Goings On

So I haven't posted in a few weeks, but it's because the weather has been so nice lately that I've been trying to spend some more time outside and the heat just seems to zap your energy. Anyways, updates...

This year, again, I am doing container gardening, as I don't have anywhere to plant in the ground. So far though, I have 9 small tomato plants, snow pod peas, kale and lettuce seedlings, and pickling cucumber and zucchini seedlings sprouting up. I also have planted beets, bush beans, 4 containers of potatoes, and I will probably be trying to get some more planting in soon. Of course, added to this I have herbs and flowers and kiwi vines, etc that weathered over from last year, which adds some color to my little container garden. I'll have to make sure that I take some pictures later of my seedlings and post them.

Lately I have also been trying to dehydrate as much as I can, and I have to say, I love the electric dehydrators! They work so fast and you can really fit a lot onto those trays! I'm planning on getting some of the sheets to use with fruit leathers, so that I can try making some for my kids, as I would much prefer them eating snacks that don't have a bunch of crap added and are 100% healthy.

What about everyone else? Any gardening updates or any other goings on in your lives that you'd like to share?

Just Around the Corner...

 

Although only mid February, there definitely seems to be a noticable change in the air. Tulips and daffodils are sprouting up everywhere, the weather is getting warmer, the sun has been peeking out more often, the frogs in the field are croaking at night... I'd say it's starting to feel a lot like Spring! This change in the weather is really getting me in the mood to start planting, and I've been trying to look through my seed catalogues to decide what to plant this year.

There's a problem though....there are too many choices to choose from!!!!

I never had any idea there could be so many varieties of beans or other vegetables, and it's making it extremely hard to really decide on anything! I know I want beans for both eating fresh and drying, and definitely some greens and tomatoes, and that I'll have to get seeds that do wel in containers or in small spaces, as I won't have much room to work with, but I am having the hardest time deciding what I want. Of course, I'm sure part of it is my own fault, as I did order several different seed catologues, which makes it that much harder, as each one makes it that much harder, and now I have to deal with the consequences. Oh darn. ;)

Oh well, I guess I'll just have to figure it out, and in the mean time, at least I've got some interesting reading to keep me busy. Do any of you have the same problem this time of year? If so, how do you narrow down your choices?

Magazine Offer

Thought I would share this offer I found over at One Hundred Dollars a Month! Discount Mags is offering a year's subscription to Urban Farm Magazine for only $4.50, with the coupon code 2479, as opposed to it's listed price of $15! Hurry though! This offer expires tonight at 12:00am EST!

New Year "Resolutions"

Happy New Year Everyone!

 

Now, I realize that this is a couple days late, but I wanted to publish a post with New Years resolutions, and decided to think things over a few days. I don't often make resolutions at the beginning of each new year, but I've decided to start doing it, so that I have something specific to work on for the year and have a specific amount of time to complete goals in. New Years resolutions always seem to center around things like losing weight or getting rid of debt, and while I do have goals like this, they are on going and I'm not going to make resolutions like that. Sure, this year I definitely want to make sure that I stay healthy and definitely get rid of any debt I have (and more importantly not incur more), but these won't be my resolutions for the new year, they're ongoing.

 

Nope. This year, I am making goals that include skills to become more self-sufficient, knowledgable, and just to improve my overall quality of life. Some of them may seem small compared to others, but I find them all equally important, and I'm sure I'll end up adding more as I think of them, but here's a starting list:

 

Improve my sewing, knitting, and crocheting skills

Learn to use power tools (besides just a drill)

 

Expand my vegan cooking abilities

 

WRITE MORE

Learn to can

Expand my gardening knowledge

Build or buy a dehydrator

Grow and preserve as much of our food needs as possible for the year, and especially next winter

Shop local as much as possible

...and that's it so far...

Do any of you have resolutions for the new year that you'd like to share?
 

Potatoes!

