Rhododendrons & Red Onions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.