garden plants this year - so I have to get going on those nightshades!

After all, my garden insists that Spring is here!

Crocuses today. I really need to plant more crocuses!

Near Spring Update

2010-03-12T16:40:00.003-06:00

I am thrilled to announce that all my lavender made it through the winter with flying colors. Now, barring any unforeseen disaster, I will have four lavender plants to enjoy this summer! I'm not sure if it was the variety that I picked or the mild winter that we had or maybe that I planted them in sand - but I have LAVENDER!!

Also, some spinach that I planted late last fall for a wishful late harvest that never fruited are still alive and taking off right now! I might have to try that again this year. I might have spinach to harvest by the end of March.

My brussell sprouts are still alive, too! I never got a harvest off them last year, so maybe this spring I can coax some sprouts out of them.

My garlic is sprouting. I still have a good stash from my last harvest, enough to get me through to this bunch's harvest for sure.

The rutabaga that I didn't get harvested in the fall is still growing. I wonder if it will still taste good...

And, of course, there are hundreds and hundreds of bulbs peaking through the earth right now! I CAN'T WAIT!! This spring is going to be awesome!

Damn Spam!!

2010-02-23T17:26:00.005-06:00

You may notice a tightening down of security on my site. It is not the way that I would like it, but ever since I had a certain blogger visit here complaining about my aversion to security and how I would soon regret it -- in fact the day AFTER that blogger placed several comments on this blog arguing their point -- I started getting spammed like you wouldn't believe!! Now I'm not saying that this person invited them over, and I'm not ruling that out either, but it has unfortunately forced me to start using moderation. I am still refusing absolutely any kind of WV because it and I do not get along. I try to monitor this blog daily, but as I am currently over-employed, you may have to wait a few days for your comments to appear.

Since I am now forced to use this monstrosity, please help me by following one simple rule -

Make sure that your comment is clearly pertinent to the post.

I am deleting any comments that I can't tell decisively are not spam. If you are a regular commenter, I will recognize you so you can be as vague as you would like. New commenters unfortunately will have to convince me that they are not spam. If you comment and don't see it up where it should be, please email me, making sure to use [Obsessive Gardener] in the subject line to keep it from being presorted by my filter.

And no more badgering comments about spam, they can hear you!

It's A Brand New Year

2010-01-24T00:44:00.003-06:00

I can't believe that it is already 2010! Two more years before the end of the world, you know; and only two more months before the new growing season. So I'd better get going on all these unfinished projects!

I haven't even ordered my seeds for the up-coming season. Luckily I have leftovers from seasons' past, and the seeds have hit the shelves in all the big local stores. You would be so proud of me! I looked for a whole fifteen minutes and didn't buy even one packet! I didn't have my seed-need list, and didn't want to end up with even more of what I already have.

It's been a very busy time for me. Right before Thanksgiving I was asked by a past employer to interim for a position that had suddenly gone vacant. I knew that this was going to happen since a good friend of mine had held the position and had told me he was moving suddenly out of state to be with his girlfriend who had gone to grad school. I accepted the interim position and have been working my full-time business manager job during the day and serving as library supervisor at night (as well as running around trying to find renters for two vacant apartments!!).

Well, of course the job was open, and they really wanted me to take it. In fact I had been offered the position two years ago, but ended up turning it down due to some major commitments I had made at my current job (switching wholesalers and getting Medicare accreditation); among other things going on in my life). But I wasn't going to turn it down twice. I've worked there on and off since 2001 and love all the people. So, I will be switching jobs soon. I go in on Tuesday to take care of the paperwork. I already do the job so there's not much in the way of training to take care of. So, yay for me! This new job will leave my mornings free for gardening which suits me just fine!

Winter Landscape

2009-12-27T11:19:00.004-06:00


I don't cut back a lot of my plants at the end of the season, for a few reasons: 1) I can be a bit lazy in the garden, 2) the plants provide food and shelter for wildlife, and 3) they just look so pretty with all that snow.
		You can see all the bunny tracks in this picture; maybe not the wildlife I would like to be sheltering in my garden. But what you can't see is the several dozen chickadees and various other winter birds that dart around the garden picking food from the remaining vegetation. Nature's bird feeders.
		They are especially good at getting the remaining seeds from the prickly echinacea. I love the contrast of the almost lethal looking spikes sticking from the soft, sparkly snow.

Winter Wind-down

2009-12-01T17:58:00.005-06:00

We still haven't gotten any snow save for that little bit in October that melted rather quickly.

I have been working on my vegetable garden planting layout for next year and my seed order. I am hoping to find space to plant a little of all the seeds that I currently have now and will be ordering.

There are a lot of plastic containers in my basement ready for winter sowing -- my first attempt. Please leave me any advice and links to info!

I am also drawing up plans for a window greenhouse. I have a good sized window in my mud room that tends to get things piled in front of it (my son is the culprit) making it look really bad on the outside. It gets a lot of morning sun, so I thought it might be a nice place to set up some greens and herbs for winter use. I think that they will look much better through the window than piles of books and gym clothes!

I still haven't brought in my rosemary as it is holding it's own in the cold weather. It will come in this weekend. If you are a cold climate gardener - rosemary does just fine in a container and overwinters great in the house in a sunny window. In fact, the rosemary gets really tender in the winter and is even better!

I am continuing to research hoop houses looking for the best design for my uses. When I do build mine, you can be assured that there will be a step-by-step post. And I will be that much closer to year-round gardening!

Until then... I usually turn my attentions toward the kitchen in the winter, where I cook obsessively; much to the delight of anyone who knows me and lives near me as they get tons of great food (I cook way more than I could, or should, eat!). So, be sure to check out The Obsessive Gardener companion blog: The Obsessive Chef.

Who Ordered All This Damn Spinach?

2009-11-08T21:53:00.004-06:00

I know it may be hard for a lot of people to believe, but when it comes to some things, I am not the best planner. Like my vegetable garden. I usually wait til the last minute and run out to the big box to buy plants and seeds, usually getting everything into the ground around, oh, mid-June. And as I'm planting I realize that I bought seeds that I already have 4 full packs of - like Bloomsdale spinach.

I am determined to change my ways! Who can eat all that spinach?

This weekend I spent some time inventorying my left over seeds. I have them listed by their plant types, variety names, amounts and age. Although many seeds remain viable for years, some have a shorter lifespan; I kept that in mind as I planned for which seeds I still need. I was surprised to see that I had most of the seed that I would need for next year.

Turns out, I have over 30 different kinds of vegetable seeds in hand right now:

Maxibel beans, edamame, jalepenos, sweet onion, AmericanFlag leek, Brandywine Pink tomato, Wayahead tomato, sweet basil, Romanesco broccoli, Listada de Gandia eggplant, Triple Treat pumpkin, Sweet Pie pumpkin, Black Beauty zucchini, buttercup squash, Table Queen squash, cantaloupe, SugarBaby watermelon, Blue Vates kale, Bloomsdale spinach, kohlrabi, turnip, mustard spinach, salad blend, Sweetness carrot, Baby Star lettuce, Buttercrunch lettuce, Ruby lettuce, Caesar Salad blend, Early Prolific straightneck summer squash, Waltham butternut squash, Packman broccoli, Swiss chard, and snow peas.

I just need:

beet, carrot, sweet pepper, parsnip, black eye peas, shallots, sweet peas, potatoes, rutabaga, brussels sprouts, pak choi, corn salad, arugula, and cucumbers.

