Gardening
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Soup From The Garden
We had a scattering of beets that survived a round of seed planting back in January. They were part of the bad carrot planting we had, rains too heavy and washing away the seeds. But a few stuck and it was finally time to pull them up and replace them with peppers. When we were pulling them I was reminded of this recipe from a new-to-me blog that I bookmarked over a month ago. I dug it up in my feed reader, looked it over and decided it was doable. As you see above, all of that came from our garden. The only thing that did not come from the…
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Digging the Earth | Homesteading, Gardening and Heritage
Slowly we’re starting to think about purchasing our first house with some land to go with it. Not a lot of land, but bigger than your typical suburban lot. It’s funny, we’ll be married 10 years this June and for those 10 years we’ve rented our abodes, bummed with our parents for awhile, called a flame orange tent home, as well as a couple of motels/hotels. So, it is a little strange to think that we would be actually putting money towards something that in 15-30 years we could call our own (because really, it is still the bank’s until we pay it off). With that I’ve starting seriously thinking…
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Taproot
A couple of weeks ago I was reading a blog when they mentioned Taproot Magazine, a new publication partly founded by Soule Mama. I used to read her blog often but haven’t much in the last few years so I went to the magazine’s website and to her website to read more about it. Instantly I was enamored and I had to have it. So I subscribed as a founding subscriber for a discounted rate and between doing that and reading more blogs with photos of the magazine, I’ve been wondering where mine was. Well, yesterday I opened the mailbox at lunch to see it sitting there. I was so…
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Meet the Ladies | Tomatoes
The Ones We Bought In an effort to jump start the season of tomatoes we decided to buy a few plants already started at our local nursery. I’m not big on hybrids but Chris’ mom loves Early Girl and so we decided to give her a try. I’ve wanted to try Cherokee Purple for years but it has never made it into our garden. I have seeds, in storage. We’ll see how she performs for us. I ended up with two Cherokee Purple’s because when I went to grab this one, I broke the tomato. Guilty, I had to get a second one and pay for both. I decided to…
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Mid-March in the Garden
We had two, mostly straight, days of rain last weekend. During the breaks in the rain we spent a little time in the garden getting seeds in the ground and transplanting tomato seedlings. I took all of these last Sunday evening after the rain has finally stopped and the blue sky came out. The photo above shows the sugar snap pea trellis but on this side of it will be some long beans. We planted salvia out front to entice the butterflies and hummingbirds. The sugar snap peas from below. The front half of this plot is spinach and flat leaf parsley. Chris was able to start sweet basil seeds…
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The Sunflowers
I popped into a Dollar General on the way home from visiting Chris at his field hotel two weekends ago to grab a few goodie package items to send to my niece and nephew. The seed display was promptly placed in the middle of the aisle near the cash register and I could not continue on, I had to stop. No, the seeds weren’t organic and who knows where they were from, but I was so enticed by the super cheap price, somewhere less than $0.50 each for most packets, that I grabbed up a few packages of sunflower seeds, ageratum, celosia and zinnia. I can’t wait for the celosia,…
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Lovely Lupinus texensis
We have one plot in our garden that has radishes growing but otherwise we have filled it with bluebonnets we bought at a garden center and bluebonnets we seeded, along with a few other non-edible flowering plants. I like having a small section dedicated to flowers, especially since we aren’t focusing on collecting plants right now. I’d been checking on the bluebonnets but hadn’t had any inkling that they were ready to bloom. Then one day last week I walked right up and the blue-purple flower stood out and stunned me with its brilliance. Finally, the bluebonnets were out!
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The Garden at the Turn of the Month
It seems like nature has switched ‘on’ and the plants are ready for spring. Overnight, blooms are coming out of seemingly nowhere. Sugar daddy snap pea bud Sugar daddy snap pea blossom The Brussels sprouts have not done that great. Unfortunately we have a row of beds that gets a lot of shade in the winter. The shade comes from a rodeo shelter that blocks a lot of sunlight from mid-morning to mid-afternoon, thus some of the plants in this section are stunted. I think the sprouts would have matured more had they had access to more light. I’ve been eyeing their leaves to add into my morning green smoothies,…
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A New Writing Adventure | Sprout Dispatch
Sometime in early January I came up with the idea of Sprout Dispatch. Of course it wasn’t called that initially, it took the brainstorming of Chel, my brother Curtis and myself to get the name, but here we are, ready to start. What is this about? Well, it’s a collaboration between the three of us on our gardening adventures. I wrote more about it in the post that is up today. There will be thrice weekly posts, one from each of us, for awhile. We’re starting with themes and interpreting them our own way, but I’m sure the blog will evolve as time goes on. So, please, subscribe to the…
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The Turnip Harvest
We pulled all of the Golden Ball Turnips last weekend in an effort to make room for a spring crop of cucumbers. Some of the turnips were gigantic, including some that I had thinned and transplanted in a spot that we’d just harvested radishes several months ago. We took the turnips home and made two batches of mashed turnips and froze them for future eating. I love having all of this food, but I can’t wait to get a deep freezer and more storage space for keeping food for throughout the year.