SubUrban Garden Diary

1st Harvest of 2012

2012-01-16T13:43:00.000-08:00

The green onions in my new harvest basket

Yay! I have a harvest!!! This was not a planned harvest. Last summer, I gave my teenage son the task of planting the onions in one soil bag. He was instructed to plant them 3 inches apart. He must have got inches and millimeters confused. lol!!! After he planted the bag, I asked him where the rest of the onion seeds were and he said he used the whole envelope. lol!! Well, I hated loosing all those seedlings and I really let them stay in too long, so none developed any large bulbs so I had a lot of small green onions. My husband and I really don't ever use green onions, so I didn't know what to do with them. I had harvested a few in the summer, but most of those ended up in the freezer. The rest, ended up just staying in the bag until today. My little guy has a nasty cold and my oldest had a stomach virus. I am trying to keep from getting sick since I have diabetes and a few other autoimmune conditions. Well, I was reading that garlic, onions, ginger and chicken soup where good for your immune system. I had garlic, ginger root and free range chicken broth on hands, but I really didn't want to cut into the big onion that we have for the little bit that I was needing. That is when I remembered the garden bag of green onions that I had out back. I really did not not know if the would be in any shape to use since we have had several freezes and thaws. I went out and gave it a try. They looked good! So I went ahead and harvested the rest of them. Here is what they looked like with the bad parts cut off and all cleaned up:

1 oz of green onions

I cut up the end parts and put them in 2 cups of broth along with ginger, garlic, a few cut up baby carrots, dried parsley, sea salt and pepper. It was spicy, a bit hotter than I usually tolerate, but it really didn't taste bad. I know my kids won't eat it though, way too spicy for them. Maybe if I left out the ginger, but definitely not with it. Hopefully it will help me fight off all of the icky germs.

This post is linked to Harvest Monday.

Garden Expenses

2012-01-09T22:19:00.001-08:00

I was reminded over at Daphne's Dandelions, that I really should be keeping track of how much I have spent on gardening. Big problem, there is no way to exactly track my expenses over the last year, because I wasn't keeping track and sometimes I bought stuff for the garden when I bought other stuff and the receipts are long gone, but I can get a ball park figure because I used my PayPal account or Amazon for much of it, and I do have records of a lot of that. So here are some guide lines I used for myself. First, I am not counting anything before January 1, 2010 and the only reason I am counting the expenses for the 2010 growing season is because I grew so little that I am still in the negative for those expenses. Second, I am not counting any books that I bought for educational purposes. Many of my expenses are going to be lumped together in one sum, because I really don't know what the break down is. I may have that I made a Lowes purchase with my PayPal account, and I may know that either most or all of the charge was garden related, but I don't have exactly what was bought, so I am lumping those items. As I add more charges, I will add them here. I also may make changes if I am able to narrow down my purchases more. So here goes:

Wood for boxes, soil, manure, and misc. garden items: $400.00 (The amount was $372.77, but I know I am missing items. If I bought one or two items here and there along with other items, then they were not counted. Also there may be a few items in this total that were not garden related, but I believe there were more that didn't get recorded than over recorded, so I rounded up.)
Cold Frame: $22.00 (approximate amount)
Grow Light Bulb: $6.74
Lamp for light bulb: $19.97
Kitchen Compost Keeper: $19.99
Trellis Net: $7.99
Organic Starter Set: $9.99
Craft Sticks (for plant markers): $7.97
Rain Barrel Kit: $35.00
Seeds: $8.73
Seeds: $12.12
Seeds: $29.75
Greenhouse: $69.00 (approximate amount)
Water Filter for Garden Hose: $17.75
Fertilizers: $56.07
Garden Tools: $17.69

Total: $740.76

Since this is my first real year of gardening (as in really trying to provide food for the family and not dabbling), then I suspect, I will probably remain in the hole. I hope I am wrong, but I would not worry about it if that is the case. I know it will pay for itself eventually. Many of the expenses are not yearly expenses, like wood for the raised boxes, rail barrel kit, cold frame and soil, they are getting started costs, so it's not like I am going to spend this amount every year. Next year will be much less. I plan to keep track of how much I harvest much better this year including the weight and market value of the produce. Over at Budding and Blooming, they got a great post on figuring out how much your harvest is worth, it's worth checking out if you are interested in that sort of thing.

January Goals

2012-01-07T23:44:00.000-08:00

Well, I don't have a whole lot of goals this month, but I do have a few. Here they are:

Finalize my seed orders. Like everyone else, I am swimming in seed catalogs right now. This is my first year to order from seed catalogs, so it is a bit overwhelming. Before this year, I just picked up my seed from the store. I am really looking forward to order, even though I am a bit overwhelmed by the selection.
Start an indoor garden. I got a grow light bulb from Amazon, that I intend to try out. I still need to put my lamp together. I hope to get to that this week. Some of the things I am going to try growing are: Tonda Di Parigi carrots (these are small and round so they can grow in a container!), Gourmet Baby Greens, chives and parsley.
Continue to read Organic Gardening by Geoff Hamilton.
Continue to teach my children about gardening. Growing an indoor garden will be a great way to do this.
Continue to track the weather. I am trying to learn to be more aware of the what the weather is doing to help me in the garden. I have always been a bit fascinated by the weather, but I am trying to put that fascination to good use. I am currently just tracking the highs and lows of the day, whether it is cloudy or sunny, whether there was precipitation or not and when the sun rises and sets. I am hoping by tracking these, I will become more aware of them naturally.