I have been looking at the R.H. Shumway catalog (since they are now owned by Jung - a Wisconsin company). I have read some great things about them, and some not so great things. Generally the reviewers said that they have fantastic product, trouble is they may not ship it in time. I figure though with seed I should be safe, because if I do not get the seed when I need it, the stores should be stocked by then and I can just purchase from them. And seed will hold until the following season if necessary.

I'm trying to pace myself, but who knows... if I get the seeds early enough, I might even start some plants indoors!

November Overhead

2009-11-07T17:13:00.002-06:00

It was a beautiful day today and I got a lot done, but mostly I spent time in my garden (and a little time on my roof:). When I get enough money, I am going to get this power line underground. It is a nuisance for over head shots and when we want to sit outside and enjoy the stars.
This last week I even finished filling the new vegetable beds with compost. I also planted about 60 garlic cloves and the ten raspberry plants I got from a coworker. I still have rutabaga, Swiss chard, broccoli, kale, leeks, spinach and Brussel sprouts growing.

I know it seems a little weird to be thinking of this when we haven't even started winter yet, but I am feeling really good about next year.

Garlic Planting

2009-11-07T10:01:00.008-06:00

I love garlic! And I was reading about garlic planting on so many blogs that I just had to find a way to get it done this fall in my garden. I hadn't purchased any specialty garlic for planting, instead, I just headed to the grocery store and bought 8 bulk garlic bulbs. I did this a couple of years ago with great success. The garlic doesn't taste the same after it grows in your garden - it's BETTER!

I tore the bulbs apart to get the cloves I would need for planting. I just plant the cloves, just as you see them in the picture above, in 2-3 inch deep holes about 2-3 inches apart. No fertilizer or protection necessary. They are very hardy and will sprout in spring giving me usable bulbs around mid-June. A lot of people take the biggest for planting, I take the smallest and save the biggest for kitchen use.

After planting all the small cloves, I chopped up the bigger cloves and put them in a sterilized jar with oil for storage in my refrigerator for later use. I find that the grocery store garlic does not store well in my kitchen, so I thought I would give this technique a try*.

What is really strange is that once this garlic has had a while to grow in my garden, it not only improves greatly in flavor, it also improves in storage quality. It easily keeps right on my kitchen counter for the entire winter!

*I have been reading that even if storing in the refrigerator this may not be safe to eat raw due to potential botulism - however, I will only be using this for cooking so this will be fine for me as high heat for ten minutes will destroy any toxins that may be present according to the FDA.

What Makes A Good Blog (and what doesn't)

2009-11-01T18:19:00.008-06:00

The Crafty Gardener was asking what his readers look for in a blog and what added gadgets they actually use and Nell Jean at Secrets of Seed Scatterer was telling her readers what she liked and disliked about blogs. And as opinionated as I am, I just felt a post a-brewin!

For choosing a blog to read I go through the following process:
(pause cursor on sentences for hover text)

Intriguing blog title.
A great blog header will keep me there for a look-see.
Clutter is a big turn off.
Newest post either visible upon entry or not too far a scroll away is a MUST!
Author info at the top is definitely the way to go.
A well thought out, well written post is also a MUST.
I LOVE humor!
Pictures aren't necessary for every post, but do add to the experience.
I prefer blogs that allow comments.
I HATE word verification!
No pitch black backgrounds with bright white text - Headache City!!

Bonuses:

Fabulous photos
Post labels
Authors who read and respond to comments
Blogrolls.
Hyperlink references in posts
Posts that teach me something.
A passionate, funny writer that isn't afraid to go off on a good rant now and then ;)

Specifically for garden blogs:

Wide shots of the garden
Pictures that include the whole plant
Step-by-step instructions
Names of plants in the pictures
Your planting zone and soil type

Now I'm not saying that mine is a perfect example of a perfect blog. In fact I have seen so many blogs that I feel mine can only aspire to be like. But, I found it useful to see other blog readers' ideas of a great blog and thought you might too.

Tell me what you like (and dislike) about blogs!

Veggie Bed Overhead

2009-10-24T08:53:00.010-05:00

Here is an overhead view of my vegetable garden with the newest bed installed and two other "possible" beds laid out. The small bed will be for raspberries and the big bed is for pumpkins. The other bed will be a general bed. If everything goes well tomorrow I will be finishing all these and hopefully get them filled with compost before the end of the day.

Update (Saturday 2:18pm): I got called in to work, so I didn't make very great progress on this project. I will post a picture of my progress most likely tomorrow.

Update (Saturday 5:56pm):

I don't have the rebar in or the beds filled with compost, but I do have them leveled and ready to go whenever it quits raining...

Update (Sunday 5:32pm): It didn't rain like it was supposed to so I got the rebar installed on all the beds. Yay for me! I got an abrasive saw disc to cut the rebar to shorter pieces (1' instead of 2'); and I got an auger bit big enough to get through all three stacked pieces of landscape timbers which really sped things up! The disc cost $6 (but you can get them at the Big Boxes for $3) and the auger bit cost me $8 (and boy was it hard to find! Got it at Menards). Both were definitely worth their prices!

I Have Leeks!

2009-10-19T22:46:00.004-05:00

I started leeks from seed three years ago. I didn't get any that first year that were big enough to eat, but I was very glad that I didn't pull them out in the fall as they overwintered just fine, much to my surprise.

The second year the leeks didn't get big enough either, but one of them did bloom. Again, I left them over the winter. And again they did just fine.

This year I found new leek seedlings from the seeds that blooming leek produced. Back in September I reported that the leeks had yet again failed to produce stalks big enough to use, so imagine my surprise when I pulled one that had seeded in an inconvenient place as I was cleaning the beds for winter and found that it was indeed big enough to use! In fact I found enough that were big enough that I could make my yummy leek and potato soup!

So it only took three years. I'm patient, because it's no work at all just waiting. I had 5 blooms this year, which means even more leeklings next year. I will just keep letting them do all the work and enjoying the results :)

Weather Reprive

2009-10-18T23:36:00.010-05:00

After snowing/sleeting much of the week, it warmed up for the weekend allowing me to get some things done:

Weeded all the main garden paths
Raked the yard and mowed the leaves for mulch
Pulled all the dead plants and weeds from the veggie beds
Emptied the rain barrels for winter storage
Weeded some of the main garden for planting
Weeded the whole front bed for planting
Planted all but one of the 99cent plants I got from Home Depot
Laid out a new raised bed (to be finished later this week, hopefully)
Planted about half of the remaining spring bulbs
Harvested the rest of the beets, black-eyed peas, the shallots and the carrots

I was really surprised to see the carrots. I grow them in small pots because I have a nematode problem in my vegetable garden. Usually they never make a nice root. I was pulling them up to store the pots for the winter and there they were, chunky little carrots :) Not enough to make pickled carrots like I would like, but great for snacking. Garden fresh carrots are the best!

Speaking of canning, here is a picture of some of my harvest preservation efforts so far. I have canned lots of applesauce, tomato sauce, salsa, pickled beets, strawberry jam, grape jam, zucchini dill pickles, and zucchini sweet pickles. I have also dried mullein, black eye peas, apple wedges and made apple chips. Then there is all the vegetables I froze. A couple of days ago I used some of the broccoli that I froze earlier in the season - it was so GREEN! Even after cooking it!

Here are all the spring bulbs that I needed to get planted. Notice that there are bulbs here that weren't in the picture I took last week? I told you they follow me home!

