Garden Grand

I thought I'd lost all my amaryllis back in April because I forgot to bring them in during an overnight freeze. I planned to dump them all and use the bowls for salad greens. Then things happened, and I never got around to dumpring them. Good thing. Many did survive, and two are preparing to bloom! I love that the red and white striped one opened on the Fourth of July!

My first tomatoes of the year are ready to join my next salad! They are small, but they will taste out of this world.

One of the last things Lizard did with me was buy a wisteria to create shade for our trellis/pergola over our back porch. I was so excited when I went out to water (by watering can) this week and discovered the wisteria is beginning to climb! All on its own! I did not have to show it where to go!

I had my best pea harvest ever last week, even though it's been unseasonably hot for going on two months now. I typically get three or four pea pods at a time. Lizard liked the young pods whole in a salad. I like that, but my favorite is a bowl of fresh peas. This is the first time I've ever had a big enough harvest to enjoy a bowl of peas!

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Easy Being Green

This was supposed to be my St. Patrick's Day post. I was so spent and exhausted at the end of the day on Monday, March 16, I forgot to hit publish. I kept thinking I could publish a little late on Tuesday, but I didn't get on the computer until after 7 p.m. That has happened a few times in the last several weeks. I guess that's just my new blahg schedule these days.

I'm hoping to start as many of my raised-bed garden veggies from seed again this year instead of buying established plants in a few months from one of the local garden centers. With no real winter this year, I might be able to get an earlier start on transplanting...

My goal was to plant my peppers and tomatoes for the coming summer on March 1. That was Sunday. I'm teaching 5- and 6-year-olds this year, and they are still at the very active and very excited stage in which it's a real challenge to keep them in their seats or to get them to listen to anything I say. I have to make everything into a game to capture their attention at all. Lizard's also struggling a bit more these days, and his needs outweigh anything in the garden. By the time we get home from church, we're both so exhausted, we both end up taking an afternoon nap. Then it's Bible study and my weekly call to my mom, and I don't get much else done.

I did, however, get my seeds planted in clean yogurt containers on March 2, and they've been coming up like crazy!!! (I also remembered to sprinkle poppy seeds in the garden right before our March 15 snowstorm that was supposed to be half an inch and instead delivered nearly six inches!!!) I can hardly wait for fresh tomatoes (and poppies!!!) from my garden!!!

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I See Red

The Colorado Front Range experienced its latest first overnight freeze last week. I'm so thankful I got to hang onto my tomato plants an extra couple of weeks. I picked about 40 mostly yellowish green tomatoes about five or six hours before the mercury dropped way below freezing. I've had them in the living room window ever since. Some are not going to turn. But more than I expected have turned, and I've been enjoying fresh tomatoes every day!

Of course, the living room window is getting only about two to three hours of sun these days. So I've been sticking the tomatoes on the dash in my car in the afternoons, hoping the heat and magnified sun will coax them into color.

Some of the darker green ones are beginning to get a little mushy. But I managed to get almost enough red for one last batch of homegrown homemade spaghetti sauce for the year.

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Veggie Paradise

I've had a multiplying mystery plant flourishing beneath the spigot on the north side of the house for years. I finally dug up and replanted in a pot the nearly two dozen separate plants – bulbs – last week. Once it appeared they survived the trauma, I did the Google photo search and discovered I have a very healthy crop of garlic chives. I must have planted some in a pot on the nearby porch when we first bought the house, before we received permission from the HOA to transform our front and back yard into gardens. I don't even remember a harvest, but I'm sure there was some homemade spaghetti sause in there somewhere. The seeds must have blown to more fertile ground. I will try to harvest the seeds and put them in the raised bed gardens this fall.

Most of my tomatoes got a very late start this year, but they are making me so happy now.

My pepper plants also got a late start, and only one plant is tall enough and bushy enough to produce blossoms so far, but none of the buds made it to pepper. A second round has begun. Fingers crossed for at least a few homegrown this year. But, I did buy some roasted Hatch chiles last weekend. And spent about four hours skinning and freezing all but about six, which promptly went into scrumptious meals.

Even though we've been in a heat dome for about three or four weeks, my sugar snap peas – cool weather plants – have produced enough pods for a meal (for two!!!) for my first time ever. We've typically split a pod or two or three times each new growing season. Our first real pea harvest!!!

