Garden Pics and Stormy Weather

Our garden is finally beginning to look like a garden. 

That's great, in general, but the late growth is presenting a few problems.  Our early crops, like broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cabbage, are just starting to take off.  They are cool weather plants, so not only do we wonder if they have time to mature properly before really hot temperatures arrive, we were counting on them nearing harvest by now so that we could sow other seeds in their place.

What to do?  What to do?

As they are still rather small, we are considering transplanting them back into pots and trying to over-summer them and put them back in the ground as large bedding plants in late August for a fall harvest.  I'm thinking this isn't the best idea.

We could just sacrifice them so we can use the real estate to plant our summer crops (i.e., zucchini, peppers, etc.)  It would work, and monetarily we'd only be out a few seeds, but I just hate the idea.

Or, we could leave them be and add more beds (raised or in-ground) to plant our summer crops in.  This is probably what we will do.

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We had thunderstorms with strong winds overnight.  Here is a limb from a small maple that has broken and is draped over the power line running from the pole to our house.  Our electric utility has been notified, but because we still have power, we are not on the priority list (apparently lots of folks lost power in the storm).  We've been told a crew will come out soon, but probably not today.

Problem is, more storms are on the way.  In the 15 minutes it's taken me to write this since taking the pic, the skies have grown dark again and the radar is turning red.  If there's much wind with this next round, we could easily lose power.

Still, I'll take this weather any day over the snow we had three weeks ago.

Haphazard Homestead Happenings

Where does the time go?  The days are just flying by lately and so much is happening around here.

The gardening is beginning to show signs of growth.  Except for the potatoes, onions and ginger, everything we planted this year went directly into the ground as seeds.  Almost all the little seedlings have started to come up.  We have carrots, onion, radishes, peas, lettuces, Swiss chard, spinach, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kohlrabi, turnips, and beets.  No signs of cauliflower yet, though.  We've been eating asparagus on a regular basis, and some of our rhubarb is almost ready to harvest.

We had a couple of nights of freezing temps last week (in late April?), but we covered everything and it all made it.  The weather, and therefore the garden, are running a few weeks behind this year, and I'm wondering now if we'll have any room for our late spring plantings that I had thought would follow behind some of the early crops.  Oh well, we might just have to build another raised bed or two.

Like everything else, our flowering trees are behind schedule.  Our red bud, white bud and crab apple are just now starting to bloom.  One of our young rhododendrons is in full splendor right now, though.

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I have almost completed my April craft project and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to finish by tomorrow afternoon.  Look for it on Wednesday, along with the rest of my April goals update.

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For those who enjoy hearing about Bob the Basement Cat, he is doing well, but we've come to the conclusion that he is either partial or completely deaf.  I'm not sure how we missed it, actually.  We can often go in and out of the basement and do whatever we need to do, and if he's asleep or just looking away from us, he might never realize we're there.  Also, when you speak or make other noises, his ears don't move toward the sound, not even a little.  It might also explain why his meows are so very loud and might be the reason he craves touch so much.

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Our weekend schedules are filling up fast for spring/summer.  A couple of biggish home improvement projects, a trip to the zoo on Mother's Day, a day of city-wide garage sales, and camping, have us booked up for most weekends until after Independence Day.

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19 more days until school is out for Kat, possibly for good!  We have decided we will unschool her once this year is over.  Learning about this lifestyle change is huge in our lives right now and is what I've been spending much of my time on recently.  I promise, though, that this shift won't turn this into an unschooling blog.  I'm not sure I'll blog about it much at all, but if I do, I'll spin it off to a separate blog much like I do with our RVing stories.  Just thought I'd mention it, since it's been taking me away from the blog and Facebook page lately.

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I apologize again for not being around to visit your blogs and pages much lately, but I'm going to try to remedy that this week. 

Mute Monday

Settling Back In

We had a very nice spring break last week, but whew! -- I'm glad to get back to some usual routines this week.  Kat is back to school, Shane is working out of town 4 days a week, which has become almost "normal" for us, and winter appears to finally be settling down into spring.  Here are a few highlights from the weekend:

Kat was with her mom and step-dad for the weekend, and they took in a special Doctor Who event at a local theater.

Kat, my son-in-law M, and friends.

