Tag: garden

Gardening · Simple Sundays

Simple Sunday- Gardening

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“It’s been proven by quite a few studies that plants are good for our psychological development. If you green an area, the rate of crime goes down. Torture victims begin to recover when they spend time outside in a garden with flowers. So we need them, in some deep psychological sense, which I don’t suppose anybody really understands yet.”- Jane Goodall

“I grow as many of our vegetables as I can, because my granddad was a professional gardener, and it’s in the blood.”-Terry Pratchett

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”- Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy books and wise people. Everything – even mountains, rivers, plants and trees – should be your teacher.”-Morihei Ueshiba

“You’ve got to invest in the world, you’ve got to read, you’ve got to go to art galleries, you’ve got to find out the names of plants. You’ve got to start to love the world and know about the whole genius of the human race. We’re amazing people.”-Vivienne Westwood

“A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.”-D. Elton Trueblood

“You can pick wild strawberries with your eyes closed, locating them by smell, for they are two parts perfume to one part taste. An hour of searching might yield a handful if you’re lucky. Wild strawberries can’t be encouraged, nor can they be discouraged: They come to you unbidden and unearned. They appear, or do not, by the grace of the sun.”-Hope Jahren

Gardening

Garden Update

LSieh2 Comments

Piggy has started chasing squirrels! This is very exciting for two reasons. 1- The squirrels were eating all the started veggies off my plants before I could get them! And 2- We’re most likely keeping Piggy! She’s captured the Husband with her ridiculously goofy snorts and many dog kisses. She’s quite serious in this picture, as she was supervising the rearranging and cleaning of my sewing space. I’ll do that update in a few days, when I can get things put away. It’s still messy. It’s in a better spot though, I think, so that’s good.

She does like to be outside and we were super excited when she started treeing squirrels. She’s not quite fast enough to catch them though, at least so far. Tonight she stalked one across the yard while it was on the cinder blocks for the garden and then charged until it was up a tree. I approve quite hardily!

I learned an interesting fact this year. Tomatillos grow the husk first and then the fruit grows after that and into the husk! So cool, but I was a little confused at first. Here’s a picture.

I have two orange Juliet cherry tomatoes starting to turn and a lot of green ones on other plants. My homemade cages are mostly working. I am pleased with them, so I’ll set them up next year too.

I have eaten my second produce from the garden too! A little radish! We had one lonely strawberry this year. I think they need some extra compost in the fall to keep them better over the winter.

I also used some of the rhubarb in a fun new quick bread recipe. It was pretty good. I have also been excited about having arugula in my salads. It’s fun to have something to make the salads a little less boring.

My hot peppers are growing, the squirrels stole one, but abandoned it in the garden, as usual. My other peppers keep getting eaten before they can grow.

My zucchini has a lot of flowers, but they keep getting eaten, so I don’t know how many zucchini I’ll get this year. It bums me out, I was going to make more squash pickles to share with Dad.

I made a scare bag to put in the garden, but I might need a few more. My Grandpa Ed used to put them in his garden and he was a fantastic gardener, so I’m hoping some of his garden luck will rub off on me. My rhubarb is planted in his memory as well, so I was excited to use it this year.

Some of my herbs are growing and I need to replace a couple of them. It’s been too hot and I haven’t been able to water them enough. I also transplanted a couple of the volunteer tomato plants into pots instead of in the middle of the cucumbers/carrots/etc.

We have a couple of interlopers that we are going to work on getting rid of. These are American Pokeweed and these are we think, Poison Oak.

My younger brother is staying with us for a little while and as it turns out, he’s immune to poison ivy! We’re all hoping this also applies to poison oak, although he will be wearing the necessary protective gear of course. He’s going to dig out the area by the apple tree that we had planned to turn into another garden space anyway. I’m thinking we’ll put two narrow beds in it to grow herbs or things that can be trellised. For now though, after he digs it all out, we’re going to cover it with landscape fabric and set up the blocks to hold it down. Hopefully it’s not gotten too far away from that area and into the ground cover a little ways over.

Piggy has been getting very itchy after coming in from outside and we suspect that might be why. We’ve got an itch relief spray for her and some wipes that seem to help.

We did have a nice interloper though. A big toad! Piggy found it and was sniffing it until I made her leave it alone. It hopped off into the bushes. Being so close to the river, we do get a lot of toads and frogs. I think it’s fun!