I planted all the species tulips, one bag of the Princess Irenes, the Mr. Fokker anemones, The irises, and the bleeding heart. I still have almost 300 bulbs to plant! I'm going to love it in the spring, but right now - UGH!

UPDATE 10/19/09: It's 1:30pm and I am done planting ALL the bulbs! WHEW! Now I have to tackle the raised bed...

My Garden at the Moment...

2009-10-12T10:56:00.007-05:00

Of course. Because I still have so much left to do in the garden.

Here's What I Still Have To Plant:
About 2/3 of these bulbs/plants plus three 14ct packages of Princess Irene tulips (which I bought a month ago and completely forgot!), 24ct bag of Mr. Fokker anemones, a 24ct bag of Azureum muscari and a 50ct bag of Lilac Wonder tulips.
And all of these 19 perennials, which I picked up at Home Depot when I was playing hooky Friday to... stop looking at me that way! It was fate! I got there just as they finished re-pricing all their perennials to 99cents!! I could not pass that up. I was practically stealing them. And they had some great plants, not just all Autumn Joy sedum and no-name hostas. I got: 2 Twilight hostas, a Christmas hosta, 2 Silver Mound, a Frances William hosta, 4 Can Can heucheras, 2 May Night salvia, a Snow Hill salvia, 2 Sunny Border Blue speedwells, a Moonshine achillea, a Pizzaz hosta, an Elegans hosta and a clematis (that I forgot to grab a tag for so I don't know what it is, but I think it was Jack).

Oh and just in case you don't yet think I am crazy...I was playing hooky to pick up another two bushels of apples from my orchard friend/coworker and to go pick the remaining apples at another friends house (another bushel worth). I am determined to not run out of applesauce!

New Approach to Bulbs - Trial 2

2009-10-08T09:05:00.005-05:00

I have been planting spring bulbs every year for years, and it has gotten to the point that I spend more time replanting bulbs I accidentally dig up trying to plant new bulbs than I spend actually planting the new bulbs! Also, I can't really tell where I need bulbs and what colors I need where.
Last year I devised a plan to have my bulbs planted yet portable so that I could place them in the garden in the spring when I would be able to actually see where they should go. I gathered all the perennial pots that I had saved (and even got a few from my friends) and planted a big cheap mixed bulb pack in the pots, secured those in a little loose compost and covered with leaves. The bulbs did just fine and I was able to group the bulbs and plant them where I needed them in the spring.

It worked so well, in fact, that I decided to try it again this year. I already planted the area I used last year with perennials, so I used my vegetable garden this year - I'm not going to be using it until after I can get these bulbs out of the ground anyway. I put them in pots rather than planting them directly in the garden and digging them out to transplant because I tend to do a lot of damage digging bulbs and I want these blooming next spring. I will be trying a straight planting for the purpose of transplanting with some smaller bulbs that don't need to be planted so deep.

Last year I planted one bulb per pot since I didn't know what each bulb would be, since it was a mixed pack, and I wanted to be able to group the like bulbs together. This year I used specific varieties and planted 2-4 per pot.

So far this year I have purchased 486 bulbs - I have about a third of them now planted -- and there most likely will be more to come, they just follow me home :)

Barter Harvest

2009-10-05T19:43:00.004-05:00

I don't have an apple tree, but I do know people with them and I know one that owns an orchard and loves grape jam and pickled beets. And I have that to spare. So what do you get for a couple jars of jam and a jar of pickled beets? Two bushels of apples; quite a bargain barter!
He asked me what I wanted, I told him whatever would be good for applesauce. I got one bag of Sweet Sixteen (very sweet), 2 bags Cortland (very tangy and crisp), 1 bag Macks (very firm), 1 bag Honey Crisp (set those aside for fresh eating), 1 bag Chestnut Crab (very good, sweet, crisp apples - just the right size for a quick snack. Those I saved too), 1 bag Connell (good all around apple), and 2 mystery mixes.

I looked up a bunch of applesauce recipes and they all said that you needed a food mill. I didn't have a food mill, and wasn't going to be able to get one at 8pm on a Sunday night, so I winged it, as usual. I thought I might be able to press the cooked apples through my steamer basket, but then decided that I would just peel the apples instead and use an immersion blender. Worked perfect, except that peeling two bushels of apples is a pain in the butt!

Here's a tip to keeping the apples from browning while you're peeling all those apples: add some crushed vitamin C tablets to a bowl of water to keep the cut pieces in. The ascorbic acid in the C keeps the apples from browning.

The recipe is easy, just cored peeled apples, some water, and if desired: lemon juice, sugar and spices. Apples are high acid, so water bath canning is fine. The lemon juice option is just to maintain color. Some batches I sweetened, others I left plain. I used cinnamon and ginger for spices and dark brown sugar for sweetening.

My son assured me that these will not be around longer than a month. I'd better get more apples.

BTW: the really dark jars are pickled beets.

Mullein Harvest 2009

2009-10-04T15:15:00.005-05:00

I grow mullein in my garden for a few reasons: I never have to plant it, the birds love it, it is pretty, and it makes a fantastic decongestant!

You can see how I use it in the garden here.

And you can see how I use it in my kitchen here.

To dry the leaves, I usually just clean them with either a little water or brush them off with a soft brush (like a paint brush) and then lay them on baking racks to dry for a couple of weeks. The results have been good, but I recently tried a drying method that works even better and faster. I just got some cheap thread, strung them up and hung the string of it in my kitchen.

I left a few mullein growing around the garden here and there just for picking off the leaves throughout the summer. I pick all but a few in the center to keep the plant alive so it can continue to produce leaves. Here is my harvest so far this year, dried and packed for storage:

Last year I had filled that big jar in the back, and it was gone before March. This just might get us through the winter this year.

A Little More Left

2009-09-24T22:14:00.008-05:00

Concord grapes. This is less than half of the harvest. I picked two more of these large bowls full of grapes and even left a bunch on the vine for the birds anxiously waiting in the lilac for me to finish. I have preserved over dozen pints of jam - and if you haven't had home-made grape jam, you don't know what you are missing! I traded some of the grape jam for apples from an orchard owner I know. He gets sick of apples, so was very happy to get something grapey instead.

Empress of India nasturtium and some kind of aster that I don't immediately remember the name of. This aster always looks like it is just not going to make it all summer, but then some time in mid-August it takes off and starts to bloom in September. It doesn't look very good with that red nasturtium, but I think the nasturtium leaves match well. Perhaps a pastel nasturtium next year?

I know a lot of you may see this bloom and say, "Oh no!" But I love this little weed! It is an annual hibiscus. Although it self-seeds freely, it is easy to weed out where you don't want it. I was lucky enough to have a large patch of these this year so that they packed a bigger punch when they did bloom -- which is usually for a few hours mid-day.

Purple Prince zinnia. I need to grow more zinnia next year. They are so easy and beautiful. Some of them even looked like dahlias, which I won't grow because they are too much maintenance.

Gaillardia. I have been trying to spread this sport around. I think yellow is rather harsh, but the orange and red in this one is very beautiful. So far I have managed to multiply this from the initial sport to about a dozen of the same color pattern in the last two years.

Blue Boy phlox. I have had this phlox for years and this is the first that it has bloomed. Not really blue, but a welcome bloom for the garden anyway.

Main garden. It is such a lovely view from my kitchen window.