So I have mixed feelings on the potato bag that I bought this last spring. The leaves on my plants started to yellow a week or two ago and have withered and died, with me still watering them on a regular basis, so today I decided to harvest any potatoes that may have grown. Unfortunately, most of the potatoes weren't full size yet. I did find two full size potatoes, but one of them was rotting and obviously isn't usable. I also noticed that the soil in the tops twothirds of the bag was relatively dry, but the soil on the bottom was extremely damp, and that the water wasn't draining out of the holes in the bottom of the bag. I'm not sure if I should somehow elevate the bag next time so that it has air circulating underneath, but I guess I'll just have to experiment. I've replanted the bag with a different variety of potato, and I'm hoping that I'll be able to get better results this next time. I can't really complain though, since I did still get some potatoes out of it.

Spring Planting

Spring weather has finally arrived, and I am so glad that I can finally plant things outside without having to worry about another snow... at least, I'm hoping there won't be anymore freak snowfalls this spring (fingers crossed). We are still getting heavier rains off and on, but it's springtime in the Pacific Northwest, and we've also had some nicer sunny days the last couple of weeks, which have been nice. I love when the weather gets warmer and we have light sprinklings of warm rain. 

Anyways.... this springtime weather has been getting me in the mood to garden and I have been slowly amassing the makings of a container garden for my back patio. For some reason, buying seeds seems to be somewhat addicting, and there always seems to be a new variety of heirloom vegetable that I've never heard of before and have to get, and it definitely doesn't help that a packet of seeds only costs a couple of dollars. I wonder if they have Seedaholics Anonymous meetings I could attend, or maybe a Plantaholics Anonymous, since I seem to buy a lot of plants too, like this miniature lemon tree:

and this tea plant

and I finally bought a female kiwi vine!!!

 ........aaannd back to my original topic.

So the weather has been nicer lately and yesterday I took the twins out in the backyard for a couple of hours to play and plant seeds. So far I have planted: Trionfo Violetto and Christmas Lima Beans, Snap Peas, Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce, a Mesculin Mix of lettuce Ragged Jack Kale, Russet Potatoes, and Lemon Balm, and I have lots more to plant!

 Of course, some of the seeds I won't be able to plant this year, things like pumpkins and melons, but I can always save them and use them sometime in the next few years. Being outside and getting my hands in the soil was nice though, and I think that Bella and London enjoyed shoveling the dirt and planting seeds, although they seem to have gotten more soil on the patio than in the pots, but at least they had fun. And I'm pretty sure they wore themselves out.....

I love my babies. :)

Mattocks and Lemon Balm

The last couple of days have been beautiful and I've been taking advantage of the nice weather and helping my mom and step dad with outdoor projects at their house. Wednesday was spent clipping raspberry and loganberry canes and burning debris, and Thursday I spent moving small logs and wood pieces, cutting back peony bushes, pulling and dumping weeds, and learning how to use a mattock. For those you that don't know, a mattock is much like a large pickaxe and is often used for digging into hard soil, as well as removing tree trunks. I got to learn how to use one by spending a good amount of time hacking away at the roots of a small oak  trunk. I finally was able to remove the trunk, but, needless to say, my whole body is going to be sore for the next day or two, since repeatedly swinging one of those over your shoulder is definitely a full body workout. I am perfectly fine with being sore tomorrow though, because I know that I'll have a reason to. Whenever I am sore as a result of doing some physical activity I actually almost enjoy it, because I feel like I've earned it and I know that I'm building muscle. That may make me a masochist, but oh well. On another note, I found a perfect little lemon balm plant that had started to grow right in the middle of my mom's strawberry patch, and since my mom considers thinks of these plants more as weeds than herbs, since they always sprout up and spread everywhere, I'm taking this one home to use in my container garden.
 Below are some pictures I took Thursday. For some reason they ended up kind of wonky looking though. I guess next time I should try using an actual camera instead of my phone.

The mattock
(aka my new favorite tool)

The hole that the stump had been in.
It looks smaller in this photo than it was
 (probably 3 and a half feet).

The offending stump.
(again it looks a lot smaller than it was :P )

A terrible picture of Bumpers the cat. I'll get a better one soon.