I think that’s all the garden updates recently. Everything seems to be taking a long time to grow and produce. I think we need to add some compost for next year to get the extra nutrients into the soil. Hopefully I will have some more updates soon!

Gardening, Here I Come!
Gardening

Gardening, Here I Come!

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So first off, I was left unsupervised at a local garden store and I discovered their magical backyard area for the main greenhouse. Plus, I definitely want to support my local small businesses. So yes, I did need all these plants. 🙂

I ended up running out of potting soil for my last two herbs and my little fairy garden replacement plants because I had a lot of plants, but I’m excited to get the garden going.

I did plant seeds on Tuesday and next year I swear I will actually sort markers out, not just assume I’ll remember where things are. It’s going to be a squash and melon battle royale in the corner of one of the beds this year. I have two zucchini plants, a watermelon, and a pumpkin, I think…. May gourd have mercy.

Here’s the bed in question. I switched them this year, since I have had the tomatoes in the same bed for two years.

I have discovered that a true friend is one who will take extra zucchini plants off your hands, by the way. I could only get a pack of 4 plants, but would kind of like to have other things in the garden bed, so only wanted two. She’s also taking some sugar snap peas. The peas are getting their own tripod.

I’m using the same little trellis cage I used last year for beans and have three sets of cucumber seeds ready to go on a trellis, if they actually grow. All the vining things are on the right side of the bed, next to the path. I figured that would make it easy to reach them.

I have a row of carrots down the middle, since they grew so well last year. I added rainbow carrots, because you know I couldn’t resist. Across the front of the bed is arugula and little gem lettuce. There may also be swiss chard and a broccoli? Next year, I promise to label everything.

The peppers are in this bed as well. Nothing fancy, a salsa mix from seed, a poblano, a jalepeno, and a long cayenne pepper. There’s also a couple of bell peppers, one plant and a seed mix.

Now the tomato bed, is as usual, where things get interesting. 🙂 It’s also where I find another definition of a true friend, one who shares heirloom tomato seeds with me! She sent a Better Buy Yellow, a Casspian Pink, a Black Prince, and a German Ruby Green. I planted them all and am hoping they will all grow. I wasn’t able to get myself together to try seed starting again this year, so I have no idea if they will even grow in time, but I might as well try, I thought. Maybe, like the radishes, I might get some surprises.

I will admit that I buy tomato plants by name, not necessarily by what’s actually best for my garden or space. Kind of like my mother when she buys wine actually, so that must be where I got it from. 🙂 So in interesting tomato names this year, I have Mortgage Lifter, Lemon Boy, Pink Brandywine, Green Zebra, and once again, Mr. Stripey! I’m definitely going to try to save seeds this year, in case I can’t find him again. I have a couple of beefsteak and Sweetie cherry tomato seeds planted somewhere in the garden. Possibly next to the extra radishes. I also bought a tomatillo plant! I’ll be excited to try some slasa verde too!

I can’t forget my herbs, of course! I think I need more of them though. My thyme survived a little, but then when it froze again, it was no more. So far, I have flat leaf parsley, Greek oregano, spearmint, lemon verbana, lemon balm, and two kinds of sage, varigated golden sage and garden sage. I haven’t used all my dried herbs from last year, so thought I should try to go easy this year, but I really want more fresh ones to use. I get such a kick out of just stepping out to cut fresh herbs. Makes me feel all sorts of fancy!

My tea pot and the empty pot is basil

The strawberries mostly survived. The ones in the specific strawberry tower did not survive, oddly enough. I think they may have been too dry. The others are growing very well, although I still need to weed them. We even have some berries started already!

I also bought some fairy garden plants to fix my fairy gardens from last year, a succulent to take to my office (hooray for windows!) and some flowers to go in the empty front bed so it looks like we’re doing something in there. I don’t have a good picture of the bed, as it doesn’t look pretty yet, but here’s some of the flowers.

We do have some glorious iris starting to appear. My friend gave us a bunch last year and I’m excited to see the different colors. Here’s the purple one that’s open right now!

