Sunday, December 8, 2024
Overwintering Roses
Saturday, December 7, 2024
Growing Sweet Potato’s
One of the negatives to starting plants inside is that sometimes you have to deal with gnats which are very annoying. I’ve got several traps set up in the corners of my grow area to catch them. So far they work extremely well. I will keep updating on the progress on these as things change 😊
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Harvesting Valarian Root
Monday, November 18, 2024
2024 Tomato Harvest
This summer I planned on growing just a few tomato plants that I really love. But somehow a few that I love, turned into over 20+ tomato plants along the fence line mixed in with the flowers. Some new ones that I wanted to try and of course the usual favorites from last season. This has become a new process for me since I am so limited with space in the garden boxes I decided that if I plant one or two and then a flower and then a couple more and then another flower that it is technically not taking up space but sharing the space and they should both benefit from that. The flowers will attract the bees to further aid in pollination of the fruit and visa versa. I also decided that in doing this that Im not really taking up space and if they survive, it was meant to be. I also prepare for loss of new tender plants by over planting but I think this time almost everything survived.
The summer of 2023, I planted 12 San Marzano tomato plants in the large 4x6 raised bed and they were amazing but I had an over abundance of them that didn’t ripen until fall and I sort of felt overwhelmed when I wasn’t able to use them all to make sauces like I intended on early in summer. Instead I harvested them later in the season and only made a few batches and froze the rest of them whole. I skipped the San Marzano this year and stuck to my favorites which have always been the sweet cherry types and the heirloom variety that I can just eat right off the vine. My favorite out of all the heirlooms that I’ve grown so far is Paul Robeson. It has amazing flavor and so meaty and I love that in this tomato!! I love the marbling inside these tomatoes and the colors and textures are so stunning. One tomato that seems to always amaze me is the pineapple tomato. I don’t even remember planting that many this spring but I must have because I had so many of them. And they were not little, they were very large and looked like little pumpkins which were fun giving away and sharing with friends.
For the 2025 garden I may not grow the pineapple again, but if I do I will try and only grow one or two plants. I do love having a huge variety of tomatoes. The colors are so beautiful!
Sunday, November 17, 2024
Harvesting Dahila Seeds
This is my second year growing Dahlias and I have learned so much, especially this year. After purchasing my first Dahlia tubers in spring of 2023, I knew very little about this flower. This is now my second season growing them so after learning so much about them I decided that I would try harvesting my own seeds from the Dahlias seed pods that I collected this current season 2024.
Over this two year period I have read so many of other people’s experiences and watched so many “how to’s” that I finally am feeling like I’m getting it, and also getting hooked too.
When I first started growing these flowers it seemed very complicated but in just one year I feel like the knowledge I have now has made me feel so much more confident as a grower.
I am most excited to try growing some new varieties and hopefully develop some really beautiful new flowers of my own. This summer I was really surprised by the dahlias that I grew from seed last year 2023. When I saw how beautiful they were, I suddenly had a new respect and love for this flower because of the unique opportunity to produce something new and one of a kind.
Monday, October 7, 2024
Preparing for Fall and Dahlia Projects
Over the last couple weeks I have been collecting seed pods and have been able to harvest and store several already. In the process of doing this I am learning some things that I had questions about previously.
Like where do the seeds form after they have been pollinated and my curiosity led me to do some dissecting and took some pictures to share with you. The fact that each seed inside the pod could be a different flower depending on what bee visited and which flowers are pollinated is amazing and it’s blowing my mind a little bit.
Ive seen a ton of pictures online about tubers and also what they look like and how to recognize the eyes etc, what the seeds look like but I’ve never seen the inside of a pod. Now with my seed collecting project, the information is all coming together for me. I am able to see now what an immature seed and a mature seed looks like and to only collect the large viable ones. The seeds pods that are still slightly green, are left to dry until they turn a sort of papery brown color and I’ve been opening them and allowing them to air dry overnight and this has been sort of my nightly ritual of working on at least one or two seed heads per night until they are separated into their own bags labeled with the seed parent. Most of these first ones that I am currently working on are from dahlias that I grew last year from seeds in 2023 garden and in the fall I collected the tubers and replanted them. These will be labeled so I know who the seed parent is.
I’m getting really excited about trying to create some new varieties of dahlias to expand on my collection. It’s still fairly small but I’m wanting to definitely create a larger one next summer.