GBBD September 2009

2009-09-16T09:16:00.010-05:00

I couldn't take pictures on the 15th for Garden Blogger Bloom Day, hosted at May Dream Gardens, as I was at work all while the sun was out. And today, well, it might finally rain, yay! But not such good weather for taking pictures :( So forgive me for the far less than average quality.

Repeat bloomers:

Blue Ravine clematis
I planted these with Comtesse de Bouchard because Blue Ravine blooms in spring and fall and CdB blooms in summer.

Hairbell
It is a native to this area and I was surprised to see it repeat after blooming in early summer. But not as surprised as I was to see this next flower repeat...

Oriental poppy
I do not remember ever having one of these repeat bloom. It must have been the cool summer.

Non repeat bloomers:

Desdemona Ligularia
As always this one is great, for the foliage and the flowers. I grow this one in full sun and it LOVES it! It is usually one of the last plants I have to water too. I don't know if it dug a well or it is just not as thirsty as other ligularias, but I'm not asking if it keeps performing like this.

Plum Crazy hibiscus
I am "plum crazy" for this, the queen of my garden. It is my longest lived hibiscus (all others have perished long ago) and I would like to expand its area, or get other hibiscus. There are a few that I've had my eye on.

Main Garden

Again, sorry about the fuzzy shot, but you can see that I have a lot more blooming: Autumn Joy sedum, sunflowers, Purple Prince and mixed zinnias, sweet allysum, White Swan and purple echinacea, alpine strawberries, feverfew, Stella de Oro, catchfly, Red Prince weigela, Picote cosmos, two kinds of heliopsis, garlic chives, two kinds of rudbeckia, gailardia, and lots of different kinds of asters. Fall has never looked so good out in my garden!

Black-eyed Peas

2009-09-13T01:30:00.010-05:00

A few years back my son ate black-eyed peas for the first time and loved them. Even though a bag of them is pretty cheap at the grocery store, I decided to try to grow them this year for him. They have proved to be a very interesting plant.

They were easy to start, just set for a few days in moist paper towel to sprout, then plant in the ground. Just about every one of my bean sprouts survived.

They do not seem to be bothered by pests. Whereas my edamame and Maxibels without protection were eaten to the ground by rabbits, the rabbits left these completely alone.

The flowers are beautiful and vary in color from bright white, to cream, to almost light tan. Unlike a lot of bush type beans, these flowers are held high on the plant so you can actually see and enjoy them.

The beans are, of course, also held high on the plant. They actually sit almost on top of the plant and are held out horizontally. This adds its own interest to this plant. It also makes it very easy to monitor and harvest the beans.

The black ants love these plants and can always be seen at the base of the bean stems. They seem to be harvesting a thick sap that is oozing from that place on the plant. This may be one of the factors that keep the insect pests away. The ants do make it a little tricky to harvest, as they do try to protect their plant, but I haven't been bit yet and a simple shaking of the plant knocks loose most ants.
Here are beans harvested from two ripe pods. The nice thing about harvesting dry bean is that you don't need all the beans to ripen at once for processing. I will just pick as they ripen, dry the beans, and store in a jar for later use. Easy. I like easy.

Food Garden Results Summary - 2009

2009-09-07T12:36:00.009-05:00

As you may recall I planted three raised vegetable beds this year. I always crowd my beds, but I stretched the limits this year seeing where I could gain a bit more space. This is an updated report on my findings. All amounts were based on the needs/usage of a family of three.

4ft of curled vates kale More than enough and then some. There was enough for us, our neighbor and the food shelf. It is still producing strong too! Will grow in some shade but prefers full sun. Allow for it to spread at least 12" across.
8ft Bloomsdale spinach Plenty unless you do a lot of freezing/canning. This was direct seeded and was producing within a month. Seed was collected and it was torn out sometime in mid August. I planted some of the seed at that time and it is almost producing secondary leaves. OK to crowd with itself, doesn't make a great understory/interplant plant.
10ft mixed lettuce This was maybe too much unless you eat salads EVERY DAY. I did bring some to the food shelf. I like the mixed lettuce. If one kind does not do well, you always have others and it makes your salads much more interesting. Worked great to plant this under the broccoli along the edge of the bed where it would still receive light but also receive cool shading from the broccoli.
8 Packman broccoli This was a good variety and amount. I had enough for all our uses and some left over for the food shelf and the neighbor. I planted this early (late April) with no cover. They grew well even when spaced only 10" apart - I might try 8" next year. I would also insert a corral around the row when young as they get tall and flop over sometime in August -- or I could just try cutting back hard when I harvest to keep them short.
11 mixed pepper plants These were fussy! Only interplant with very short plants. They do not like competition for light, and they need lots of it! I had 4 jalepeno plants and although this pepper did the best of all that I planted, this was not enough for salsa.
4 Early Girl tomatoes & 11 mixed tomatoes I really like Early Girl tomatoes; they are my favorite that I have grown so far - excellent flavor, size, and consistency for both fresh eating and sauces; and they can be started a lot earlier than all other tomatoes that I have grown (I started them in early May with a row cover). I made the mistake this year of getting indeterminate plants, oops! But these four plants out-produced all my other tomato plants combined! Although, part of the reason that the other tomatoes didn't do as well was because I grew peas on their cages and the peas did better than expected, ultimately completely covering the tomatoes! I might get the indeterminate again and trellis them.
2 spaghetti squash I had interplanted/understoried these in the middle of the tomato corral. This actually worked fairly well as the vine was very long and easily found its way out of the corral and wound around it. I only have one squash fruit - which actually is better than the none that I have gotten in previous years.
2 zucchini This has always been sufficient... except this year. They had silver leaf and only produced three squash so far.
57 garlic Need more garlic!!! This only produced a quart of garlic bulbs for me. I tried interplanting some with the broccoli -- no deal. The broccoli choked them out. The garlic I harvested were planted in a patch all by themselves.
34 Maxibel filet beans This was more than enough, they started producing in June and have produced fairly heavily until a few weeks ago. I ripped out a few of the plants to allow room for my peppers. This sparked another wave of bean production in the remaining bean plants. I LOVE the flavor of them, but I do not like their fuzzy texture. I need to find a great tasting smooth green bean. I tried to interplant spinach and rutabaga, but the beans quickly choked them out.
16 rutabaga I got these from over-crowded seedling in my neighbors garden some time in early July. I interplanted and underplanted them throughout the garden. They work out great for growing along the edge of the bed, but do not survive in shady spots. I have one mature rutabaga right now. My others are suffering from not enough watering. I do not know how well they will store, so I don't know if this is a sufficient amount.
100+ sweet peas Can you ever have enough sweet peas? I think that I did reach that perfect amount this year. I grow enough for me and my neighbor (family of 3+), since she can't seem to grow them. I only use them fresh. If I were to start freezing I would have to grow about twice as many. I found that sprouting the seeds before planting made a huge difference in survivability and proper spacing. I usually grow these on my tomato cages/corrals without any problems, but this year the peas went nuts and overtook most of my tomato plants!
50-75 large leaf sweet basil More basil please!! It takes so much just to make a little pesto that I almost need to grow a whole bed of basil to fully meet my basil demand. I thought I didn't like basil until I tried this variety. I can use this in many of the same ways that I use spinach -- it's just spicier. I always harvest the top half and let the plant regrow, but I'm thinking what I might want to do in the future is harvest just the big leaves and leave all the side buds; they might regrow faster. OK for interplanting as long as they get enough light.
3 yellow straight-neck summer squash I actually loved this squash. Why haven't I grown it before? It turns out my squash-hating husband loves it too. This number of plants was sufficient unless I find more ways of using and storing.
8sqft of volunteer American Flag leek They don't like to be crowded by other plants. These start well for me and even overwinter, but I have yet to get a usuable leek from my patch. What's the secret?
6 turnips They are still tiny as the turnips that I thought I planted earlier were actually something else - salad mustard?? I started these plants from seed late July. I might get some turnips out of them. I've interplanted them with the brussell sprout plants I picked up in late July from Menards for 6/50cents. That's working out very well as the sprouts get tall and leave plenty of room for the turnips to spread out underneath.
1 Triple Treat pumpkin Not enough. Luckily I was able to take over my friends' unused garden and plant 7 more of these :) I tried these on a trellis. They get a little too heavy for that and are probably better off grown ground level. Fantastic pumpkin for pies and seeds (the seeds lack the woody shell), and are great small Halloween pumpkins. Although you can carve these, I want to use the meat, so I just paint them.
2 Table Queen acorn squash This will end up being plenty. They were great producers and grow well on the trellis.
2 buttercup This one is producing better than last year. I am growing it on the trellis and it is taking that well. I haven't tried this squash yet as I didn't get any of the plants to fruit last year, so I don't know if I want more of this one.
2 Waltham butternut The year before this was plenty, but this year they aren't producing as well. I think it is because it is very cool. I am trying them on the trellis for the first time and they are taking that well. I don't think that this affected the production.
6 edamame This will not be enough. They have yet to produce any beans. That could be because the rabbits kept eating them down to nothing all spring until I put a fence around the plants. These plants are tough! I interplanted a few beets with them and this worked out well.
16ft Detroit Red beets I though that this was going to be too many, but now I am finding I wish I had more. If I was just using them for fresh eating it would be plenty, but I want to can some pickled beets and am falling short of what I'd like to have. They are easy to grow and the seeds last FOREVER. They are great for interplanting and underplanting as their leaves don't get very tall and they tolerate shade very well.
16ftblack-eyed peas This is the first year that I have grown them. My son loves them so I thought I would give them a try. They have beautiful flowers and unique fruits - they hold the bean pods horizontally above the leaves. Ants love these plants! I think the plants give the ants a nectar in return for them protecting the plants from pests as I see the ants eating a clear goo from the base of the pod stems and the plants are not bothered by any pests. If these turn out to be worth growing for beans, this will not be enough; otherwise it is a good amount for just some interest in the garden. They don't seem to mind the encroaching squash either. They get too bushy for inter or underplantings other plants with them.
10 sweet yellow onions Not enough, because I really have none. The onions did not mind being transplanted once, but when I had to transplant them again to get them out from under the over-growing squash leaves, they gave up. Not successful for underplantings, but might work well in a loose interplanting - need lots of sun.
6 shallots These were re-freshers (I had bought them from the grocery store but didn't use them before they got too shriveled to use, so I threw them in the garden to re-beef - I do that with my spring onions too). I might try to grow them for real next year. They are growing well even in their shady spot.
tons of volunteer lamb's quarter which not only are an edible weed, but are high in nutrients and are darn tasty! I started to pull these out of the garden around the time that the lettuce was on its way out to make way for the other plants growing bigger.