So other than the sunburn I’ve accquired, things are looking good for the garden. The Husband rigged a sprinkler temporarily up to water the beds for us and it’s one of the shooting and turning ones and it looks hilarious. We need to get new hose couplings to make the other ones work. We’re going to venture out for mulch and more herbs tomorrow. I will attempt to be good, but you know once I get in the plants, the garden haze descends upon me and I have no idea how all those plants just jump into my cart. Honestly, it’s almost spooky! 😉 Yeah, the Husband doesn’t believe me either, but he sure likes the salasa that we have all summer.

I hope you’re able to grow some fun things this summer. I know it’s perking me up to plant and sow some hope for the future. Happy Gardening!

Wordless Wednesday- Signs of Spring!
Gardening · Wordless Wednesdays

Wordless Wednesday- Signs of Spring!

LSiehLeave a comment
Ducks on the neighbors’ pool.
Lemon thyme that survived the winter!
Volunteer strawberry in my tomato bed. I’ll move it when I have the rest out.
More Strawberries!
Garden Roundup
Canning and Preserving · Gardening

Garden Roundup

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Hello from a cold, rainy fall night! I just got home from a bellydance workshop where I also vended. It was fun, but not so much productive, in terms of vending. I didn’t really make too much more to sell, but will share the couple of things in my next sewing post.

I’m guessing Fancy missed me because I sat down and she essentially tackled me. I’m writing this on my phone app, as my lap is currently occupied by a cuddly and needy dog who will not let me get up.

Anyway, back to the actual point of this post! The garden! We used most of the food that we harvested, which I was proud of. The squirrels got some things, including an entire purple bell pepper! What jerks! Here’s the haul!

I was excited to actually preserve the herbs this year, instead of accidentally freezing them and not being able to use them. I used the dehydrator for a lot of them.

In the jars we have pineapple sage- in the little jar, lemon thyme- in one of the big jars, regular thyme, and rosemary.

I also froze some fresh sage and basil in oil to try and use in cooking. They were super easy to do. I just ripped the herbs and put them in a mini muffin pan and poured a little bit of olive oil in the spots. Then after they were frozen, I just popped them out and put them in glass jars for storage. I have decided to try to use more jars for storage. A friend has inspired me to try and use less plastic, so I thought these would be perfect.

Another interesting way to use up the herbs was to make herb butters for presents. We have an Italian herb blend with rosemary, parsley, oregano, and basil. We also have a lemon pepper blend with lemon thyme, parsley, and pepper. I think they should be delicious!

We had a volunteer basil plant appear in the soil on the side of the driveway!

Overall, there are a few things I would do differently next year. Starting from seeds worked for the carrots for sure, but not the bok choy, Swiss chard, or radishes. The beans worked well and the marigolds are still going strong. I harvested two poblanos, four purple peppers, and many hot peppers.

I’ll leave you with a picture of Fancy and a garden carrot. Have a great night!

Gardening Meals!
Gardening · Recipe Roundup

Gardening Meals!

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I love having a garden! I inherited some of that from both Grandpas and it was encouraged and fostered by my Mom. My Grandpa Ollie was a missionary Papua New Guinea who helped with agriculture. My Grandpa Ed was a fabulous gardener and I remember seeing his garden as a kid. I have very fond memories of gardening with Mom in the summer. Mmm… tomatoes fresh from the garden, pea pods off the vine, crunchy carrots, and raspberries! Now I have both garden plants and some very pretty flowers that I do absolutely nothing with. It’s a nice balance. The featured picture is our hydrangeas by our front door.

I have started to get some produce from the garden! I was getting worried, but went out to check and found some cherry tomatoes! I also have peppers to use in pico.

We’re talking about putting in another garden bed for next year, which I think will house the things with vines. I’ve gotten only two tiny baby zucchini this year from my plant. It doesn’t like being in a pot apparently.

Speaking of baby zukes, I had both of them sautéed in olive oil with some Sandwich Sprinkle with the rest of my garden haul tonight for dinner. We also had steak and mashed redskin potatoes.

It was delicious! I could have cooked the steak a tiny bit less, but I was distracted by apple recipes. I suddenly have a surplus, which will be turned into crockpot applesauce tomorrow.

I have officially used the Sandwich Sprinkle on a sandwich! I’ll give you a minute to absorb that information. 🙂 I even took a picture of it to prove it. It did add a bit of zing to the sandwich. I definitely need a bigger jar of it though!

I had fruit salad along with it. I’m a fruit monster in the summer and wanted all the fruit!