Now that I know that I can store the tubers with success in my climate and indoors, I am going to keep at it and grow them again next spring as well.
Sunday, October 6, 2024
Hiking with Luna at Kings Canyon
This weekend was very productive. Saturday I drove and picked up Luna and took her to Kings Canyon for a small hike. It’s been several weeks since we have walked in this area. The early mornings have been cooler but I didn’t realize it was going to heat up so quickly. It got really hot by 10:30. We hiked farther than we had in the past in this part of the trail. I do have fears of the mountain lion in the area and have seen several signs that they are around, so I’m not as active out by myself as much as I use to be. I try my best to work through my fears though and keep doing the things that I love. It was a nice hike and we made a new friend while we were there too. She has 6 huskies and is very involved in mushing with her little team, she had lots of good information to share with me. I’ve thought about teaching Luna to pull and start training so this winter we can have fun in the snow together. I haven’t explored anything yet so meeting someone who is very experienced was got me excited about it again.
Monday, September 23, 2024
Leaf Cutter Bee in the Zinnias
Based right at the intersection of the leaf and the stem I found this leafy papery shape, like a cocoon of some type. The first thing that popped into my mind was leafcutter bee. No idea where I might have heard that before but possibly when my son was little we read about them. So I looked it up and that’s what it is. So cool!!! I am so very interested in all the workings of the insects in the garden. They all have a purpose here and I’m so happy when I get to see these little miracles in action right in the backyard.
Saturday, September 21, 2024
Looking Back at My First Garden - 20 Years Ago
Thursday, September 19, 2024
Luna Love 💗
Just 7 months ago Luna came into our lives. She is mainly meant for my friend, who is in a wheelchair and is in need of a support dog, but she has gradually been helping me to trust again and has been a great support to me as well.
These pictures were taken when her dad was in the hospital recently and I stayed with her for a week caring for her. I was with her in the garden in the early mornings before leaving for work and it was beautiful being with her and having my morning coffee while visiting all of the flowers and listening to the birds. These moments are precious to me and I’m so happy that I can also provide her with comfort and care when she needs it.
Friday, September 6, 2024
New Rose Garden Completion
A rose garden is not something that Ive even thought that I’d be creating, so it completely surprised me and I am so love with them now.
This entire yard has seen a huge transformation, starting back in 2022 when I planted the first perennial garden in the front. During this time I also worked on the backyard as much as I could in my free time, but it was so overwhelming and heavily weeded and big, so I decided to only focus my energies on the front part of the yard and getting it established first.
Then my plan was to next get the back garden boxes put together and work on that part of the garden the following spring of 2023. That is when I moved the dirt and got all the beds along the fence set up for growing. I did not have much interested in putting anything in the current rose garden area at all, but grew one zucchini plant there last year along with some cosmos and a sunflower but that part of the yard was of very little interest and had no plans.
It wasn’t until my birthday in the spring of 2024 that I had the idea of making a rose garden. It’s always been a thing for me, every birthday I love visiting the nursery and picking up new spring plants. Even though I grow almost everything from seed, I still love the feel of being in a nursery and it makes me happy! Sometimes I buy small things at to fill in the gaps or just when I feel like it. But this year, my kids asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I said Roses!! Not the ones that you put in a vase and throw away!! I wanted to build a rose garden so I could enjoy roses for a long time and many years to come. Also an added benefit was to make the yard more visually appealing around the aluminum wheelchair ramp that accesses the back yard. It might actually turn out to be perfect. So I went to work, shopping and I bought a few varieties at my local hardware store and also ordered one special rose that I loved from the greenhouse garden center to pick up around Mother’s Day, just in time to plant for spring. Here is one I picked up (pictured above) and is in the front seat of my car. Such an exciting day!!
I bought 6 at the hardware store and so far 3 of those turned out to be nothing like the label, but I love them anyways. Same is true for 2 of my 5 David Austin’s but they are still lovely and enjoying every minute of them!! They are all very wonderful and I cannot believe I’ve waited this long to experience the joy of having roses. The smell just takes me away to another world and the colors are stunning!
Watch the video to see what this spot looked like in spring of 2023 before the tree was removed.
