May 29, 2025

As before mentioned, this has been a strange spring. Right now, we've had several days of chilly, cloudy, sprinkly weather.  Jim planted all the early seeds and potatoes, and most of them didn't come up. It didn't warm up like some years and we had no rain, so we blamed it on that. Jim planted again in early May, we had some warm days and some wet ones and things are coming up. The lettuce, though, not at all. 

I planted these flowers in my flower garden with the intent to write down where I planted them. I didn't so I'm going to try to remember now. The Alyssum I planted next to the iris south of the house because it is supposed to like hot, dry weather. That spot doesn't get watered. I planted one next to the back of the waterfall into the pond, and one some place in the rock garden section, and the zinnas ... I can't remember. It's getting pretty weedy out there and Jim helped me one day getting the rock garden section cleaned up. Then it started raining again. We got 2". It's a big help for the new grass planted where the old septic tank was and the new one is. 

 

April 19, 2025

A new growing season is upon us. I thought we had a pretty mild winter, with a couple of weeks of near zero weather and a total of 9" of snow in the only significant snows we had this winter and they were after the first of the year including the one in March as evidenced in the first photo here. 

Last fall mom shared some spring bulbs with me and I evidently planted them and forgot about them because I was surprised when they bloomed. The funny thing is, Mom forgot about hers, too.

According to my brother, netted iris.

I've never been able to get crocuses to grow, so we'll see how they do in future years. If they look like they are lying down, they are, because the wind is blowing.

I love my scillas. They are the only thing in the garden that is really blue. My blue bells are very blue and are growing into a big clump, but I didn't get a picture.

I love all the different kinds of daffodils and jonquils I have. It has been a strange spring with hot and cold weather at the wrong times and some of my jonquils at the front of the house didn't bloom at all and my hyacinths never came up.

Pear blossoms.

End of the day.

 

July 4, 2024

 I've really fallen down on the job on keeping up this blog.  I've been spending too much time knitting to the detriment of everything else. 

Our garden is going well, so are the weeds.  We've had more than usual rain this spring, 4" in this last week, and plenty before then. Other parts of the state have had more rain, plus tornados, hail and high winds. We've been fortunate to miss all of that. 

I've been putting brown wood chips on the flower gardens. I'm having my usual trouble of getting things to grow. The soil is not the best and it's shady. On a side note, the two ash trees that produce seeds, in the flower garden and the front yard got shriveled up leaves that turned black when they fell off. My son said it was emerald ash beetle. I looked it up and a fungus does the same thing. Emerald ash borer infected trees usually die top down, and fungus damaged trees grow new normal leaves. Ours regrew leaves so my diagnosis is fungus. The tree in the backyard that doesn't produce seeds, was not affected.

I have picked all the lettuce and spinach and put it in the freezer for smoothies. We've had a couple messes of beets before this and I'm using onions.  A few of the yellow onion are already affected by the usual fungus. I intend to pick more at a time than I need and freeze what I don't use. 

Today, Jim braved the mud and picked 1 3/4 buckets of beets. I pickled 5 quarts and saved a few to take to my folks. I got a white beet, the second so far. 

Jim had butchered 4 chickens and plans to do more tomorrow. 

Beet photos:

Beet greens -- not bad

I washed these beets outside, they were so muddy.

 

May 1, 2024

 Gardening season has started, albeit a little late on our end. Jim has been sick with a very tiring and coughing virus and finally has enough energy to get some planting done. He planted potatoes two days ago, onions, beets, peas, lettuce, carrots and swiss chard yesterday. We don't have spinach seed. We got almost 2.5" of rain last week, which was nice, but also hindered the planting. I have been slowly weeding and getting trash out of the flower gardens. It's been windy the last few days and it hasn't been a fun job. Today was cloudy as well as windy, so I didn't go out at all. I planted a couple of perennials. One I don't remember just now and the other was and ice flower plant. Our mix of shade, sun and clay soil limits what and how things grow. 

I have what I think is a spaghetti squash plant growing in a pot in my dining room. The last spaghetti squash we opened to cook had two sprouting seeds and I planted them. One came up and is blooming. Since it grew among all our other squash it could be cross pollinated and who knows what we will get. 

September 30, 2023

 Summer if over, and I haven't blogged much about gardening this year.

We had a prolific year. I had more cucumbers than I needed. We ate them as salad every day. I use equal parts of mayo and sour cream and sprinkle in a little sugar and a little more garlic powder. I have a lot of pickles left over from last year, so I only made as many as I though we would need besides those, and we pulled up most of the vines. Our tomatoes, too, did really well. I made 60 pints of tomato soup and 50 quarts of juice. I canned and froze two lugs of peaches. We also put away 101 quarts of corn in three sessions. I am out of jars. Usually, I put tomatoes in the freezer and when I want juice I take out an ice cream bucket of frozen tomatoes and make some. The freezer this year is full of chickens, beef and deer. We need to be having some company to help us eat it. Both of us eat less than we used to. 