Meanwhile, Shane did some work on our back deck - by himself on Saturday and with my dad's help on Sunday.  The condensed story is that we had a deck, we removed the railings to put up a sun room.  We decided against the sun room in favor of building a larger deck, then we decided against the idea of a larger deck and in favor of just putting the railings back up. 

Of course, the original railings were long gone, we we had to buy new lumber.   We used some extra fence pickets to put a privacy wall at one end of the deck.  We'll be the first to admit our own yard is pretty junky looking right now, but our neighbor's yard on that side is a real eyesore with a shed that is falling in on itself and a trampoline that is hanging in shreds.  We'd rather not see it, and we'd rather not have their dog go into a barking frenzy every time we step out onto the deck, so the privacy wall helps with both of those issues.  Looks pretty nice, too, if you ask me.

Our deck is a tall one, 6-7 feet above ground level, so we still need to buy siding of some sort to underskirt it, and of course we need to stain and seal the new lumber, but this is a nice start.

While the guys worked on the deck, I managed to fix breakfast for us, do several loads of laundry, and prep and plant one of the raised beds with snow peas and onions.  We ended the weekend with a nice meal out with my dad and some friends.

I have a full week planned.  I plan to back outside to plant more of our raised beds, make a batch of soap, complete my menu plan for April, return to my M-W-F blogging schedule, and possibly start my next craft project.

What is on your schedule for this week?

Last Minute Meal Planning

This coming week is spring break for Kat.  We were supposed to be on a mini-vacation out of town all week, but more snowy weather and a work situation changed those plans for us.  I can't get outside to work in the garden, either, so I thought this week might provide a good opportunity for me to publish a few posts to this neglected ol' blog of mine.

These changes in plans have thrown a monkey wrench into meal planning.  Thinking we'd be out of town, I had nothing planned for our suppers this week.  We have to eat, and fortunately, we're stocked up on just about everything, so here's what I came up in a hurry:

Sunday:  Balsamic venison roast, mashed potatoes, peas, green beans, coconut cake.

Monday:  Lasagna, garlic toast, corn, lettuce and spinach salad, coconut cake.

Tuesday:  Bratwursts, potatoes au gratin, sauteed Swiss chard, green beans, coconut cake.

Wednesday:  Leftovers from the three previous meals.

Thursday:  Barbecue chicken kabobs with spicy bacon rub, potato salad, steamed cabbage, green beans.

Friday:  Fried fish (spoonbill), homemade french fries (recipe to come), coleslaw, home-canned peaches.

Saturday:  Kung pao pork tacos, lettuce salad, home-canned peaches (although we have tentative plans to go out with friends instead)


What's on your menu this week?

And by the way...today is our 13th wedding anniversary.  We decided to go out last Friday night instead of tonight.  We even splurged a little...after all, we're worth it.

More Snow

Robyn, my online friend from Australia (with whom I traded aprons last year), mentioned that she'd like to see pictures of all the snow we've been getting.  I'm happy to post them.

This first picture was taken Monday of this week, following the snow we had last Thursday.  At our house, we had about 11 inches of snow, and as you can see, there was about 7-8 inches of it still on the ground.

The rest of these were taken yesterday, after another 9+ inches fell.  We were fortunate not to get the 15 or more inches that were originally in the forecast.

No grilling for a while.

Can you believe this is 6-7 foot tall dogwood?
I'm happy to say I think it will recover.

And this one usually looks like a traditional Christmas tree.

At least 50 shades of gray here.

Shane is working out of town this week, so I've been digging out in stages.  I've done the back deck twice, both times so our semi-feral cat can find his way up to eat.  I did the front steps and sidewalk as far as the driveway this morning, and in a while I'll go back out and finish the driveway. 

It's still snowing very lightly, but at least it has stopped accumulating.  It's a pain in the butt, but it will be oh-so-good for the garden later this spring.

Garden Planning - Step 2 - Buying Seed

Knowing how much to plant each year is the hardest step in garden planning, I think.  As far as I can tell, no matter how I choose to calculate amounts, I'm going to get them wrong. That said, I still think it's better to work on this step and at least have an idea, rather than to just forge ahead blindly.  After all, neither a truckload of zucchini nor a spoonful of peas will do me much good.