We had pizzas made with fancy things too. I used a pizza dough recipe that didn’t require a long rise time from The Kitchn. https://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-pizza-dough-recipe-221367

It did rise for a couple of hours at least. The Husband had mushroom and ham with fresh mozzarella. I had a lovely Margherita Pizza with fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, and fresh mozzarella. The recipe was also from The Kitchn. https://www.thekitchn.com/easy-recipe-classic-margherita-pizza-recipes-from-the-kitchn-174103

They were both lovely! The crust for mine was baked on an upside down cookie sheet, which made it super crunchy. The Husband’s was also nice and crispy, but I used the pizza stone instead.

Here’s some pictures of the rest of the garden as well. Herbs, tomatoes, radishes, and carrots.

Oh! We have strawberries!

I’m excitedly waiting for them to turn red so we can get them before the squirrels! We don’t always have good luck with that. Things are growing pretty well. I have to re-stake some tomato plants. They’re falling over with the weight of the tomatoes. Next year, I will get some cages and will hopefully be better prepared.

For now though, I will leave you with this very relaxing picture of Fancy. I hope your night is as lovely as her nap was. Good night!

Tuesday Treats
Gardening · Party Posts · Recipe Roundup

Tuesday Treats

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We’ve had some exciting new recipes lately and a few older favorites. With my schedule stabilizing, I have been able to do a bit more meal planning, along with adding an “on your own” day permanently into the rotation. That has been super helpful for Wednesdays or Thursdays. The Husband has been requesting more dishes too, which helps. Today we had chicken pot pie over noodles, which we haven’t had in a while. I was hungry, so forgot to take a full picture!

I loudly and snottily announced that I was going out to the garden to pick fresh herbs and the Husband laughed at me, but then told me that I should probably be Instagramming the whole experience. I was the one laughing then. Silly Husband! I was not Instagram dressed! They did look really pretty cooking down with the onions though.

The potpie was made with leftover chicken from this dinner:

Herb Butter Baked Chicken Breasts with Stovetop Stuffing and roasted carrots. I used the Sandwich Sprinkle on the carrots (seriously, I need a bigger jar of it) and fresh garden herbs for the butter.

Rosemary, thyme, sage, basil, and oregano were all included. I actually used some lemon thyme and basil in my strawberry shortcake, which we had for dessert.

This was the lemon thyme batch. It needed a little more herb in it, but it had a subtle lemony taste. The basil one came out much stronger, but basil is a stronger herb in general. I’ve been eating that one over yogurt too and it’s delicious!

So why all the strawberry things, you might ask? I dragged the Husband (yes, dragged, he doesn’t enjoy it) picking with me on Sunday after a panic moment of “what if they run out?!” We may have helped with that. We picked in between 12-13 pounds!

We tried a new farm, but didn’t like it as much, so will stick with the old one if we go together again. I might go on my own one more time, but I can also just pick some up from the farm market. I have a back quartered for eating or jam, and a batch left whole in the freezer. We have some to eat fresh in the fridge and some as shortcake. The shortcake ones will probably be made into jam, as they need to be used up quickly.

I also made this:

Is your mouth watering yet? No? Here, try this picture instead:

MMMMMMM! This recipe is soo good! I found it online at Pumpkin Inn Spice. https://www.pumpkinnspice.com/strawberry-pound-cake/. There were lots of delicious looking recipes, but this one said it was one bowl and that was good enough for me! I finally used the Bundt pan that Mom got me for Christmas.

I have a Strawberry Cheesecake Pie in the fridge that I’m super excited about too. I tasted the filling and man, oh man! I could have eaten it like a pudding! I’m looking forward to trying it tomorrow after it has set.

I’m still plotting what to do with the jam strawberries. I know I want to make Strawberry Rhubarb and I want to try an InstantPot Jam recipe too. We’ll see how ambitious I get.

We had a mental health professional game night this week and I forgot to get any pictures! We were having too much fun! I did make some things for it. We had a Caramelized Onion dip (https://pinchofyum.com/onion-dip) and pico. K brought a Chicken Bacon Ranch Dip. Of course, we had a veggie tray for the hummus, but no pickles. It wasn’t a formal party, Mom! I didn’t need the pickles! I made sure to tell everyone that I had some though, if they wanted them… 😉 I also made Chocolate Fondue for a dessert dip. We ended up just talking instead of playing the second game, which I think says a lot about the group of friends we have. 🙂

Oh, I did get a picture of the drink I made for the party the next day. I used the basil to make Basil Lemonade from Southern Living: Little Jars, Big Flavors. I have wanted to make that since I got the book, but my basil did not do well last year. You make a simple syrup infused with basil and then make up the lemonade.