Green beans were another first this year. These are from my first harvest a few weeks ago. I think we'll have a fresh new harvest in a few days, and it will be enough for another meal (for two!).

The spoon tomatoes have been the garden sleeper. I didn't think the seeds were any good because they took so long to germinate. Now all nine plants are exploding with blossoms.

Some of the blossoms are beginning to turn into tiny little tomatoes!!!

And some are beginning to mature! I think I'm going to have luscious salads every day very soon!

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Tomatoes!!!

Off to a slow start, but my first year of veggie gardening totally from seed is out the gate and making a good run!

I've already harvested my first few tomatoes. They are small, compared to grocery store and/or farmers market offerings, but they really pack a punch. They are SO tasty!

These are going to be SO awesome with grocery store cucumbers and a couple of onions from my garden. Just add a skosh of vinegar...

I enjoyed tiny little spoon tomatoes from the grocery store in my salads last winter, so I searched and found seeds a couple of months ago. I planted 20 seeds, and I've got four plants, one of which is beginning to blossom! Fingers crossed!

First peas weren't enough for a meal, but they made a great snack.

First beans weren't enough for a meal, but I stuck them in the veggie bin in the fridge until I had enough, and oh, were they heavenly!

We still have plenty of rhubarb. I bought strawberries and bananas from the grocery store and then cooked up some rhubarb.

Lizard is LOVING the strawberry banana rhubarb sauce with his plain yogurt every day. I just love to make him smile!

No red sunflowers yet, but still hoping. However, I had a very pleasant surprise last week... I put my amaryllises on the (very hot and very sunny) front porch each summer before I put them in the basement for three months in the fall. Sometimes I will get an unexpected blossom in the hottest part of the summer. I'm so tickled peppermint with this year's bonus!

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Going for the Greens

With changes in all kinds of circumstances at home, I needed to be creative in my garden plans this year. I decided to give planting indoors from seeds and then transplanting outside in May or June another try. I punched holes in the bottoms of 12 clean yogurt containers, then slipped them into hole-less containers for proper drainage. I filled each with soil and dug out my stash seeds.

I used up all the tomato seeds (five varieties) in my stash. I didn't even know if any of them would grow. I think only one package was from last year; most were from up to a decade ago. My baby tomato plants might now be sold for at least $2.99 apiece in a garden center! Look how much money I'm saving!

I could not believe I didn't have a single pepper seed anywhere. I actually had to order fresh seeds. That cost almost as much as buying a couple of mature pepper plants in May! (And I should have enough seeds to last at least five years!) My new seeds arrived Saturday, so they're a bit later start than the tomato seeds, but I've never had trouble growing peppers from seeds. I'm not worried at all.

I, meanwhile, have been planting all my potato eyes all winter long, and I've been planting the bottoms of every onion I've used for the last year. Last year's seeds from onions I allowed to go to seed are coming up, also, and, tee hee hee, onions deter critters. A couple of carrots went to seed last year (as did some cilantro, basil, oregano and dill), and the seeds are beginning to sprout in the outdoor raised-bed gardens, even though we got more snow last week! My herbs perturb bunnies, and that's a joy to my soul. My volunteer rhubarb from last year is already making a raised-bed garden appearance, and it's keeping bunnies away from that box. The lavender, mint and sage are all starting to show fresh new green, and they deter critters. My indoor microgreens have been going strong for several months now. It's going to be a fresh, homegrown salad summer!

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The Garden's End

We got a full extra month out of this year's garden. Our first overnight freeze didn't occur until last weekend. So I had fresh tomatoes and peppers all the way up until Friday.

I tried to cover the raised-bed planters Friday night, but the plants didn't care. When we removed the blankets the next morning, the plants that should have been toasty warm were dead. This happened last time I tried to cover the plants prior to a freeze, which I think was spring last year, but I had to try again.

Prior to covering, we brought in all the baby peppers and all the tomatoes that looked like they might be mature enough to turn red in the window. I'm not sure how many will actually turn. I gave my mom a good belly laugh because she loves fried green tomatoes, and she remembered the year I tried to make a baked version with my green tomatoes. (Miserable fail.)

We had our first snow Sunday night, and now the flowers are gone, too. I am going to miss my garden for the next five months, but I'm hoping I will get many chances to shoot snowflakes while I wait!

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Wordless Wednesday

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