In the flower garden realm, I am feeling a real lack of interest in doing any more weeding or cleaning up, so I haven't. I'm also very disappointed in the petunias I planted in my big flower garden. I don't know whether it's the soil or the shade. I think pinks do better. 

Next year I want to budget enough to go hog-wild on bedding plants and crowd them in, since they don't seem to spread, just hang on. 

I'm glad Jim likes to do the gardening. I don't do very much picking, but as the tomatoes and beans come on, I usually help. 

Our peppers are all in the freezer, and so is the okra. Jim forgot about planting beans until the summer was half over, so when he planted them, they took forever to get going and we picked a few now and then and then ignored them. A week ago, those bean plants were burgeoning with beans. We picked them and it was such a tiring job, that we pulled up 2/3 of them, intending to pick the ones left to eat. We haven't. I put 7 quarts in the freezer. 

May 3, 2023

 Spring has been a slow starter this year.  We've had plenty of cold springs of late, but as soon as we get a bit more green or a few 'soft' days, we start hoping the cold is gone and warm and growing days are right around the corner. Hope springs eternal. We had some hot days in April, but more often we've had chill and wind. A lot of wind. Several days with 30+mph wind made it unpleasant to want to be out working in gardens or at all. 

Yesterday was a very pleasant day, with 57 degree temps and little wind. I even felt warm digging out a few weeds and planting seeds. I planted moss ross by the mailbox and some more in our little corner plot at the front of the house, along with some snapdragon seeds.  I'm not sure I'll have much luck with growing things from seeds, except zinnas which a harvested myself. The alyssum I planted under the flag pole are tiny things just starting to come up.

Jim says that the peas are coming up as well.  

April 15, 2023

Spring is coming, although it doesn't look like it from these pictures on March 26th. We woke that day to a surprise of 8" of snow on Sunday morning. 

Now, nearly a month later, our garden has been covered with chicken manure and compost, chiseled, tilled and planted with early crops. Potatoes, spinach, lettuce, beets, peas and onions.  We have been having a problem with two kinds of fungus on our onions, root rot and black mildew. The online solution is not to plant onions where there is fungus for 6 years. Our solution is to plant fewer onions and harvest them before the fungus does. 

We bought a dozen JetStar tomato plants. We really liked the way the produced and stayed healthy last year, so we are trying them again. We have 2 milk jugs of the 12 we need to cover them, and we plan on getting some yellow tomato plants later. 

I have planted alyssum seeds by the flag pole and the spot by the driveway. I planted snapdragon seeds there also.  (by the driveway) I intended to plant them in two spots, but when I was half done I noticed I spilled the rest onto the edging, so now I will have plants were I don't want them. If they come up, anyway. 

After three hot days last week, two of which the temperatures approached 90. we are expecting frost for the next couple of nights.  We had drizzle today, which was welcome.  We are very dry around here at the moment. 

 

September 4, 2020

The summer is winding down with cooler nights and a few cooler days mixed in with some very hot and windy ones.  I finally have enough tomatoes to can.  I've been putting some small amounts in the freezer right along.  I made a batch of tomato soup last week, some more pickles, and 6 qts of tomato juice.  This has been a strange year for some plants. Our tomatoes were late getting started and had black spots on them, they are better now, more fruit and fewer spots.  The okra is taller than it has ever been, over 6 ft. tall.  The cucumbers have been as prolific as ever, but I haven't been too enthused, I still have pickles leftover from last year.  

I pulled up the bean plants a week ago.  They've done well enough, though, thankfully not as well as usual.  We don't eat tons of green beans around here. 

The weeds have gotten away from us, to the point of letting most of them just go.  Jim has been cutting them off and feeding them to the cows in our pasture that belong to a friend.  The pasture is pretty dry, so they relish the tender parts of the leaves.  We could use some rain. 

Jim has started to harvest potatoes.  They seem to have something wrong with them, some are rotten where they met the stem.  

Water Hyacinth--August 8th.

Bumble Bee at the Farm 

Very Tall Okra 

Front door zinnas 

July 31, 2020

Our sprinkler system controller got frizzled last week by lightening.  Our printer was taken out a couple weeks before.  This was just before we left for Indiana so our lawn and flower garden dried out while we were gone.  Parts of our state are in a drought and parts are getting more than enough rain.  I've been going out a little every day and weeding the flower gardens.  Jim is behind on the vegetable garden, and no wonder, we've been gone.