Gardenizens

2009-09-06T23:39:00.005-05:00

The CobraHead Cometh

2009-08-29T22:16:00.000-05:00

Carol, over at May Dreams Garden was hosting a CobraHead weeder giveaway - and I won!

...so did everyone else who entered, which is fantastic. What a generous company CobraHead is! Ehem... did I mention that they are a Wisconsin company?

The handle is the kind of plastic that I really like, a warm, strong composite. The grip is ergonomic, which is really important since I have a LOT of weeding to do! Example:

Garden pathway before.

Garden pathway after.
Much better. Thanks CobraHead!

I found that the thing that this tool was best at was grabbing the break-away weeds that are so difficult to weed by hand. It cut through the compact soil of the pathway without any difficulty at all. I was able to get all the weeds out of this 10ft section of pathway in less than half an hour without any fatigue, soreness or blisters. Hurray!

Down and Dirty

2009-08-22T22:10:00.002-05:00

I had read on a few blogs about the Picture This photo contest over at Gardening Gone Wild but had never thought to enter it until now. The theme for August’s Picture This Photo Contest is “Down on Your Knees” - a picture taken at knee level or lower. I LOVE those pictures! And I had the perfect subject out in the garden. So here is my first entry to Picture This:

GBBD August 2009

2009-08-15T00:48:00.001-05:00

When I went out in my garden for photos for this post, I was sure there would be none to find. I was wrong.

Perennials

I had a White Swan echinacea a few years ago that looked to have been taken over by its purple babies. Now, this year, I have three white cone flower plants!

I have no idea what this plant is. It was labeled "Blue Lake" veronica.

I planted over a dozen Stargazer lilies, and I am left with three.

I always liked the way that the "Goldsturm" and the dwarf liatris looked together.

Annuals

I got a few Zebrina malva plants from my parents a few years ago and they have been self seeding the same area ever since. I move them where I want them in the spring when they start popping up.

I didn't think that these Empress of India nasturtiums would ever bloom.

These touch-me-not volunteers are very welcome in my garden since they help combat the affects of the gas plant.

Catchfly, one of my favorite volunteers.

Rudbeckia hirta, another of my favorite volunteers.

And, finally! My black eyed peas are blooming!

Go see what other gardeners are doing on the 15th of August over at May Dreams Garden's Garden Blogger Bloom Day.

BTW- I am going out of town for a few days, but will catch up on your comments and all your blooms when I get back.

Vacuum Sealer

2009-08-02T00:06:00.003-05:00

Have you been looking for a low-cost vacuum sealer with a small footprint, that works? Go to The Obsessive Chef to see my new gadget review.

Buried Treasure?

2009-07-31T09:57:00.004-05:00

I was doing some much needed weeding this morning - and boy was it ever needed as I uncovered a whole plant that I didn't even realized was flowering!!

I'm not fan of the solid throats on daylilies, but all in all, I guess this one isn't so bad.

And I can't believe that it was blooming under all those weeds.

I bought it this spring thinking it was going to look like this. They don't even look similar! Maybe it grows into its color?

I thought it would be tall, so I planted it to the back of the border - it's short. There wasn't much truth in that tag!

The form of this lily is its true saving grace - it is beautifully compact. Just like I like them!

Food Gardening Update

2009-07-24T23:42:00.008-05:00

Those who follow my gardening escapades here know I have several large flower gardens, but I hardly ever talk about my food garden. This is the year of food gardening for me. I spend more time in my vegetable garden than all of my flower gardens combined. I have even taken up a vegetable garden in a friend's backyard down the street.

My first harvest of the year was June 22 from my strawberry patch. I use strawberries as a border plant in my main garden. These are Honoeye. They have great flavor, but aren't consistently sweet. When they are sweet, they are the best strawberry around for fresh eating. They are always great for preserves.

On June 24 I had my first major spinach (Bloomsdale), lettuce (speckled Romaine) and broccoli (Packman) harvest.

And the Early Girls were setting fruit.

By July 09 we built an extra raised bed and a squash trellis to get even more out of our vegetable garden space. As you can see, I pack a lot into a little space. Each of these beds is 4'x16' and are loaded with more plants than some would dare put in twice the space.

