Garden Change

Our early spring garden.

This photo was taken on April 19 of our backyard vegetable garden. Things have changed in just a little over 6 weeks. Take a look!

Look how the letuce has grown!! And it is delicious. Big red leaf is Red Derby, Caretaker (head lettuce), green bibb, speckled bibb, and green romaine are the different kinds of lettuces in the plantings.

Strawberries blooming on May 14.

Amazing how just eleven days after taking the picture above, I had berries for breakfast! On May 25, my birthday, my hubby surprised me with strawberries from the garden for my morning cereal. A very special treat since the JUNE-bearing are about two weeks early.  So far my DH has picked nine pounds of the sweet berries...soooooooooo good!

Memorial Day--Take Time to Remember

Memorial Day

Memorial Day is a day to honor and remember those who served in our Military. 

Take time today to say a prayer for those who serve today in our armed forces 

and recognize those who gave their lives for our country.

Onion Maggots--yewwwwww

                                                            

Is there anything more disgusting than maggots? Hate those pests. And this year, we have problems with them in our onions. It's been cold and wet, ideal conditions for them. We probably should have rotated the onion crops, but we didn't. It is impossible to get rid of them now. 

The Weekend Gardener has an extensive discussion on these nasty critters. Check out the site. This photo is from that e-mag and there are more good images of the disgusting creatures.

My DH has decided to grow onions in a container for this year instead of planting them in our ground. He will have to do some work on the soil to get rid of the maggots.

Growing Tomatoes Vertically

Growing tomatoes with no tomato cages

My DH is growing tomatoes this year with no tomato cages. He's decided to plant the tomatoes and then weave the plants through the re-enforcement wire. You can see the plants just set out next to the wire.

In fact he is planning to grow a lot of vegetables this year and attaching them to the wire. He calls it vertical gardening. It saves space and just think how easy it will be to pick the green beans standing up!


He is planning on growing Crista, Early Girl, and Sweet 100 tomatoes, cucumbers, honeydew, muskmelon, green and yellow pole beans, and peas on the wire. Stay tuned for how he will hold up the melons..I want to see that for sure....

Beans just set out next to wire wall. Corn plants on the right of the picture.

Anticipating Strawberry Season

Strawberries in blossom

Just looking at these strawberries in bloom makes my mouth water for strawberry cake or pie or a bowl of Cheerios topped with the delicious beauties. But I'll have to anticipate those treats making the sweet taste all the better.

These are June bearing strawberries. We gave up on Ever bearing berries because the production was low. However I see there are some new varieties out which are supposed to be improved. They call these Day Neutral strawberries and promise to bloom spring, summer, and fall. Let me know if you have tried these strawberries and how you liked them.

Waiting for this season's tasty berries. Yum!

Spring Garden is Planted

Spring garden...Hooray!

In the photo you can see the tulips, the bird bath (which had a chunk of ice in it this morning), the greenhouse to the right side of the photo, and the garden in the background. Please check the right side bar to see how my DH puts up this 10' x 12' structure. He takes it down and stores it in the garage when the plants are all moved out in the spring.

Forsythia, tulips, lilacs and gorgeous flowering trees. It must be spring..Who knew it would arrive four weeks? Amazing weather this year. Our tulips are gorgeous. Usually the deer are munching them off before they get a chance to bloom, but we put netting over the area this fall before we left for Florida.

My DH planted rye last fall in the garden, so with the early warm weather, the rye was very high and thick when we arrived home. He had to wait for it to die before he could plant the garden. At this time though, it's just as well he waited a bit because we are experiencing frosty nights and cool days.

Our spring garden is planted now with onions, beets, peas, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, radishes, and strawberries. The strawberries are in already established beds which wintered over beautifully. They are blooming early, so we covered them when frost was forecast--more frost coming too. Hmmm...our June bearing berries may be May bearing this year. Mmmmmmm....love those berries!

Please check back again as I will be updating you on this year's garden every week, offering gardening tips, garden information, and recipes for your garden produce.

Wishing you all a happy gardening season!

Christmas Time at Florida's Disney World-Living with the Land

What a beautiful time of year and especially nice weather in Florida. We took advantage of it when we visited Walt Disney World, Orlando, FL last week. I had gardeners in mind when we took the boat tour through the Living with the Land attraction in Epcot, one of the worlds at Disney. Disney also includes the Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, and Hollywood Studios.

Living with the Land is an amazing inside look at experimental farming in deserts and aquaculture. Talk about intensive gardening, small space gardening, and thinking out of the box. Sweet potatoes and pumpkin plants not grown in the ground, but supported in the air. Plants in PVC piping swirled into growing stations that can stack many levels. We saw vanilla and stevia plants and many unusual varieties. The greenhouses grow crops native to many cultures and the produce is used in the Epcot restaurants.

The World Showcase at Epcot has many nations offering delicious native dishes. You can take advantage of those places, but if you are on a budget, go to the cafeteria-style restaurant in the same building as Living with the Land for a delicious meal. Especially a great place to treat the kids and adults to a sit-down, air-conditioned time for eating and relaxing.

I took a lot of photos inside the growing chambers, but it is a bit difficult to do so while riding along in a boat. I hope you enjoy looking at the photos and that some day, you too will get the opportunity to take the tour.

Inside the greenhouse

Pumpkins

Bananas

Enormous lemons bigger than grapefruit

Sweet potatoes

Varieties of lettuce

Strawberries

Unusual growing method, eh?

Cucumbers

Irrigating Your Garden

Greetings from Florida. We found our garden in good shape when we arrived this fall. My DH couldn't wait to get the plants he started in Michigan into the ground. They were packed in the back of the truck at least four days...no water either. They seem to be okay, no worse for the travel. Of course the sun and warm weather perks up everyone...even plants!

The first thing after planting the lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, he rigged up his irrigation system through out the garden.You can see from the pictures he uses pvc pipe and spaghetti style tubes. Each plant has a tube to water it. With one flick of the faucet, the garden gets watered. No more hanging onto a hose. It's fast and easy.

As you can see, this is a raised garden. I like the look of it with the deep green metal sides. We have two 6' x 10' planters with ten inch sides and a walkway between them.

Garden Tip: Our neighbor across the street decided to irrigate his garden like this too. He found window spline from the aluminum retail store makes a great tube to use.

To read more about this garden, click on the raised garden label in the list at the right.