Some of my plants from last year are coming up already outside!
It has been warmer, but is still quite cold. I have noticed that we have had several nights that have not gotten to freezing though. They have gotten close, but still we are having very warm nights. Here are some pictures of Strawberry plants and Onion bulbs that have come up green and started to lift out of the mud and muck!
So I guess I better get a move on those seeds inside!!!
Thanks for stopping by!
-Sara Murray
Hi everyone,
I am toying with expanding my outdoor garden this year!
I have found that with only 5 more fence pieces I can double my garden space!
Last year I found it hard to weed, and the plants were all too close together. Especially in mid-summer when everything gets to be a bit of a jungle out there.
I will keep you posted on plans. For now you can have a look at the picture on my “Fall Plans” post here and envision adding on two more fence pieces to each side to bring it out into the yard more, and placing the gate at the side (in between what is the old side pieces and where the 2 new ones would be added).
Thanks for stopping by,
Sara
Planting the yellow globe onions was a breeze.
Watching the green shoots come up, also a breeze…
The trouble started when grass also sprouted around the green onion shoots. I could not tell them apart very well and when I tried to weed I inevitably ruined onions. So I stopped. 🙁
Combine that with a very rainy summer and the fact that birds will grab the onions right by the shoots and pull them up to eat them left me with only 15 or so ping-pong ball sized onions. The green tops have all fallen over and yellowed – which means they are done. They won’t get any larger.
Why won’t they continue to grow?? They are alive and well in there without the tops after all. There is an exchange of fluid and sugar which happens in the shoot/leaves and travels down into the bulb that makes it grow bigger.
So, onions do not like much water. Birds also like them. And the shoots look just like grass – so weed like crazy!
Plan for next year? RAISED BEDS with store-bought planting medium – this will hopefully tame the grass issue. For now they are coming indoors.
So I was able to harden the seedlings successfully! Normally that’s when I kill things. Generally I forget about them and then they die from over exposure. This time I was meticulous about how much time they were out each day and brought them in properly. The only thing that happened was a little sunburn from starting in a place that was too sunny.
Note to self: Start hardening in a place that only gets a few hours of sunlight per day. The plants get plenty of indirect sunlight even if they are never in direct sunlight.
I have started transplanting them into the vegetable garden today!
I have transplanted the broccoli, and the tomato plants (roma and beefstake). I probably have about 20 volunteer tomato plants out there as well!!! I will wait until they are a bit larger and then thin them out and see what plants came back from the dead tomatoes that were on the ground.
So tomorrow and Saturday I plan to transplant the carrots, peppers, onions and petunias.
Thanks for stopping! ~ Sara
I planted some strawberry plants a few years ago and all we ever got was one single strawberry from them. NOW they are very happy and producing many berries! They are so delicious. Store-bought strawberries are NOTHING compared to the flavor you get from growing your own.
I have them in the center of my vegetable garden (along with the other animal favorite, broccoli) to try to keep them away from other mammals who may want some. I also put bird netting up just in time! We harvested 3 berries yesterday and they were so very good.
I can’t wait to get more off these plants. I wonder if they will keep producing all season. That would be awesome.
I might actually have to get some more of these plants if they are going to be so tasty and so happy and easy to keep.
Thanks for stopping ~ Sara
I harvested the first of the radishes the other day!
They were pretty small, but the rows needed thinning anyway. They were VERY tasty. Not as spicy as I would like, but at least my daughter can have some then too.
The type of radish I got was a “Cherry Belle” They are a solid bright red and smaller variety. I left them in the garden 2 weeks longer than the 22 days to harvest and even now the vast majority are not ready to harvest yet.
Thanks for stopping by!
~Sara
Hi everyone!
Today I planted the seeds in the outdoor garden. I put in broccoli, carrots, zucchini, cilantro and basil. I bordered the sides with cosmos, and made areas for the small plants of broccoli, onions, bell and jalapeno peppers, and tomatoes to go once they are properly hardened.
I have the baby plants up to 8-10 hours of outside time per day. So I am just bringing them in at night now. When I know that I have a good few days of mild weather I will transplant them. Right now we are expecting a storm tomorrow and one next week. So maybe after the storm next week. I just want them to have a few days of over night weather to get settled. If a storm did come I could just cover them with laundry baskets and boxes.
I will be putting the planting date and the harvest date on the Scheduler-Calendar page as well. All my planting and harvesting dates are listed there. According to the packets I should be able to start harvesting most of the garden in mid-July.
Thanks for stopping by!!
~Sara
Thank you to the bird or rabbit that ate some honey suckle berries and then came to Maddie’s garden! We have had this bush/tree for a few years now and I am going to attempt to train it into a topiary shape this year!
The first year it was going to be a tree = one long stalk/trunk and one sprig of honey suckle at the top. I cut that down to the ground almost. It came back and it brought friends! A little scary at first and I considered pulling it out all together. But honey suckle is such a sweet bush and perfect for a little girl’s garden so I left it.
Each year I prune it aggressively and the next season it comes back fuller. It wants to be very tall so I just cut it down. I think I have enough growth and fullness this year to shape it. In this same garden I have another bush that we call the “monster” bush. It wants to take over the whole garden so we cut it back all the time. And there is a clematis. It is in soil that has not been prepared and used to have several evergreen bushes in it.
I have had the clematis in there for about three years now and it looks like it is finally going to really go!
We call this flower bed Madison Square Garden. She has a lot to contribute about what goes into this garden and always plants an annual border around it which she plants mostly herself and then cares for by watering and weeding herself.
Will post pics later!
Thanks for stopping by!
~Sara
So, as many of you have heard I tore out a large juniper bush and one other small bush in front of my house to extend my flower bed last season.
There is rock packed with mud in this area as the previous owners had a rock bed with evergreen bushes before. (Which I despise!!!!!) I thought I could pick the rock out like I did with my other beds I have created around my house. Not so. There is so much mud packed in this bed that it would take all summer to get it out by hand. So I am calling in a professional service.
I am going to have the landscapers come with a bobcat/back hoe and dig out 1-2 feet of soil and rock and just haul it away. Next I will order square feet of top soil from my *local* *small* 🙂 garden market down the road here. I will need to let that soil rest and then test the Ph level and maybe adjust it a bit before planting because evergreens are so acidic!
Once that is done I can put in my ornamental tree and more flowers!
I will post before and after and during pictures!!!
Thanks for stopping by!
~Sara
