Ok Let's Start Over

  Ok so hopefully this year I will be able to put more work into my garden this year my baby is walking now and not confined to a stroller. So here's to a new year and an awesome garden. My goal this year is to be able to really learn as much as I can. It seems to me that our food prices are in for a drastic increase, yikes scary. So our theme this year is you better learn how to grow it now and grow it well before you're forced to because it's so expensive that you can't really afford to buy it. Food storage is going to be a main focus for us this year and part of that will include canning our fresh crops.  So were doubling up on alot of our plants and were trying lots of new things.

   Here's a couple of picture's of the seeds we have started. I started about 50 lettuces today and we'll  start 20 next week so we can have a a good continually suply of lettuce.

And here are our two week old broccoli and onions.

   I'm going to try and write every week about our progress but these first few weeks not much goes on so it might not be necessary. I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas so please feel free to leave comments
Happy Gardening

Summer Gardening

Well the summer garden crop is in full swing. I finally pulled out the cold weather veggies that were starting to die off. Gardening is a family activity my three year old loves to help us water and my baby kind of has to go where I go so we spend a little time each night out in the garden. Here are the most recent pic's.

Here are our Tomatoes which are growing fabulously they even have some little green tomatoes starting and in the middle Beans they haven't gotten real tall yet but we made a 'bug off' tonic from the Jerry Baker book and it worked great. Last year the  bug decimated them before they even got their second pair of leaves.

Here is my daughter next to the broccoli plants I pulled out. Broccoli gets really big so make sure you have plenty of room if your going to grow it.

Here is my son he's just cute out here watching us garden.

This is our potatoes and corn. We started the corn really late because we had weird weather in May/early June so I doubt that the corn will amount to any thing much but our potatoes are doing great.  

The artichokes are still small so I don't think we'll get anything from them this season. I'm hoping that they are growing a big strong root system for a harvest next year. Cross my fingers!

We just planted the pumpkins a few weeks ago but they're doing awesome. Hopefully come October we'll have some good jack-o-lantern sized pumpkins

Here's the first ripe raspberry's I've seen so hopefully freezer jam isn't to far off. 

The summer heat has come.

So the time of year has arrived where I have to force myself to go outside. Unlike most of the population I hate the sun. Well really I hate the heat of the summer sun. I think I actually get seasonal depression in the summer but the one thing that makes it worth it is my garden. Sure I wait until the sun is mostly down until I go out and check on it but I find myself actually hoping it stays sunny so my tomato's, peppers, and watermelon will grow. I digress lets get to the good part, the photos.

Speaking of the summer heat it has made our broccoli bolt. It started to flower but we have four smaller heads forming well see how that goes.

Our baby corn have just started sprouting. We never had a good weekend in May to get them in the ground. Who knows if they'll get big enough but I don't really like corn so I'm not sure I care.

Here are our yummy snap peas so tasty!

My husband created a metal frame so we could use some black netting to keep the birds out of our berries.

Finally our artichokes have started to look like the evil plant they're suppose to. I doubt that we'll get any artichokes this year but I hope they get a real strong root system going this year so we can have a good crop next year.

And finally we have our new baby pumpkin plants. My husband decided to plant one of those huge varieties of pumpkins this year so we'll see what we get.

Just a quick update

I don't have tons of time this week so it's going to be short and sweet. Things are going great it's finally starting to get really warm that's good for the garden. It also means my favorite veg/fruit can start getting bigger. Tomato's yum! I know were far away from harvest time but i can't wait. Their pretty much the only reason I don't completely detest the summer. My husband keeps telling me that the garden can't grow if I block out the sun, nuts, cause I'd sure like to try. Anyway on to the veg pic's.

We had our first harvest today we pulled the Butter crunch up and had it with our tacos it was yummy.

The strawberries have started to form still not ready to eat yet obviously, but there growing.

The peas have really take off this week I just hope they get big enough before the heat kills them off.

Our beans are growing great but just like last year they are being eaten alive. We tried a Jerry Baker, Bug Off Tonic so we'll see if that will hold off the bugs. We might have to try something a bit stronger.

Broccoli is doing good as well it has really shot up this last week but it is another veggie that I hope will produce before it gets to hot we'll see.

We planted our peppers this week a little late but it was necessary they look awesome so hopefully we'll get some nice peppers this year.

"Frost Free Date,What's That?"

So we had a slight problem this week. A snow storm hit our neck of the woods, can you believe it. I mean hello it's the end of May. I was so annoyed but there is a good lesson to be learned here. Just because the seed packets say you should plant your little baby plants outside at a certian date doesn't mean you should follow it blindly. Luckily I decided it had been to cold to plant my melons and peppers outside this week so I waited. If I had followed the recommendations I would have lost all my melons and peppers. It makes me wonder what people did when you couldn't just run to the grocery store for food. How devastating would it be to loose your crops to frost when that was the main way you feed your family. Or the farmers in this country who depend on there crops to sell so they can feed their families. Yikes that would really be bad to lose everything, luckily I don't live in that time or in that situation all I lost was three tomatoes plants which I had replacements for. Everything else seems to have come through the storm ok, it think. Here quick update.