In the first - the Broccoli Bed: 4ft of curled vates kale, 8ft Bloomsdale spinach, 10ft mixed lettuce, 8 Packman broccoli, 10 mixed pepper plants, 4 Early Girl tomatoes, 4 mixed tomatoes, 2 spaghetti squash, 2 zucchini, 12 garlic, 16 Maxibel filet beans, 4 rutabaga, 40 sweet peas, and basil plants here and there.

In the second -the Garlic Bed: 3 yellow summer squash, 18 Maxibel filet beans, 12 rutabaga, 45 garlic, 8sqft of volunteer American Flag leeks, 6 mixed tomatoes, 24ft various peas, 16ft large leaf basil, 1 volunteer broccoli, 4 turnips, 1 sweet pepper, and some spinach sprinkled here and there.

In the third -the Squash Bed: 2 Triple Treat pumpkin, 2 Table Queen acorn squash, 2 buttercup, 2 butternut, 6 edamame, 16ft Detroit Red beets, 16ftblack-eyed peas, 10 sweet yellow onions, 10 rutabaga, 15 large leaf basil, 6 shallots, and tons of volunteer lamb's quarter (which not only are an edible weed, but are high in nutrients and are darn tasty!).

By packing in the plants I reduce space for weeds, cool the ground, and reduce water loss. I had a goal this year to have enough to bring some of each to our local food bank. I am definitely meeting that goal. It's not only great to have somewhere to go with all my extra, it's great to know that I am helping others.

July GBBD

2009-07-15T21:54:00.008-05:00

My garden usually looks like hell around this time of year and there's usually not much blooming, but amazingly it looks pretty good and there are tons of things blooming! There's a lot to look at, so I'll keep the words to a minimum.

"Lipstick" alpine strawberry

Balloon flower

Armeria (new to my garden this year)

"Red Shades" bee balm and mullein

native Blackeyed Susan

"Carefree" rose - truly is carefree

cutleaf sumac

"Montana" centaurea - seeds out well for naturalizing

"Prairie Sunset" heliopsis - prone to aphids, but a little soap water does the trick!

echinacea - planted these from seeds 10 years ago and they have been slowly taking over ever since!

"Eidelweiss"

"Elodie" double lily - they survived the move!

"Golden Queen" globeflower

"Gold Flame" honeysuckle

hoary vervain - native

"Italia" lily - These are one of my favorites! Fortunately they also are multiplying since I can no longer find them offered.

These were labeled as "Latvia" when I purchased them, however, after further research, they are not. So, if anyone out there has a clue as to what they might be, please let me know. They are very dark red on the petal exterior and a glowing red/orange on the inside. Very nice. Plus they have nice form and are very sturdy - no staking needed.

Common mullein - volunteer

"Molten Lava" lychnis

"Miss Wilmot" cinquefoil

"Pewter Moon" heurchera - still blooming since last GBBD!!

"Parker's Gold" achillea

pink catchfly - volunteer

"Queen of the Prairie"

red bee balm

Rattlesnake Master - native

"Zebrina" malva

"Zagreb" coreopsis

white rose campion

Volunteer sunflower - I planted sunflowers about 10 years ago and have never had to plant them since. Every year I just go around the garden and move the volunteered seedlings to where I want sunflowers.

Zucchini flower

Angelique lily - very scentastic!

Rudbeckia hirta - volunteer. I love these flowers and look forward to seeing them every year. They are biennials that re-seed moderately. I have about a dozen seedlings waiting their turn next year. I can't wait!!

Street-side view

patio view of main garden
(not every flower seen here is from this garden as I have four other major gardens in my yard).

Let's thank Carol at May Dreams Garden for creating and hosting Garden Blogger Bloom Day every month. It's fun and interesting to see what every one has blooming -- and sure makes shopping for new stuff easy! ;) So hit the GBBD link and find out what's going on.

BTW - I had started posting this on the 15, but due to some technical difficulties did not get it finished and live until the 19th.

New Inhabitants of Sylvana's Garden

2009-07-06T07:25:00.002-05:00

Teak, Wicker, & More Inital Review

2009-06-24T23:19:00.007-05:00

The table from teakwickerandmore.com came very quickly. I got it last Thursday; a mere 9 days after I was told that it was ordered for shipping. The industry standard for this type of product is 7-10 business days, so this arrived on an average schedule. The box was a little banged up, but the product did not appear to have suffered too much from it (see below).

The item was just as they had described on their site. I appreciate that greatly, especially with an online shop since you don't get a chance to "kick the tires" before purchasing.

Of course it was "some assembly required". I don't have a problem with that at all since I am quite comfortable with tools, and had all the right tools for the job. I used a ratchet set; you could get by with a Vicegrip or some other adjustable wrench.

It was little banged up (possibly from the shipping), but all on the under-carriage. I sprayed the back of the table with a little black Rustoleum that I always keep on hand for my garden accessories. The back of the table is made of what looks like non-treated plywood, but I don't see that as a problem since it is protected from weather by being on the underside. There was a little stray caulking set into the sealant that they use to coat the table top, but it wasn't that noticeable, and if it doesn't bother me -- Miss Obsessive-Compulsive -- most people probably wouldn't even notice. It is hidden well by the natural texture of the slate.

I didn't even need instructions this was so self explanatory. The cap nuts and bolts were attached to the table parts which made it really easy to inspect for any that might be missing -- they were all there - Yay!! It also makes it very clear how everything is intended to go together, and saves you from having to dig out some small baggy from the packaging box and trying to keep track of them all.

The table top took a little finagling to get all the bolts (which were attached to the underside of the table) into the holes into the top of the table legs. You might want a second person for this since the top is HEAVY!

It is the perfect table for this spot. The table appears to be sturdy and was tall enough for my regular sized chairs. The size can accommodate 4 people for just drinks, 3 people with light snacks, or 2 people for dinner.

The look of the table with its natural slate top and black iron frame goes with just about anything. I especially liked that the legs were scooped, matching well with the feminine style of my other garden accessories. The slate was a beautiful mix of earthtones and I really like the particular pattern that they installed it on the top. It is reminiscent of a spiral, which is perfect for my garden!

If I had found this table while on my recent store searches for a table for this area, I would have snapped this one up -- even at the $86.99 price tag! And they offer FREE SHIPPING on this! Wow!

My initial recommendation: I would suggest checking out Teak, Wicker & More. I know that I will be surfing their site for other wishlist items! Good deals on high quality, stylish items with accurate descriptions. Can't beat that.

New Additions

2009-06-18T08:49:00.003-05:00

Since I had to go all the way into the Twin Cities yesterday for a work related seminar I decided that I would stop at Gertens to look for non-invasive ground covers and came home with these beauties. Disclaimer - not all are ground covers.

Sagina subilata - Irish moss
Sedum spurium - fireglow sedum "Fuldaglut"
Sedum hispanicium - "Purple Form"
Geranium cinereum - "Purple Pillow"
Iris sibirica - "Pink Haze"
and last, but definitely not least...
Lavandula augustifolia - "Lavance Purple"

Can you tell I like purples? That iris is not pink, it's purple. I was going to show a picture of its wonderful bloom, but it was spent by this morning. There is another on the way though!

The lavender is tagged as northern grown and zone 4. We will see. I bought two so that I could try out a couple of different sites. Wish me luck -- and give me any advice you may have on them!

The geranium is similar to Ballerina, but the flowers are a rich reddish-purple.

The Irish moss is for my husband. He loves moss and it was on his wishlist.

Another one on his wishlist was that tiny leafed sedum, Purple Form. The university has it all over their native garden (mostly natives, some non-native) as ground cover and we love it.

