And Sow My Garden Grows

Janurary's seeds

2012-01-28T14:22:00.000-08:00

It's always fun for us watching how fast the seeds sprout.

The September garden

2011-09-18T12:06:00.000-07:00

The leaves are starting to change color and the smells have changed in the air. School has started and most of us gardeners are planting our fall veggies. Some of us have unsightly tomato plants with green tomatoes hanging all over them wondering when and if they're going to turn red. It was a pretty cool summer here and only now with the recent heat the tomatoes starting to turn red. Here is an article I read this morning regarding this subject. Looks like I wasn't the only one disappointed this year with our crop.
http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-living/ci_18912349?source=rss

Maggie's Chinese cabbage is growing beautifully and we have lots of red onions & walla walla onions in the ground. Carrots and lettuce are sprouting and any day the beet seeds I planted should will too. Here are some recent happenings from out back..


Finally red

Green zebras

Rows of Chinese cabbage

Herbs galore


Colin's huckleberries

Poblano peppers

Basil

Perfect rows of lettuce

2011-08-12T16:30:00.000-07:00

I don't necessarily buy into the whole astrological sign thing but I am a Virgo and I do happen to like most things "just so" I'm also a fanatic about things being straight and even. I know, I need to relax and undoubtedly having 3 kids is bound to cure me at some point :) When it comes to gardening though, I admire full, lush, out of rhyme & reason gardens but I do love the look of perfect rows of lettuce and I find it easy to care for the lettuce this way. My method of planting lettuce seeds has always been using a straight piece of wood to mark where I dig. This year though I am trying a technique I saw online using flour to mark the rows. I unfortunately can't remember the site where I saw this but thought is was a great idea. We'll see how it goes!

Goodbye July

2011-07-28T13:49:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe that summer is almost over. The fall school clothing and Halloween items are already well stocked in the stores. We are anticipating the new school year and are in denial that Maggie is going into 4th grade and Sam 1st and that little Amelia is already 4 months old. Crazy. I gave up hope on our tomatoes this year. The plants are tall and leggy. We have had a few ripe tomatoes so far and we're not impressed. Thank God for farmer's market. The herbs however are enjoying this cool summer and we have enjoyed making homemade pesto a lot. The beans look like they're doing well and we should be picking a bunch any day now. I love the way the vines are up against the fence, creating a green wall. The sunflowers are tall and happy. Never a favorite of mine but I am enjoying them more and more every year. They happen to face our 90 year old neighbor's house and she looks forward to seeing them. They bring her so much pleasure. We now plant them for her. The bright light cosmos are indeed bright orange, beautiful and wild. All of them reseeded from last year. They even managed to reseed over the fence along the creek. Beautiful. looking forward to our first acorn squash, Sam's plant is amazing! Our vacation away with family will happen soon and when we return, I will be mapping out the winter garden. I already know that one bed will be full of onions and another with garlic and of course we'll have plenty of lettuce. For now though, I'll enjoy these last few days of summer and those sunflowers.

Our First Potatoes

2011-07-16T13:43:00.000-07:00

We harvested our first potatoes yesterday. We planted the seeds in early Feb and didn't know what to expect. Amelia was born in March and needless to say, the potatoes fell victim to neglect. Not a good thing with container gardening. The plants never bloomed and actually withered away altogether. Yesterday we dumped the container expecting to see nothing and we found a handful of potatoes from each container. It was pretty exciting! We are definitely going to grow them again and I imagine with more attention and care, we will have even more to harvest.

Welcome Summer

2011-06-23T15:36:00.000-07:00

The cosmos in Maggie's garden are quite charming right now and the nasturtiums have happily found it's place in our yard once again. The mint is relentless as always, popping up everywhere and there's a rumor that we will be drinking some yummy mojitos this summer. The squash is rambling about in Sam's bed and volunteer tomatillos are popping up everywhere! The tomato plants are on the small, leggy side but that's not all that surprising considering the low temperatures and record rain we've had this month. We do however have blooms and fruit and of course lots of hope for plenty of bruchetta. I started off the morning today contacting Farmer Fred , our local Master Gardener via Facebook (how great is that?) inquiring about planting tomatoes this late. Hopefully I can get at least one more in the ground. Other than that, I am planning on pulling out some climbing roses that aren't doing so well and replacing them with something else. Something bright! I am thinking about the black eyed Susan vine but heard they are frost sensitive. I plan to pop in the garden center today and see if I can find them. I have only seen them available in seeds.

Rhododendrons & Red Onions

2011-05-03T08:38:00.000-07:00

I love our rhododendrons. They bloom for only a few short weeks out of the year but it's well worth waiting for. Not knowing what a rhododendron was, these were the only plants that I saved on our property after we moved in. Everything else was cactus and shrubs that were pruned wrong and covered in cobwebs and they had to go.

