Homemaking Organized Blog

Archive for the ‘Gardening’ Category

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…

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.

 

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.

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!

 

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

I’ve been avoiding blogging because when I went to add my linky over at 5 Minutes for Mom I neglected to link directly to my UBP11 post and instead just linked to the whole blog….oh well.

Okay so here is my UBP11 post and then read on…

Right now I want to talk about Pea Trellises.

You know peas need to climb and there are so many things they can climb it might be hard to make a decision. I browsed around the internet and such and my mom drew up some plans (which she promptly signed as works of art so I didn’t take them from her.) So we used her plans and then I had my helpful nephew hack (that is my word for them) a simple frame to place over my pots.

I’ll take a picture one day. I’m too tired right now from all that fresh air.

I’ve never grown peas before. I’ve always wanted to. I’m growing 10 plants in a pot (is that too many). I have a Garden Patch pot. Wish me well.

You can get some ideas from these two videos.

I’m in the throes of planning our spring veggie garden so when offered the opportunity to review GroOrganic‘s online garden planner I jumped at it.

Truthfully I was getting overwhelmed with all the details I had going on about specific plants, when to grow, where to grow, how much can I grow etc.

This year (as every year) I aim to get as much as I can out of our little backyard and patio (yes I container garden). I’ve been trying to pinpoint which varieties will do best in our Northwest climate. What didn’t work the last couple of years (last year was very wet). And did I want to try something new.

So far I’ve been using the GroOrganic planner to pinpoint where and how much of an item I’m going to plant. And also reviewing the tips for planting in my area (did I mention it has you put in your zip code so it can give you specific advice for your area?)

Measure your space and go in there placing veggies. It’s ingenious! It knows how much of each type of plant can go in the designated spot.

1. Start off by watching the videos.
2. Then set your planting region so the planner knows what information you need.
3. Then start drawing your planting space. As you draw the various shapes of your planting beds, containers, what have you, the size shows up which is important in knowing how much of something you can plant.
4. Once you’re done with your design you start adding veggies to your areas. There is information about each plant. When you’re done adding your plants you can go to the plant list which will give your growing information such as the spacing each plant needs and how long during which months are best to grow it (ingenious!).

The planner is also customizable in case you want to devise your own growing seasons for some special plants or some such.

Right now I’m messing with the succession planting features because that is what I plan on doing (sort of). I’m discovering some of the things I was planning to do may not work out and I have to rethink my planting plan.

These are the features of the GroOrganics Online Planner

• Growing information: Just click for full details of how to grow each plant, where to position them, etc.
• Number of Plants: Clearly shown by the number at the top of each plant square
• Personalized Planting Chart: You get a chart showing when each plant will be planted and harvested. Our advanced system works out the dates for your own area.
• Reminder Emails: You can have emails sent reminding you what needs planting in your garden (optional)
• Easy Crop Rotation: The Garden Planner remembers each year’s crops and advises where to place them next year
• Succession Planting: See which crops will follow others and view your plan for each month of the year
• Add Notes: Like a garden journal you can add notes on how each plant did
• Intuitive Use: Works just like software you are familiar with, including features such as copy and paste
• Tutorial Videos: Quick built-in videos show you just what you need to know to get the most out of the software

There are two membership plans for GroOrganic‘s online planner

The Seedling Membership is $39 a year and gives you…
access to the Online Garden Planner

The Premium Membership is $99 a year and gives you…
access to the Online Garden Planner and…
12 packets of non-GMO seeds per year (as you renew)
An Instruction Manual
Members only discounts and gifts
and a free online review of your garden plans

I am thoroughly enjoying the planning and tips for my garden adventures this year. I have to say truly this did help me get organized and ready to get going. So I’ve started some lettuce and cabbage and in the next few weeks I’ll be outdoors planting peas, carrots, and onions. Woo hoo!

Note: I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commissions 16 CFR, Part 255 Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising. Tomoson Product review & giveaway Disclosure.

It’s time to start thinking about gardening again. My mom and I sat down with catalogs and paper yesterday to figure out what we’ll be doing.

She’s got some plans to grow a bit of fruit and I’m going to streamline my veggies.

I’ll have to get her list from her but for me this is how it’s looking…

Spring

• Lettuce
• Onions
• Carrots
• Cabbage (maybe)

Summer

• Tomatoes
• Potatoes
• Peppers
• Cucumbers

Well that’s it for now.