First here are our butter crunch lettuce you can totally see the difference between the robust heads we started from seed vs. the one start we bought from the store, way different.
Next we have our Broccoli it's doing fairly well. I expected it to be a little bigger but maybe it didn't like the lack of sun we've had from our really rainy/snowy May. I guess we'll see what happens.
Then we have the peas. I also expected these cold weather veggies to be bigger but so far no huge growth.
Our potatoes are doing awesome we've already had to bury them twice and here they are again poking through. Lookin' forward to some good red potato salad. Yummy.
The chives are doing very well here they are in full bloom they're pretty and they smell so good when we cut them and put them on baked potatoes or eggs. They will take a year to look like this. We planted these last year from seed.
We do have a box of raspberries which isn't really recommended because raspberries grow more in a thicket and can't really be contained within a box. You can see right in front of this box that there is a little raspberry shoot trying to grow "outside the box". I have a feeling that I'm fighting a battle I can't win, trying to keep the raspberries inside the box.

Frost Free Date Is Here

So we made it to our frost free date, here is where the gardening activity really takes off. Hopefully we will have lots to show you in the coming weeks so I'm super excited. It has been very wet and a little cold this may so I'm hoping that our tomatoes will be fine when we plant them outside. The tomato seeds we started look awesome and we have tons of extras. Maybe we'll sell them. You can see above the tomatoes ready to be planted. They look a little small compared to the plants you might see in you neighborhood stores but here's the difference; the seed started ones have been growing exactly the right amount of for my frost date so when they go out they will be more than ready to spread their roots and grow grow grow. The store bought plants have likely been sitting in their pots for far too long and they think that their pot is all the room there ever going to get so when you put them in your garden they will grow a little but the will never be as hardy or produce as much as the seeds you start yourself. Plus I think it's important to learn to start your seed on your own there may come a time when no one is starting seeds and selling them in the store or it's so expensive to buy them you have to do it yourself and anyways it's really it's fun to watch it sprout and grow. Ok enough of that let talk about the other plants that went outside. Here is another example of why it's better to start your own seeds. On the left we have lettuce that we bought from the store because I got nervous about the lettuce seeds we started ourselves. On the right our lettuce. It's hard to detect from this picture but our lettuce is much heartier. It has already started to form the beginings of a head and it's a much healthier shade of green. When we planted them they looked pitiful if you check out our week 16 post you'll see what I mean. I should have trusted myself and just let my little starts do their thing.

Next we have our peas they are in the middle of the box their a little smaller then I would like because I think I planted them to deep and have had a colder may then usual. We'll see what they do I hope to get a small crop before it gets too warm.

Next we have the peppers they are looking great. They don't go out for another couple of weeks but the are growing fabulously and I think we'll get a good pepper crop this year.

We have our melon starts. We've got a honeydew it's our first time growing this one. We've got a red, a yellow, and a green flesh watermelon, I'm hoping to make a cool fruit salad with all three colors. And we also have a tiger melon. We bought this from an heirloom seed catalog and we're not sure what to expect from them so we'll see what happens. Mostly things are going great maybe a bit slow because of the cold weather but no casualties yet. Hooray!

Week 16

How time flys. So far I'm not real good with the weekly blogging but I hope to get back on track. It's been crazy we've had ear infections, a trip to Disneyland, and a condo that needs renting. Whew sometimes life is too stressful. Now that thing seem to be settling down (crossing my fingers) I want to get back to the gardens progression.

Here's a quick recap of the things that got done but not blogged about. Back in march we started our tomato's, peppers, and spinach they are all doing quite well. The peppers have taken the longest to sprout but have finally all sprouted. The spinach is looking good were doing an experiment this year with our spinach because there are some mixed opinions about whether or not you should start your spinach inside so were trying both ways to see which is more successful. Our tomatoes are doing awesome. We just thinned out the baby tomato plants and for some reason that always hurts my heart but after we did the remaining plants started to take off so I guess it's good we did.

At the top of this picture you can see the tomatoes. Then below are the peppers and spinach starts.

This last Saturday was spent getting our boxes back in order after a long winter. Very little weeding was needed, just the way I like it. Gardening is so fun when it's not back breaking work. We added a few new boxes this year the biggest addition will be a 12 inch deep 4x4 for potatoes and carrots. Were a little late on plants a few things due to some spring snow storms that messed up the planting calender. This week we transplanted artichokes, broccoli, lettuce, onions, and planted peas.

First we have here our artichoke plants they are planted in a 2x2 box one to each box. we have six plants that made it out of ten seeds we started. Not to bad considering the poor germination rate of artichokes.

Next we have out lettuce. It looks really sad I'm not sure if there going to make it so we might just start some seeds next week just in case.

Then finally we have our broccoli. This is the first time I've tried broccoli so we'll see how they turn out. They look really good to me but as a first timer I'm not really sure what to think yet.

I don't have picture of the peas because those you start as seeds and they don't look like anything yet. I'm excited this year, were trying a lot of new things this and as some one who doesn't really like the summer this gives me something to look forward to when the summer heat kicks in.