I started out by taking my initial list from Step 1 and considering how much we eat of each.  This isn't an exact science, and some calculations will be less brain twisting easier than others. 

One way to figure amounts is to determine how many times a week your family eats a vegetable, multiply that by the number of people in your family, then by 52 weeks a year to determine your annual consumption in servings.  It's easy enough to Google to find out how many servings are in a pound of that particular vegetable, but if you can find even two websites that remotely agree on how many pounds per plant that vegetable will yield, please send them to me, because I couldn't find them.

Another way to plan is to remember how much you planted last year.  Every year we plant about 8 square feet of lettuce.  We don't plant it in rows, we just broadcast the seeds.  Every year I'm certain it won't be enough to satisfy those early spring cravings for fresh salads.  Every year it ends up being too much and bolting and/or getting bitter before we can eat it all.  Every year the excess becomes cheap filler for the compost pile.  In an odd way, this works for us, so why fix what isn't broken?

So this is how I proceeded, best-guessing my way through the roster of things we'd like to grow, and ultimately moving a few more things off the planting list and onto the purchasing list.  Once this list was finalized, Shane and I compared it with the seeds we already have on hand and know are good, then we ordered the rest. 

At this point in our gardening experience, I don't feel qualified to recommend specific varieties or seed sources. I will tell you that most of the seeds we already have on hand came from Hometown Seeds in a promo pack I received a few years ago.  Our seed potatoes were gifted to us (thanks, Melinda!).  We ordered the rest of what we needed from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, both because they sell non-GMO seeds and because they are located in our home state.  We have just a few things left to buy; we'll probably get those from local nurseries.  You'll have to do your own research and make the decisions that are best for your family.

Next up...I plan the layout of the garden while I wait for the snow to melt.

Deep

In anticipation of the snow storm, I missed Wednesday's post; today's won't be much of one either, unfortunately.

In the city, nights are bright when snow's on the ground.
Taken 10:00 last night, out our back door, with no flash.

We're sitting in snow, 10-12 inches deep right now.  With Shane and Kat both home yesterday and today, the house is feeling a a little full for weekdays.  It's hard for me to find my regular groove, blog writing included.

So, I've been doing what needs to be done, but otherwise I've been immersed neck deep in the archives of a blog I just discovered called Hickery Holler Farm.  The Canned Quilter is also a Missouri blogger and it appears we have a lot in common.

I hope to get Shane involved in some more garden planning this weekend because this snow won't last long and garden season truly is right around the corner.  With luck, I'll have more about that on Monday.

Have a great weekend!

Garden Tuesday - First Day of Spring

Geometric strawberries.

We had very warm weather all last week with nothing but more nice weather in the extended forecast.  The calendar says spring is here, and I believe it.  Not saying that cooler weather couldn't return or a frost couldn't happen, but I'm just not feeling like it will.

We've been busy growing our garden area.  We started out a few years ago with three raised beds.  We've added at least one bed each year and started planting in-ground at our fence line.  This year we've added three plant pyramids, four boxed-in raised beds of various sizes, an "un-boxed" mounded raised bed , trenches for potatoes and a conventionally-tilled plot to try our hand at raising corn.  We've nearly doubled our garden space this year.

This time of year, new beauty can be seen daily, whether in the form of something we planted or in the form of plants and trees that were already here when we moved in six years ago.  Here are some photos of what was going on Sunday afternoon.  Hopefully it will be sunny the next time I take garden shots.

This pic shows about half of our raised beds and the three pyramids.

Closest to the camper are our three original beds and
one we added the second year of gardening.

The two background pyramids have strawberries in them.  If you look closely at the pyramid in the foreground, you can see seedlings just emerging.  This structure is planted with lettuces, radishes, carrots, beets and green onions.

These are made from a split tractor rim and have 1st-year asparagus
planted in them. The mounded bed behind will eventually
be planted in bush beans.

This square bed we added a couple of weeks ago has been planted with ground cherries.  Nothing is planted in the two new beds behind/beside it yet.

Our first small strawberry blossoms.

Marching March peas.

Container chives coming back for a third season.

Redbud buds not quite ready to open.

This post is being shared at Garden Tuesday at Sidewalk Shoes.