My new Lemon Balm plant :)

My Favorite Part of Winter...

When the tulips and daffodils starting sending up shoots. Eventhough we still have a couple of months of winter weather, seeing these always makes me think of and look forward to spring.

Look what I found...

It's a potato bag! I randomly found this yesterday while shopping, and I thought I'd try it, and use all of those potatoes that end up sprouting in the cupboard before I can use them. Although I'm not crazy about buying a lot of China made products, I thought that I'd try using this one and seeing how well it worked, and then trying to find a pattern for making my own from scratch. I'm excited though to see how this works. Wish me luck!

Look What I Found!

I was digging in the garden and found tons and tons of tiny potatoes! We had planted some Russian Banana fingerling potatoes several years ago, in this area, and never ended up digging them up. So I'm guessing that they have just been growing back every year. I couldn't believe how tiny some of these were though. The biggest ones are a couple of inches long, but some of the smallest are only about an eighth of an inch wide. There are probably more down there still, but I have a feeling that I planted the cucumbers over them. Oh well, at least I found these. Now I just have to figure out what I'm going to do with them....

Peonies

I have always loves peonies and wait every June for these beautiful flowers to bloom, and I am happy to report that they finally have. They always seem to take forever to bloom, and don't last for very long, but I feel that they are worth the wait and I love being able to enjoy their beauty, even for that short time. I have created an annual ritual of cutting some of the flowers, that goes something like this: I very cautiously cut several of the flowers, while trying to avoid the many ants, spiders and earwigs (my least favorite insect!) nestled inside, shaking the flowers off the entire way through the backyard to the back porch, sometimes letting them sit their for a while to get rid of any lurking insects, cutting the extra leaves off, shaking them (again), and then putting them into a beautiful cobalt blue vase and bringing them inside. The flowers usually keep for a week or so, before we have to throw them out, although a couple of years ago, they wilted after only a couple of days, and we couldn't figure out why. I think it may have had something to do with the air though, because our bread was also going bad really fast during that time. Some pictures of the peonies are posted below. :)

Peonies in their special blue vase

As for gardening news, we have been a little behind with tilling and weeding the garden, and I still haven't planted the last few things, but they are in pots and already pretty big, so I'm hoping that they'll be fine for the next day or two. The plants that are already in the ground, include sugar snap peas, pickling cucumbers, lemon cucumbers, some preexisting, strawberry, raspberry, blueberry, Logan berry bushes/plants, and some grape vines, and a marionberry plant that my mom got this year. The plants still needing to go into the ground, include zucchini, yellow summer squash, pumpkin, 4 different types of tomato, and some walla walla sweet onions. I'm hoping to be able to go get a few more starts, but I will have to see where we are after planting what we have so far. I'm really looking forward to trying my hand at canning pickles and tomatoes this year. Hopefully it will all work out, without any big accidents.

Three days of Weeding.....

Ends in this:

 And there are still many MANY more to go.

Weeds and Kiwi

Today was my 19th birthday and I spent it shopping for plants and helping my mom pull tons and tons of weeds all over her yard. As a gift, my mom got me a male Hayward kiwi vine while we were out, and I'll be getting a female as soon as they are in stock again. I love kiwi fruit and I thought it was interesting that you have to have both a male and a female plant in order to produce fruit.

The last two days have been absolutely beautiful, with lots of sunshine and temperatures in the 70's, and I was glad to be outside. I worked muscles that I forgot existed and am happy to be sore, because I feel like we accomplished a lot. I'm looking forward to doing even more tomorrow. We're planning on planting a garden this year, and I've started some seeds inside, which means that we have to hurry up and till the soil. I am hoping that the plants that I started will survive, especially the tomatoes, so that I can try my hand at canning using the canner I received for my birthday. I love learning new skills, especially those that will help me in living a more self-sufficient lifestyle, and plan to learn many more. For tonight though, I think I'll be content applying some aloe to my sunburn and heading to bed early (at least early for me).