Garden is growing!

Our garden is growing! We've had luck with just about everything - well after I killed almost all of the tomato seedlings.... Thank goodness for awesome neighbors/ friends/family who provided their extremely successful tomato plants to help subsidize ours. Of course a lot of our seeds/plants came from Gurney's and Seed Savers too! We've planted tomatoes, bell peppers large and small, egg plant, cauliflower, broccoli, okra, Brussels sprouts, carrots, radishes, beets, Bok Choi, kale, squash, about 6 types of cucumbers, jalapenos, sugar snaps, snow peas, green beans and sweet corn. We will DEFINITELY be planning a harvest party sometime late summer/early spring. Hope you're hungry!

 2000 sq. ft.

 Green Beans - the ones not eaten by deer.

 Sugar snaps!

 Apparently, all of these cucumbers want to live.

None shall pass....

Tomato Experts

Ok, so I've been reading up a lot on tomatoes and one site said the stems of tomatoes are weak because they are used to fighting natural winds. This blogger solves the problem by turning a light fan on a couple times a day for short intervals of wind. So I tried it. Anybody ever heard of this? Am I just merely using more energy to make the most beautiful $40 tomato ever? ;-)

The tomatoes are all doing really well. In fact, I planted 3 seeds per cup and had to pull out 2 in almost every single one. This will be an easy cost savings for next year.

These are Moonglow from Seed Savers. I'll have extras if anyone wants to plant some.

 

Another Highlight - Gurney's Hybrid Zephyr  Squash. It seems to be really happy inside. 

 

Now if it would just stop raining long enough so we could get some nice compost put on the garden we'd be really ready to go. Here's hoping this weekend dries out a bit! Cheers and happy gardening to all. 

Seedlings!

We've had a cold and long winter, but the sun is now shining and it looks like this whole spring thing might actually happen. Whew!

Dustin and I have been collecting seeds for GARDEN 2013 and this year we decided to start out some plants indoors. Last year we bought all of our tomatoes and peppers as plants, but this year we're trying out a number of varieties from seed.

We planted the seeds on Thursday and as of this evening (Sunday of the same week) we already have some sprouts!

Garden Fair and Valentine's Day

Garden Fair is tomorrow and I am so excited. I must be excited considering I'm getting up to be somewhere by 8:30 on a Saturday morning....

Our sessions - Fact or Fiction of Lawn & Garden Myths, Container Gardening, Drought Superheros, The Most Important Garden Advice Ever (keynote by Pat Stone) From Seed to Table, and A Taste of Herbs. Updates to come later.

So Dustin rocked our Valentine's night dinner with steak, lobster, wild rice, and asparagus. I rocked attempting to take food photos. See below. (I did dishes too, if that counts? - And made drinks...we lead with our strengths in this house.)

 Monster Lobster

 Who said the Pizza Pizzaz was only for pizza?

 Ahmahzing steak.

 Steak, lobster, rice and asparagus - way too much of everything. We did have leftovers!

Peanut butter, chocolate chip cookie, ice cream sandwich. Words cannot describe.

The Beginning - Garden 2013

So last summer Dustin and I rented a community garden plot at Ellis park. It was 1000 sq. ft of beauty. Of course, it was also one of the driest summers on record and this community garden has no direct water access. You could walk 200 yards to the river and carry water - see below - but most didn't. We (Dustin) did for the first half of the summer, and borrowed my brother's truck for the 2nd half.

So at the end of summer we started plans for 2013 and decided to put a garden in my brother's back yard. We tilled up about 1800 sq. ft - because obviously 1000 was not enough....

We have yet to run water out to it yet, but believe me, this will not be a bucket job this year!


And now the question is - what to do with 1800 sq. ft of garden space? I've become a seed catalog junkie. I now have catalogs from Seed Saver Exchange, Gurney's, Burpee, Henry Field's and Burgess.

 I have great aspirations of creating something like this -

http://www.countryliving.com/outdoor/gardening/ultimate-kitchen-garden-design

However, it will probably be a plethora of tomatoes, peppers, sweet corn, green beans, and sugar snaps. There are a lot of different tomatoes varieties out there...



I'm starting to make a list - anyone have suggestions?

Kitchen Update etc.

Well friends, it's been a bit since my last post. Now that we're actually set up at the house, I finally took some pictures and am ready to share.

Here is the living room now - please excuse the clutter - we're not to the truly organized  stage yet. :-)

The kitchen has been a godsend. We love it - and are slowly figuring out where all of our stuff will go.

Notice the corner bookshelf full of cookbooks!  - Such hope.

I've even started crafting again.

Kitchen Paint

We've been working each night to try to stay a little ahead of the contractors, so Mom and I finished painting the kitchen last night. We decided on light grey for most of the walls, and one dark grey accent wall. I think I love it, but we'll see what it looks like with the cork floor. (Yes cork - pictures to come.)

Here's the dark wall contrasted by the lighter one.

Now we're working on deciding paint colors for the two bedrooms, bathroom and living room. So far I'm pretty sure we're going with light lavender for the spare bedroom, but that's all we've agreed upon so far. Oh and blue for the main bedroom - the debate is about how dark of a blue to get. I'm hoping to run over tonight to see if there's been any progress. I think we're getting doors tomorrow too, so things are moving in the right direction.

Ok, time to finish my grading so I can take the time to check out the house tonight. Did I mention I made bruschetta and spicy shrimp pasta. Happy Thursday!

Cheers,
~ m.a.