So far, I've put 4 qts of yellow squash/zucchini slices and 6 qts of grated in the freezer.  Jim picked all he's going to off the yellow summer apple tree and we put six very big gallon bags of slices in the freezer.  I've been picking up the windfalls for the chickens and to keep the bugs away for future years.  We have no rain, but wind and the rest of the apple are so ripe, they are falling.  

Yesterday I made beet pickles out of half the small row of beets, and got 4 1/2 qts.  We also did our first batch of corn.  Jim picked 15 dozen, after eating 8 ears for supper, the rest made 31 qts.  Fifteen of which went to Lorene's family.  Lorene was here for a steak supper, and I made green bean casserole and funeral potatoes, and cucumber salad, and deviled eggs.  Zane cut the watermelon and filled the eggs and sprinkled paprika with a heavy hand.  They had planned to eat steak a couple of days ago, and other supper plans happened.  

July, 10, 2020

Water Hyacinth -- July 3

Ready to divide into two.

Now it's two, and spreading.

T

We are eating squash now, These are volunteer hybrids.

And, our pullets are laying eggs.  

Second time for Summer Scramble

I enjoy picking small, perfect, pretty squash, until we have too many.  With some extra I made a batch of zucchini bread and put some slices in the freezer.  The sliced work well when making scramble in the winter.

June 16, 2020

The garden is all planted.  The corn, especially those first two rows, aren't making a good stand.  Jim had to replant the okra, none came up.  He also replanted cucumbers, zucchini and yellow summer squash, because only half the hills came up.  The spinach did badly.  I only have one plant.  I have four heads of lettuce coming on.  I wish there was more.  Our beets are doing excellently well, having been eaten off by rabbits, the last two years.  Our potatoes and tomatoes are both doing well, as well as the beans, which will as usual, prove too many.  I still have two gallons of frozen beans left. I think the cold weather we had in the middle of April may have been the reason for non-productive seeds.

We've been having a spell of very windy weather.  This is really a more normal weather pattern for us. A few years ago, we had three summers without much wind.  It felt strange at first, but it was a very pleasant change.  We seem to be back the way we were, and are as aggravated as ever with so many days of 30 mph wind.  I think it's windier than usual.  I say that we don't consider it a windy day around here until the wind reaches 25 mph. 

Jim bought me a water hyacinth the other day.  I want to take pictures as it grows.  It grows fast and and enjoy watching it. It's that tiny plant in the smaller area in the pond.

April 13, 2020

Saturday the 11th, was a beautiful, sunny, non-windy, almost hot day.  

Jim worked in the garden all day planting early vegetables, 

carrots, beets, peas, lettuce, spinach and potatoes. 

We need to remember it takes 5# of seed potatoes for one row.

We didn't get some of the varieties of seed we usually get, the seeds were well picked over by the time we bought ours. 

I spent my almost hour cleaning up and weeding my flower beds.  I work until I start getting tired and then take my cart full of vegetation to the compost pile. 

I also picked a lot of daffodils since a freezing cold snap was expected.

Today we woke up to a 17 degree morning.  

I haven't looked out to see what has survived.  

Here are some before photos.

My pile of daffys

And in pint jars.  My favorite flowers.

April 6, 2020

Today was a the first really nice day in April.  It was especially so, because of the lack of wind.  

It's the first time I was out cleaning the flower gardens in April.  I picked all the daffodils that were out.  They seem late, but we had a hard freeze that did the hyacinths in.  

My scillas are blooming as well as the creeping charlie and hen bit.  I'm hoping to be out early enough to curb some of those. (not the scillas)  I take boiling water and scald the ones in the brick garden walk.

Jim planted onions this weekend, and mowed for the first time today. He also extended our sidewalk with rock.  

April 3

March 24, 2020

Every year I know I need to get out and start cleaning my flower beds early in March, because we generally have some nice days then.  

But, I don't do it.  

This year March came in like a lamb with sunny days and temperatures in the 50s-70s.  

(We also had some really nice days in February, but I refuse to work outside in February.)

This winter wasn't as cold or snowy as the last two years.  We had our biggest snow in last December,

almost 11 inches.

Dec 29

This is still the same snow. 

January 25

Windy days and bag kites

March 5

March 9

March 13 

March 19  --- Hail

I got out March 21st and cleaned out flower beds to the tune of two garden cart loads and two more loads today.  

Jim is outside planting rhubarb, which we have never had any luck with since it needs acidic soil and we don't have any, and asparagus to add to our current patch.  

After that, he's building rafters for our new chicken house/garden shed.

This project will take awhile, because even though he got most of the wood free as leftovers from some of the Costco chicken house projects, (we put the gas in), there will be a lot of other expenses and we pay as we build.