The other sedum is just so perky! I love its form and color combo. I can't wait for this to multiply so I can spread it everywhere!

OMG, 1st GBBD!

2009-06-15T22:43:00.013-05:00

So finally all vanillaed up, I made it back outside to get some pics for my first GBBD ever (well, actually I was already going to get bloom pics and decided, why not link and share - right? Say thanks to Carol at May Dreams Gardens).

My favorite hardy geranium: Ballerina. It was a tough one to get started, but well worth it! I discovered in my garden, it likes to snuggle in the sun. Plant in sun but tuck it in with other plants so it won't feel so exposed.
My second favorite geraniums, because they are FREE! These came into my garden on their own and have been busy setting up their friends and family. They are pretty and polite, so I don't mind.

New this year to my garden: Dream Queen hosta.

Isn't she dreamy?

My first delphinium of the year. Not sure of the variety, most likely Magic Fountains. This one is four years old.

Thimbleweed in the rain garden. They are getting nice and bunchy.

Bleeding hearts, and not-so-bleeding hearts.

Blue Ravine clematis. Not as nice as the first one I had, that met an unfortunate accident, but lovely all the same.
The absolute best picture I could get of Pewter Moon heuchera. I only have two, but I want more!
Red Prince weigela and cerastium tomentosum. I love this cerastium tomentosum and creeping thyme together.

I planted these peach poppies from seed years ago. What's that? They aren't peach? Yep, because this is what happens to all my color varieties of poppies - back to orange after a couple of years. But I love them anyway!

Hardy dianthus. It came in a big pack from Home Depot years ago. I thought it was an annual but needed the color and it was 50% off! It has never disappointed with its blooms and has since multiplied!

Anthemis marschallianna. I got it from Shopko years ago and haven't seen it offered since, anywhere. I have tried to divide it, but it is a fussy little bugger. As long as I leave it alone, it does fantastic and has been mounding up nicely.

FINALLY A PEONY! And unfortunately I don't know the variety. I thought it was Sarah Bernhardt, but it's not a soft enough pink. Maybe someday I will find that tag!

These daisies were some of very first plants I bought when I started my garden over 10 years ago. I bought twenty, three survived. I love the way they look against the golden barberry.

Speaking of daisies, lets not forget the backbone of my garden: the humble oxeye daisy. They volunteered their services almost immediately and have not let me down in all this time. Thank you daisies!

Oh, Gnats!

2009-06-15T09:03:00.004-05:00

I have a HUGE gnat problem! Well, the gnats aren't huge, there's just a lot of them and they all love me, or hate me -- however you want to look at it; they are all over me! I was out in the garden today trying to get a few pictures of what is blooming and they would not leave me alone! They were in my ears and hair, up my pant legs, shirt sleeves and even in my shirt! They leave big itchy welts and sometimes when they bite it feels like a tiny bear trap! UGH!!

I gave up and retreated to the house. But being the obsessive gardener that I am, I did not let it go. I hate using insect repellent because it it stings my skin, is sticky, smells bad and sometimes gets onto my lips or in my eyes - yuck! So, Google to the rescue!

In 30 seconds I found my answer - vanilla! Apparently gnats don't like it, and I have some so why not give it a try? I took about 1/8 a teaspoon real vanilla extract and rubbed it onto my neck, ears and forehead, grabbed the camera and went back outside. I was outside for the same amount of time I had been before - no gnats! And bonus, I smell like a cookie!

Heavy Duty Squash Trellis

2009-06-13T15:32:00.017-05:00

I have grown squash for the last few years and usually just let it ramble into the pathway around my veggie garden. This year I decided that not only would I get all that squash vine out of the paths so I could get around, but that I would also block out some of the not-so-scenic alley with one project. I searched the internet for squash trellis plans. Most involved making two simple wooden ladders and leaning them together. Hmm.. not exactly what I was looking for. First, it doesn't take up as small a footprint as I was hoping for, second, it just didn't seem tall enough. I decided that I would have to come up with something on my own.

I already had a bunch of lumber I had bought for another project years ago that I never got to, so I decided that I would make use of that. They were treated 2x4 in 8'+ lengths. I figured that I could make posts out of them and use some pound-in post holders that I had seen for $15 each. For a 16' span I figured that I would need 3 posts.

For the area between the posts I picked up a 16' 4g galvanized fence panel. I almost bought one for $28, but as I was picking it up, the warehouse guys asked if it needed to be pretty. I said not too pretty, why? Well, they had a stack by the dumpster that the manager was letting go cheap. I got the whole panel for $11! And you can't even really tell what was wrong with it! I had intended to leave it the full 16' span, but we had to cut it in half with some bolt cutters so it would fit in our friend's truck.

The various tools that we used: small and large sledge hammer, long level, quick clamps, crowbar, chunk of 4x4, ratchet wrench set, screwdriver, drill driver w/bits, chop saw, tape measure, and bolt cutters.

The post holders were a little tricky to install. You have to pound them in using a chunk of 4x4 and a sledge hammer. We learned that you should hammer a little, lightly and then check for level and repeat often. Don't try to get these in too quick, or hammer too hard, or your posts will be cockeyed and the fence will look terrible! We figured how far apart to put them in by installing one post holder, putting in the post, attaching the metal panel then setting up the next post where the end of the panel landed. This worked better than trying to measure out everything. We know because that was what the crowbar was for -- pulling the post holders back out to try again! And that is why you should not hammer the post holder flush to hard ground. I left ours up about 3" and back filled with compost which made them very easy to get out when we screwed up the first placement.

Also, to get the post centered where you want it, flip the holder upside down and press the square opening into the dirt to leave an impression. Then flip it right-side up and push the spike into the center of the square.

And don't forget-- before you pound these in, call digger's hotline! They were out in just a couple of days and marked all incoming lines so I was sure I wasn't going to blow up the block spiking a post holder through the gas line.

Since we were using 2x4s and the post holders were made for 4x4s, we had to make up the difference with filler. We were very lucky to find these treated lath pieces, a huge bundle for $3! I dug through the whole pile of bundles to find the bundle with the most 5/16" pieces. (2x4 are actually 1-1/2x3-3/4, go figure)

Here are all three posts in place. We added the height of the fence panel, the depth of the post holder's post holding square, and added a couple of inches to it for good measure (to add post toppers if we wanted!) to figure out how long to cut the lumber.

We were asked by our friend who picked up the fence panels for us why we didn't just save ourselves the hassle and use 4x4s. Well, not only did we already have this lumber, but the space left between the boards gave us a way to attach the fence panel.

We put the panels between the boards and ran a 4" bolt through holes we drilled in the boards at measured intervals so that we would be between rungs in the fence and not hit them. The bolts go through the end squares in the panels. By going through the squares, the panel will not fall out as the edges of the panel will hold it in place. The middle post has two ends of the panels which we overlapped to be sure that the bolt went through both panels' squares. We attached a locking nut to the other side of each bolt to cinch the boards together.

Here is the before (OK, yeah you can see the post holders already in place, but you get the idea)

And here is the after! The squash is planted and now we just have to wait for the screening magic to begin.

The whole project cost us around $65. The lumber will cost you extra - unless you too have a big pile of treated 2x4s just laying around. And the fence panel will cost you extra too - unless you get lucky as well. You can get a non-gradated panel for $21.