Last weekend I caught my first glimpse of summer. I think a lot of people did. Our local garden centers were busy. I bought some red onion starts to add to the red onions that I planted by seed weeks ago. These 6 packs hold a lot of onions. Each plug is a bulb. It's hard to see in the picture below, but the onions are filling up the right side of the bed. I also managed to get in 8 tomato plants, 3 squash, 6 bell peppers and herbs. It's great to be working in the yard again!

Finding my way back to the garden

2011-04-12T14:11:00.000-07:00

Blame it on winter or perhaps the new addition in our family but either way, it's been awhile since I've found myself out in the garden. With baby Amelia being almost 1 month old and the weather warming up, I'm slowly finding my way back to the garden. The zinnia & cosmo seeds are planted & the beds are prepped and waiting to be filled with tomato plants, squash, cucumbers and more. I recently added soil to the potato pots and my husband helped me with the wire on our fence for the climbing pink jasmine. The jasmine is ready to bloom and this will be the year that we'll start to see significant growth from it I'm sure. Here are some recent pictures.

Growing Potatoes in Containers

2011-02-07T21:18:00.000-08:00

Every year, I mention to someone how much I'd love to grow potatoes. I remember harvesting them once, when I was a teenager, out of a neighbor's garden. I couldn't stop digging. It was so exciting to find potato after potato! It wasn't until a year ago, or so, when I discovered they could be grown in containers. I thought this was great because I heard potatoes can attract insects to the garden and also I heard that they are a pretty cumbersome plant taking up lots of real estate and that they are difficult to get rid of if you don't manage to pull all the potatoes up. I also thought this would be a great gardening project to do with the kids. I surfed the web a bit looking for good tutorials and found a great article here from Love Apple Farm. Our seed potatoes were on the small size so we planted them whole. It was a fun project to do with my daughter and we enjoyed our afternoon in the garden on one of the first sunny and warm days of the new year. We can't wait to see how they do.

Lettuce, Arugula & Cauliflower

2010-11-27T13:02:00.000-08:00

I love this time of year. The weather forces me to slow down and relax more and the holidays are always fun and exciting, especially with two small children and now a baby on the way! Even the yard seems to offer us a break with our lawn growing slower and the garden beds benefiting from the rainfall. Our lettuce & arugula are now ready for harvest. This is our first year growing cauliflower and so far so good! Our other veggies are coming along just fine. With the exception of the greens, we have to wait patiently for the garlic and onions to come in. In the meantime we enjoy all the other pleasures of this time of year.

From Summer to Fall

2010-09-27T09:56:00.000-07:00

Overall it's been a very mild summer for us here. We've had only a handful of days of intense heat unlike Maybelline's Garden over in Bakersfield - yikes. Perhaps that's why our tomato crop was not anything to brag about. We also got hit this year with katydids and sadly they devoured a few of our tomato plants and reproduced like mad. There are a few more tomato plants left in the beds but I'm giving up hope on them as they are becoming quite an ugly site. I'm about to fill a few more vases of zinnias up before I yank those out too. I hate to pull them out while they seem to still be doing so well but want to make sure that I have the room for the fall garden. The zucchini is still thriving and showing no signs of stopping so quiche is definitely on our menu this week and we have a ton of tomatillos, eggplant and bell peppers that are soon ready to harvest. Sadly we had no luck with our pumpkins this year so we'll make yet another trip with the kids to the pumpkin patch, which is always quite fun and bring four home. With the exception of the noisy leaf blowers on our street throughout the week, I just love this time of year.

The Secret Garden

2010-07-26T09:32:00.000-07:00

Just home from a fabulous time seeing my family in Southern California. It was great spending time with them. Their garden was a delight to see. New beds were built in 2009 and huge change has taken place down there. They have a composting area, grapes growing and it is definitely a place any gardener would admire. Their garden sits at the bottom of a terraced backyard and it certainly qualifies as a secret garden as a narrow stone pathway is the only way to get there. My dad made these garden beds for my mom and they are quite charming to look at. I just love how the boards sit at different heights creating a more interesting look than your standard garden bed. I've never seen green zebra tomatoes like my mom's. Her plant (yes, 1) was monstrous and there was absolutely no way we were leaving without incorporating them into a meal. I came home inspired and more enthusiastic about our garden and the fall planning is under way.

