Homemaking Organized Blog

Archive for the ‘Gardening’ Category

I’ve been sorely neglecting cleaning the home. I prefer to clean a little each day as opposed to an all out cleaning in the Spring and Fall. This method helps me keep up with the home better and if I miss a day or two it doesn’t matter because the room gets touched up every several weeks.

I’m starting out in the dining room because it’s annoying me. I started with decluttering. Then moved on to cleaning overhead light fixtures. I’ll dust the ceiling today (I know I should have done that first) and then move on from there.

Trays of Plant Starts (Photo credit: OSU Master Gardener)

I put out my plant starts this week to start hardening them off. I have sweet potatoes, peppers, and basil (should I have started that from seed outside). That’s nothing to my friends 25 plants of Swiss Chard. I’m so jealous! I’ll also train the peas up the trellis and…make some calcium tea from egg shells.

That’s it for my procrastinating.

How about you? Visit New Nostalgia for more anti-procrastination posts.

Red onions (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m still dealing with onions in my little garden here. The weather has warmed up enough to get most things, except the sun loving, out in the garden.

Last year I decided I wanted to do lots of onions. We use them all the time, in various forms and who doesn’t love fresh onions? Okay Sweet Peanut is not fond of them. But she’s seven.

So first off my Potato or Multiplier onions are just starting to sprout (took a long time if you ask me). I had originally ordered Egyptian Walking Onions but Territorial Seed Co. had a bad batch and sent me the Multiplier onions instead.  I was okay with that because perennial onions just sound great altogether so I planted those in a pot last fall and they are sprouting now. Do I need to fertilize these? Anyway if you’re wondering what these are here is some more about perennial onions.

Second I ordered some Red Candy Apple and RedWing onions from dixondalefarms. I followed their growing directions for as much as could go into my two raised beds (onions only) and the rest I’ve stuffed into pots until I can get the into more pots. You get so many onions! My goodness!

Finally I’ve learned how to grow scallions from sprouting onions and I might try that for some fresh green stuff while my other onions are growing.

My husband thought I was kidding when I kept telling him I was out of room and had more onions to put somewhere. Then he saw my stuffed pot.

I feel like onions are one of the easiest kitchen goodies to grow and used so much it’s worth it to grow what you can.

Whew!

Don’t worry I also have carrots, swiss chard, peas, potatos, tomatoes (coming), melon, watermelon, lettuce, kale and peppers growing in pots. A few herbs too but I kind of ignore them until Thanksgiving.

Oh and celery but that’s another story.

Happy Gardening

Well Spring is officially here and even though I can see snow in them thar’ yonder hills, I planted some spring veggies anyway.

We got started with our onion starts (nothin’ but red this year!), some swiss chard, carrots (purple) and peas. And I’m being very lazy with the tomatoes. Instead of starting my plants from seed this year I ordered some starts. I’m so lazy I want the company to just ship them when it’s time to plant them. Yawn! Tomatoes give me such a headache every year.

I have some potato multipier onions (which I’ve never before grown) that have been out in the garden since last fall. If you don’t know what these are they are perennial onions which produce multiple heads that you can harvest and then replant in the fall.

They tend to be mild in flavor and the size you get can depend upon the size you plant (so I’ve heard). Apparently there are various varieties but the only ones I’ve found to buy are the yellow.

Originally I had ordered the Egyptian Walking Onion. This is also a perennial onion but the new bulbs set on the top of the greenery as opposed to underground. Last year Territorial Seed was unable to get any from their supplier so they sent me these instead. I wasn’t that happy so I just planted them in one of my Garden Patch pots and forgot about them… until now when gardening season is upon us. Now I’m blowing them kisses and so excited to see what they do down there.

Here is some more information on how to grow Potato Multiplier Onions

I love onions. They make the dish so this is only right that I should have them constantly coming in. You know a nice, never ending supply. Fresh from the garden.

Next up I would like to try onions from seed.

Well fall is certainly in the air. We’ve had 40 degree weather in the AM around here. I wore a jacket to day {{{Gasp!!}}} and my mom has been turning on the heat…but that’s another issue.

This past Daddy day (what Peanut call’s daddy’s day off), after an early day in the homeschool room we headed out to pull down the tomato plants, cucumbers and beans and prepare for fall gardening. We piled up rich dirt in the yard and washed out pots for the next planting.

So what do we plant. Well I have my thoughts on Swiss Chard. I haven’t thought much beyond that. I’m supposed to be getting some Egyptian Walking Onions in the mail soon so I have to figure out where I want them to do their walking too.

But I digress because this is all about great link finds on the internet.

This week, in my search for what to do with my bunch of basil harvested when the tomato plants came down I landed upon this site called Life on the Balcony by Fern (I know another lady by the name of Fern too!). It’s a site all about container gardening in an apartment situation. While we’re not in an apartment we do container garden on a small balcony (neater, less buggy). Fern’s blog is award winning, offers practical tips to you can apply today (provided you have a few gardening implements on hand) and she is coming out with a small space container gardening book in 2012!!

So my Friday Link Love pick for the week is Life on the Balcony:

And some personal picks from the site are

• A great simple idea for growing some Kale at Life on the Balcony.
• 3 Ways to preserve your basil.(I picked number one)

So just in case you think I’ve been letting the blog go stale on purpose…

Image via Wikipedia

As the end of summer looms near (sorry to be so dramatic) I’m given to thoughts of what to plant for a fall/winter harvest.