Growing Celery - Summer 2023
A large glass pitcher and filtered water
2-3 slices cucumber, long and thin strips
A half stalk of celery, cut in half lengthwise
1 large slice of lemon
You can always adjust the amounts according to your taste 🍋🥒🥒
Thursday, September 5, 2024
Bachelor Buttons
I love Bachelor Buttons because they are so easy to grow. This year they all completely self seeded from last years flowers so it made things a little easier for me, I just left the ones that I wanted to grow in the ground and pulled the ones that I didn’t. There was something fun to this as it added a little sense of surprise because I wasn’t sure which color they’d be. I had about 5 different colors last year, with blue being my favorite!
I love the natural meadow look that this flower provides and makes the rest of the garden flower pop. It is very attractive to Butterflies, and the bees just adore them. This is so important to have flowers that attract the pollinators. I believe the more variety flowers,the better! This is great for attracting more beneficial insects to the garden as well, which is important for natural pest control. I don’t believe in using chemicals in my garden so I heavily rely on nature to do this magical work for me!
In order to keep this flower blooming and looking tidy, you will need to deadhead frequently, otherwise it will go to seed fairly quickly like you see in the photos above.
My First Potato Harvest and what I’ve Learned
Growing potatoes was such an exciting part of my gardening learning experience this summer! I knew very little about growing them so I was very intimidated by the thought of it, but I tried it anyways and so happy that I did!
I have learned a few important things, so I’d like to share this with you and what I’ve learned. I knew nothing about growing them so I relied heavily on the resources online and through talking to a few family members who have grown them for some knowledge.
Some of the first articles on growing potatoes mentioned that you should hill them. I had no reason to question this, so the first thing I did was bought several bags of soil so that I had a steady supply, then I realized that there was no way that I would be able to continue hilling up soil around the bases and I was running out of room in my flower bed so that is when I started to question it and looked around online for more information on the topic and why I needs to do it in the first place.
I also looked into other ways to cover the bases and some people said straw and wood chips and then I started to run into more Information about why you don’t want to add straw because it would kill your crops and it just seemed like it was getting too complicated, but I know that when you do anything you are going to always run into people who do things differently or have their own opinions.
That is when I found Luke from MiGardener on YouTube and he talked about some common misconceptions on growing potatoes, and he went over the hilling myth and I was so relieved that I could just stop doing this and relax. I did not know that potatoes actually grow deep so there is no way that they would start popping up out of the dirt, lol! It’s silly to think about now and how much stress this caused me to feel.
Im so thankful for that information because it changed everything for me. I was able to finally enjoy the process of growing potatoes and for a change and it made sense.
Another issue that I ran into was that some of the leaves on part of the crop was starting to turn rusty and spotty and this did not seem like a good thing to me and found that it could possibly be potato blight or another disease. This made me sad because my entire crop could fail. I thought about how real potato farmers must feel and what they go through when this happens because it’s on such a large scale and is their livelihood and they depend on it for survival. I suddenly had so much compassion for people who do this as a way of life.
I did as much as I could to avoid top watering of the leaves and prevent the spread of whatever it was, and also started to remove some of the leaves and disposing of them. I read articles that said that you should burn the leaves and then I questioned if removing the leaves was bad and actually I found that removing them could be better for the formation of the tubers and sends the energy down underground. Another thing that I noticed was that after some of the first blossoms I saw some cut marks on them and they would drop off, but I didn’t worry too much about that since I read that removing the blossoms could potentially create a positive thing for the tuber development.
It’s just amazing at the information that is available out there and this has been such a huge help in my journey in gardening. I do a lot by feel and intuition but also it makes me happy that others are available to share what knowledge they have as well. Overall I am so happy with my crop of potatoes this year and how easy it was once I had better knowledge. I will definitely be growing again next year! I was able to weigh my harvest on a scale and it came to just under 25 pounds!
Here is a look at my harvest day and how it went
Overwintering Roses
Reflecting today on the rose garden that I installed last spring. I’ve never been great with roses in the past so I was slightly intimidated...
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For the new spring garden I have been collecting some new varieties of flower seeds and vegetables to try. Varieties that I have never grow...
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Last night after work all I wanted to do was lay in the grass and relax in the garden and enjoy the sunset. I was so focused on how nice it ...
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Back in October I mentioned briefly that I was planning on digging up my Dahlia tubers for the first time and researching on how to do it. I...