First Cucumbers Of 2010

2010-07-07T19:37:00.000-07:00

The kids were pretty excited to pick their first cucumbers of the year this evening from the trellis I created between their garden beds. The top cucumber is from Sam's garden bed and although he refuses to try cucumbers I'm hoping he'll give this one a try and love them from here on out. Maggie picked about 5 of these little cute little cucumbers (bottom) off her side of the trellis. We plan to cut them in to spears and pickle them tomorrow. I'm hoping to find a easy dill pickle recipe. I think I'm going to give refrigerator pickling a try (they'll be gone in no time anyhow) Still waiting for a miracle to happen with the tomato plants - they're not as showy and full of tomatoes as they were this time last year. Leggy is the best word for them here. The zinnias & cosmos are blooming and the pumpkin plants are spilling out of the beds everywhere and are a delight to see! Already we are thinking about what/when to plant for fall.

Happy 4th Of July 2010 ~ Red, White & Blue

2010-07-01T22:38:00.000-07:00

Garden Pictures June 2010

2010-06-25T20:29:00.000-07:00

2009/2010 Tomato Plants

2010-06-25T20:20:00.000-07:00

Late May 2009

June 25, 2010

I planted our tomato plants much earlier last year (I think it was the 1st weekend in April) This year I waited until later (April 19) and with the very wet and cool spring, I'm glad I did. I'm still waiting for the Sun God to turn up the heat. My tomato plants are really on the leggy side this year - not as full and bushy as last year. I should follow my daughter's advice and not look at them so often. Maybe a long weekend away is calling us.

Parking Strip Gardens

2010-06-23T21:09:00.000-07:00

Recently we had our street resurfaced. I asked the contractor on the job if he'd lift the cement from our parking strip. Not only did he do it but he also took away the concrete as well (what a nice guy!) We plan to plant lawn and crape myrtles there in the fall giving us something to look at other than the street and parked cars. I have always been a fan a tree lined streets and was told that years ago our street was once like this. While surfing the net one day I stumbled across another great garden blog called Greenwalks. It's about Seattle parking strip gardens. The pictures are lovely and I find it very inspiring. The trees and sod will eventually be planted in our parking strip but in the meantime four zucchini plants are loving the full sun out front and it makes me happy to know there will plenty to share with our neighbors.

Picture from Greenwalks

Garlic

2010-06-08T16:09:00.000-07:00

We love garlic and it's been one of the easiest and most rewarding things to grow. We initially had a hard time finding garlic at our local garden stores so I thought about planting garlic purchased from the supermarket but after some research found out that often growth inhibitors are used to stop garlic from sprouting and can be made from hormones or chemicals. I ended up buying our garlic from the local farmers market selecting the largest bulbs. I've read that if you plant large cloves they tend produce large garlic bulbs and so far this seems to be true. We tend to plant our garlic in the fall (Oct) and harvest now through July. When the greens turn brown and yellow I know it's pretty much harvest time.You can also dig around it and feel the size of the bulb to check before you pull it out. I'm thinking about planting more cloves now to see if they will grow. How wonderful it would be to have this year round from our backyard!

Garlic Three Ways (Thanks Hungry Mouse!)

Roasted garlic
Garlic-infused oil
Roasted garlic compound butter

And Sow My Garden Grows

Janurary's seeds

The September garden

Perfect rows of lettuce

Goodbye July

Our First Potatoes

Welcome Summer

Rhododendrons & Red Onions

Finding my way back to the garden

Growing Potatoes in Containers

Lettuce, Arugula & Cauliflower

From Summer to Fall

The Secret Garden

First Cucumbers Of 2010

Happy 4th Of July 2010 ~ Red, White & Blue

Garden Pictures June 2010

2009/2010 Tomato Plants

Parking Strip Gardens

Garlic

Messy *but* Happy Garden

23 Tomato Plants

The Butterfly Bush ~ Buddleia

2 Down

My Square Foot Garden ~ Update 1

Make Sure You Do Some Research First

Green With Envy

Garden Pictures

What's In Bloom

My Square Foot Garden

Happy May Day

Mother Nature's twist. Our first carrots.

Tour Of Ghost Town Farm

My Love Of Zinnias

Some Rewards Come With Hard Work

Anticipation..

No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow. ~ Proverb

Nasturtiums

When Life Gives You Lemons...

My Seedlings

My WinterSown Free Seeds Have Arrived!

Seed Starting

Our Green Day

Spring Fever!

Garden Markers

Making Progress

Newspaper seed pots

Resourceful, Recycle And Sometimes Free :)

What's growing on in the garden

Our garden friend the Praying Mantis

Just when I thought things were great..

And Sow My Garden Grows

Raised beds 2008

New Beginnings

Happy New Year & Anniversary to us!

Janurary 2005 ~ Our first house, backyard

Winter Garden

My Feburary Garden

Messy but Happy Garden