I’m in Zone 8 BTW.

So far I’ve been thinking of.

Carrots (carrots don’t like me. I have to work on them)

Lettuce (I didn’t do that great with lettuce this year)

Swiss Chard (we’ve been really enjoying swiss chard this summer)

and my Egyptian Onions should be arriving soon.

The late summer start has me thinking I should wait a few more weeks before starting anything but I’ll be tilling the soil to prepare soon.

Image via Wikipedia

My lone garlic put out this funny curly looking flower/bulb thing this week and I wasn’t sure what to do with it. So in my internet browsing I discovered that this is a garlic scape and I can use it for cooking! So this week’s link up is to more information about garlic scapes, what are they and what to do with them.

Going to Seed: This was the most informative blog post on garlic scapes I found. How to identify what kind of garlic you have and the whole harvesting garlic process. Nice information.(there are two different links here).

Enjoy!

Related articles

• Tis the Season for Scapes (blissmati.com)
• Hello Summer! Garlic Scape Pesto (leeksoup.wordpress.com)

We went berry picking the other day. It was great.

There are so many farms in our area I have to work hard to keep from banging my head as to why we haven’t partaken before this.

It was a great outing for the Sweet Peanut. Something fun for our tiny family to do together and we worked together until the end.

We all picked, washed, and processed together.We picked 27 pounds total.

I made freezer jam, strawberry tarts and a berry pie (mixed berries).

We gave about about 8 pounds and froze the rest. They were very sweet which, you know, strawberries sometimes don’t live up to their name. But these were great!

Here are some pics.

Image via Wikipedia

I’m sorely behind in updating about what is going on in the garden. I’ll try to remedy that here.

What’s Growing

-strawberries, June bearing so the flowers are out

-peas, I started these babies in March but still no flowers

- swiss chard, a new one for me. Rainbow lights or something variety

- mini Bok Choi. I have a few of these already starting to go to flowers. We ate some last night.

- Lettuce.  I love lettuce so I have tons of kinds going. Pom pom is the only name I can remember. Both head and cut and come.

- Potatoes. Purple Viking. Growing well.  These are yummy. We also found a rogue potato plant in my Mother’s yard from last year and I’ve transplanted it to ours. It’s either Purple Viking or German Butterball

- Onions, red zepplin, walla wall, and some white one’s the name of which I’ve forgotten

- carrots,

- garlic, for fall harvest

- Tomatoes, Brandywine, Black from Tula and some Oregon variety

- cucumbers, pickling and I will plant the non-pickling ones on Friday

- Peppers, some sweet something or other.

-Herbs, basil, thyme, lemon thyme, oregano, chives, parsely (curled)

One would think we never need go to the grocery store again with all of this growing around but due to the fact that you have to take into account plant failures, pests, just a few plants in pots and raised beds, we really don’t have that much. But boy it is fun and rewarding!

Image via Wikipedia

It’s National Garden Month!

I have a love/hate relationship with gardening. Kind of like sewing. When it works I’m so happy and when it doesn’t I’m frustrated, irritated, disgusted and ready to give up.

I can never decide if gardening for me is a hobby. Something practical I do to feed my family a bit healthier.  A waste of money (I have had whole crops go south). Or a time honored skill I’m getting better at.

Sometimes I feel very clueless about it all. I do note that I am attempting to garden on a small porch and a very small plot of land in raised beds.

But it is a great activity I share with my mother and my daughter and also my father long distance (we discuss and share seeds). My husband and nephew pitch in when we need some muscle but mostly it’s we three women (my daughter after watching too many Little House on the Prairie videos insists she’s a woman) getting it done.

I have ideas of grandeur and what always works is what I was not working on. I hate spending money for garden implements but it’s necessary when you start from scratch AND garden in pots.

BUT

Gardening is so great. Here are the benefits I can remember. And I’m talking about vegetable gardening. I like flowers but I KNOW I would kill them.

1. Great easy low impact exercise. My retired mother was feeling very low energy and as if she could accomplish nothing until we started dragging her along on our gardening. Now her backyard is flourishing and she’s out there tapping her foot waiting for us to get going.
2. Fun learning tool for the little ones. While my daughter still doesn’t know the best time to pick strawberries she gets up close and personal with the bugs. She loves to just dig in the dirt and attempt to grow things. I give her seeds, her own little plot, and talk about what could happen if she would just be patient. She is also our resident rock collecter so we can make borders and such. She picks weeds too when they are specifically pointed out to her.
3. Fabulous way to supplement the dinner table and the freezer. If you can get to the point where you grow one or two veggies well it is so worth it. Pulling onions out of the freezer mid winter. Or tomato sauces. I’m guilty of being Jack of All Veggies and Master of Non. But last year we did so well with the lettuce and our onions were pretty good too even though it was a wet summer. Our tomatoes and strawberries suffered but I’m hoping that won’t be the case this year. I’m turning into the mindset that you can never have too many onions or lettuce (like soap) so that is what I have growing well out there.
4. Know what is going in your body. Much easier to grow organic veggies on a small scale. You can control pests with row cover and such instead of sprays.

Here are a few links for you for National Garden Month

• Start a small veggie garden in a pot with your children.
• Learn more about Edible Landscaping
• 7 Edible Plants That Look Great in the Garden