This will be fairly easy to dis-assemble (we know because we already had to do that once) and store or move. Once we had all the materials it took us just a couple hours to cut and drill all the pieces and install the post holders. An easy project even for you non-carpenters.

UPDATE: October 2009 - This project worked out great! I did try to hammock the squash in nylons, but it turns out that all the squash was strong enough to hang except the pumpkin (and they apparently are a little claustrophobic so no-go on the hammock for them). The squash plants, overall, took up about 3-4sqft of ground space each - not bad for squash! It was a bad year for squash, but I still got 2 butternut, 3 buttercup, and 7 acorn squash! The pumpkins did not care for this set-up, but, luckily, I thought ahead and had planted a huge bed at my friend's house yielding me enough pumpkins for the season! One tip though, install a short fence between your squash and the rest of the bed to contain strangling vines (I used a cheap, but sort of strong, push-in fence).

Opportunity Knocks

2009-06-06T12:42:00.007-05:00

I got an email a while back offering me an exciting opportunity. Normally I just send these to the spam pile, but this one did refer to trying out and reviewing garden accessories, so what the hey, why not check it out? I went to their site, Teak, Wicker & More, to check out their products and I was very impressed with the style and the prices!

I spent some time seeing if there was anything that I might want to try out. I had considered the cold frames, but the one that I really wanted wasn't available until late June. Not to say that I wasn't drooling over some of the other marvelous greenhouses that they had available, but most of those were either not the right size or were out of my try-out price range.

Then I remembered that I had just finished the floor in the gazebo and it really was needing a nice table to have coffee in the morning, right? I had been looking at the local stores for a good bistro set that went with my garden style and wasn't having any luck. Maybe TW&M would have what I was looking for. And guess what; a quick search in their outdoor furniture section led me to a nice find: a round slate table (frequent visitors must know by now how I like curves and natural material)!

So here's the deal, I have never gotten anything from this supplier before, and maybe you haven't either. Once I get the table, I will post pictures and write a review of the service that I received and the quality of the product - and you know how opinionated I am, so you are guaranteed a good, honest review!

Hoop House Heaven

2009-06-06T10:55:00.008-05:00

PrimRozie has got me all obsessed about hoop houses. We are finally getting some much needed rain (just in time since yesterday my husband and I put the corn gluten fertilizer on the lawn and our dogs have been fussing about going out to eat it!!), so instead of spending the morning in my garden, I have been scouring the web for info on hoop houses. They seem very simple and I have been wanting to build one. This year it might just happen now that I have both raised beds built - now I can just put the hoop house right over both of them and have a path down the middle!

Most of the designs that I found were pretty similar. And being the Scot/German that I am, I immediately was thinking of ways to improve the design and make the plans more efficient. It took me about an hour for my epiphany - instead of building a spine to keep the PVC poles in place, why not sew a spine? The tent I bring camping doesn't use a separate spine, the poles feed through tunnels sewn into the tent to keep them where they are supposed to be and they themselves are the spine. Why not do the same for the hoop house, 'cause what is a hoop house but a tent, right? And I not only sew, but I still have a spool of plastic thread from when I made a bunch of tomato cage covers (mini green houses! If I make them again, I will post the plans - VERY EASY; even for non-sewers).

Here are the most interesting hoop house sites I found:

How to Build a PVC Hoophouse for your Garden at The Westside Gardener
This has great pictures and walks you through the entire process, including a materials and tools list! (the website needs some attention, but it is still very informative).

Home Sweet Hoophouse or How to Change Gardening Zones without Leaving Your Own Backyard at Kitchen Gardeners International.
This article had great pictures showing people actually putting one together. Not much in the way of a step by step, but does offer some advice for fortifying based on use experience.

Hoop House I from the Utah State University Extension
A fantastic video (41min) about the university's trials with their hoop houses. It gives a fairly thorough explanation about the structures they have built as well as the potential uses for the structures. I took the most notes from this video. Good stuff!

AND once your done watching that video, check out some of the other similar videos YouTube suggests! Larks Hoop House is quick and descriptive - but as a disclaimer, that accent sounds more Minnesotan than Wisconsin!

[and just as a cool find I found this. Science geeks and off-the-grid dreamers will LOVE this!!]

I've been taking notes and making drawings all morning. Hopefully I will be able to get one built this summer for use this fall. I can't wait!

Garden Project - Raised Veggie Bed

2009-05-31T20:20:00.015-05:00

I promised you fine readers years ago that I would cover how I build my raised veggie beds. Well, I finally got around to making a second one a few weeks ago, so now I have pictures to show!
MATERIALS: 15 3x4 8' long ACQ treated landscaping timbers (they have the corners rounded; use 3x6 if you want a larger seating area - do not ever use railroad ties for edible gardens!) and 20+ 2' long rebar rods (these are hard to find - you could use 3' or 4' or get longer pieces and cut them down - a pain in the patootie). Total cost: just under $84.

TOOLS: Tape measure, chop/miter saw, long level, wood boring bit a little smaller in diameter than the rebar, hammer drill, sledge hammer, flat shovel.

Here is the bed I started two years ago. See my awesome patch of garlic? The rest is pretty much weeds except for some volunteer leeks from last year's leeks. I had laid down treated boards (leveled, of course) then stacked bricks on top. It worked pretty well, but I wanted something more stable and permanent.

My son and I tore down the old and replaced with the new as we worked our way around the bed. I was moving this bed a little on the garlic end to make it parallel to the raised bed next to it (my bad from two years ago when I laid the second bed cockeyed in haste to plant ;)

Make sure that you carefully level the first layer as the whole bed is dependent on this layer. I leveled it all the way around as well as leveling it to the other bed.

I made 4' x 16' beds since the lumber is 8' long and you shouldn't have beds more than 4' wide to be able to reach all parts of it from the edges. For the ends, I just chopped 3 pieces of the lumber in half. For the sides, I wanted to alternate for strength, so I start with 2 full pieces end to end, cut a piece of lumber for the next layer so that I have one full piece in the middle and two half pieces on each end of it, then the last layer is back to two full pieces.

Now here's where the 20+ on the rebar comes in. There are two ways to tackle the attachment - you can either drive in rebar after the second layer and then again for the top layer or wait until the top layer to do it all in one. I did rebar as I went along, but in hindsight, I would get all the lumber laid out and do it all in one to save the hassle and money on rebar.

Where ever there is a joint, drill a hole to either side of the joint and drive a rebar through. Our drill bit was only long enough to go through two boards, so on the top layer, I drilled through the top and middle layer, pulled the top board off and finished drilling the hole all the way through the middle and bottom. Do not attach any rebar until you have all the holes for one piece of lumber all the way drilled through all three pieces!

Here is my helper with the finished product. As you can see, we alternated all the lumber, even the corners. This adds strength and stability. These corners will not pull apart. That bed next to it is over 8 years old; all the lumber is still where I originally put it.

Now it is just a matter of finishing off the bed with some compost and we are ready to plant!

I actually have already finished that part too. I have even gotten both of these beds fully planted: 14 tomato plants, 8 Packman broccoli, 12 pepper plants (orange sweet, red sweet, yellow sweet, jalepeno), 3 Fordhook straight neck summer squash, 2 Black Beauty zucchini, 1 spaghetti squash, all that garlic, an equal size block of American Flag leeks, two 8' rows of mixed lettuce, a 2' row of more garlic, a 4' square of Maxibel green beans, a 2' row of Vates kale, eight 4' rows of various peas, and Bloomsdale spinach and Mammoth basil everywhere!! Yay for me!