It was deliciously tart and then mellowed over the course of the day. I will definitely be making more. You could taste the basil, but it wasn’t super overwhelming, which can happen with basil. It was so good!

We had cream sauce over pasta this week too. Since the Husband has convinced me that I can use up the half gallon of cream from Costco, I have been using it a lot more to be my go to meal.

Mine had asparagus added, but the Husband had the plain one mushrooms and the Sandwich Sprinkle. Gosh, I might need a spice intervention here! It’s just so useful! It has Italian herbs, salt, pepper, and garlic! Basically everything that runs in my cooking veins, I think. Eventually, I promise to use it on an actual sandwich! Knowing how things go, I’ll probably end up hating it in a sandwich. 🙂

I forgot to share this recipe, I think. Pardon me, if I have done so before. This is Balela Salad from Reluctant Entertainer. https://reluctantentertainer.com/balela-salad/

I had this first at Trader Joes and liked it so much that I decided to make my own. Lo and behold, I had actually pinned a recipe a long time ago! I used fresh parsley and basil in this. I didn’t have mint, so left it out. I had this at my sewing day with a friend and it was yummy! I would definitely make this again.

We had slow cooker BBQ flank steak tacos this week. I had them the second time as tostados, but I think I really wanted puffy tacos instead. For the leftovers, I added green enchilada sauce in a skillet and rewarmed it basically. We liked the meat. It was nice and tender. I was at work the first night, so only have a picture of the tostados. The Husband stuck with tacos.

I didn’t use a recipe for either dish, just threw things in the slow cooker or pan and added a few spices. Surprisingly, not the Sandwich Sprinkle! 😉

I think that’s all the foods since the last food post. Stay tuned for more strawberry recipes soon. I still have a bunch to use up!

With that, I’m off to dream strawberry dreams! Have a sweet night!

Future Food- Garden Update
Gardening · Life Posts

Future Food- Garden Update

LSieh2 Comments

We have had so much rain lately that the garden is growing pretty much every time you look away from it. I also haven’t had to water it very much at all, but finally remembered to today. We are using the herbs pretty regularly. Tomorrow for our Game Night, we are using some of the basil for lemonade. 🙂

I have massive amounts of all herbs that I think I will start freezing to encourage new herb growth. I’m always a little afraid to harvest them because I might run out, which is, of course, silly. Here are the latest pictures:

The basil box. My purple basil is coming back nicely.

Parsley, rosemary, lemon myrtle, and oregano. I used the rosemary on the lamb rack this week already.

The Sages are growing well. I have plans to use a bunch of the herbs in butter for a big chicken dinner on Sunday. You can see the thyme in the picture as well. The lemon thyme has tiny purple flowers on it that are also edible.

I want to try drying the lemon myrtle, lemon thyme, and pineapple sage for tea mixes. Maybe Sunday will be an herb drying day!

The tomatoes are growing very well. I’m pretty sure one of the second batch of seeds I planted is growing, which is nice. The poor little yellow tomato plant on the end isn’t growing very well. I think the bigger plants are stealing all the nutrients. I gave it some tomato food and some crunched up egg shells. Hopefully that will help. The bigger yellow tomato is doing very well.

My beans and pepper bed is looking well. I have radishes, bok choy, rainbow chard, and carrots coming up as well. It sorely needs a weeding though, but I’m not entirely sure what is a weed and what’s not.

I saved the best news for last! (Although I’m sure I’ll get a phone call from my Dad saying otherwise.) The zucchini plant has five baby zukes on it! I couldn’t get a picture of all of them, but I’m super excited. I’m going to be harvesting these as smaller ones so that I can maybe get some more production this year. It seems to really like the pot, so I will plan on continuing to grow them this way.

I hope you enjoyed seeing our garden! I’m very excited to see that even though I kill houseplants, I can keep a garden alive at least. Maybe there’s hope for the houseplants yet! On that note, I should probably go check the one I have managed to keep alive!

Have a lovely night!