What are your goals this month? I would love to hear about them!

The Story of Four Little Pumpkins

2011-12-15T19:55:00.000-08:00

Well, here are the 4 little pumpkins that we grew this year... Unfortunately, we left them outside... BIG MISTAKE! The first pumpkin went into the compost bin after we spotted mold growing on it. Still not learning our lesson we left the other three outside... and forgot about them! I have not been out back for about 2 weeks and today my on-the-counter compost bin was almost over flowing so I really needed to get it out to the big compost bin. When I went outside I noticed the pumpkins were gone and pumpkin guts and seeds were all over the patio! Apparently some critter got really fat on our pumpkins! lol!!! All that was left was part of the top of one them. Boy did it/ they have a feast! We are guessing probably a raccoon or skunk was the culprit. Lesson learned! Do not leave produce outside!!!

Lettuce and Carrots

2011-12-07T21:54:00.000-08:00

(Lettuce in my spring garden 2011)

I'm tired of not having a fall/ winter garden!!! Recently, I've tried to eat more salad. I buy this organic baby spring mix, but it is kinda pricy. On top of that, I am the only one eating and I just can't eat it all before it starts going bad, so it ends up in the compost bin. Talk about expensive compost! lol!!! Well, I would really love to grow my own. I've been going to a lot of blogs recently, and all of them are talking about all of the greens they have been harvesting and I am SO JEALOUS!!! lol!!! So a couple of days ago, I ordered some carrot seeds and an organic baby greens mix. I think I am going to try to grow them in a container inside. I'm not sure how it's going to work, but I figured it was worth a shot! The carrots are like these really round,. short French type. I've never tried them before, but they look like they would do well in a container, and of course greens don't have real deap roots, so maybe it will work. Here are the plants that I ordered:

I also ordered a plant light bulb. Not sure how well it will work, but it was cheap enough to give a try. I really didn't want to buy an expensive grow light. This was a much cheaper solution. I hope it works. This is the one I bought:

I hope it works!! I should get everything in the mail soon. I'll try to remember to take pictures as I get everything set up. I hope in about a month I will be picking my own salad greens (and reds!) and in about 2 months be picking my own carrots. I am really anxious to try them. If I like the carrots, I will probably grow a lot more of them, since they are so small they can be grown in containers.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T19:44:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving! There are so many things that I am thankful for. I am thankful for my gardens. I am hopeful that they will contribute to a more healthy lifestyle for my family. My family means the world to me and I want them to have better health. I am thankful that next year I will be able to expand my gardens greatly. I am thankful that I have room to garden and the ability to garden. I am thankful for all the goodies I was able to get for my garden this year that will help me be more successful in the garden. Some things I got this year for my gardens are:

Garden beds (thank you teenage son for building them!!!)
Rain Barrel kit (hopefully Hubby can find the time to put it together)
Compost Bin
Cold Frame
Folding garden seat (will make gardening more comfortable!)

I am also thankful that I was able to attend a composting series at my local metro parks (for free). I learned a lot there.

I hope everyone was blessed this holiday! So what are you thankful for?

Clean Up

2011-11-04T22:14:00.000-07:00

We have been busy on our garden and now it is all tucked in and put to bed for the winter. Here is what I did:

I cleaned up all of the old summer garden stuff. It was a mess! I took the bags out of the yard and set them aside to reuse the dirt and got rid of all the vines, stems and leaves. Most did not look very healthy, so I did not save them for compost because I was concerned they may be diseased.
My oldest son built me 8 garden boxes for next year!!!! Yippeee! They are all 8 inches deep. He made 3- 4 foot by 4 foot, 1- 3 foot by 6 foot and 4- 4 foot by 6 foot boxes so we should have quite a bit of growing space. I'm so excited!! :)
I took the summer's dirt and put it in the bottom of the garden boxes. A few leaves were in there too.
On Oct. 15th, I first layered the bottom of the garden boxes with newspaper. It was quite chilly that day, so I did not wet them. It was windy that day, so the newspaper was blowing and we didn't have enough to have a great coverage. I will probably want to put down some type of weed blocker next spring since I am pretty sure that newspaper that I put down will not block it all.
Then we filled the boxes with organic top soil, manure and peat. We bought like 56 bags of 40 pounds of the stuff and it only about halfway filled the boxes. lol!!!
After filling the boxes, I made a string grid to have the square foot squared on several of the boxes. Some of them are prepared to have string first thing next spring, some already have the string.
In several of the boxes I planted some garlic. I did not plant near as much as I would like, but we got several planted. I have a mix, some are "Music" garlic that I bought from the garden center and a few are unknowns that I bought from the health food store. The unknowns were not sold as seed, so I'm not sure how they will grow, but it was a bit cheaper than buying them from the garden center. I figured it was worth a shot.
Then I planted a red clover cover crop on the rest of the area. I have no idea if it will grow well or not, but I figured I would give it a try.
On Oct. 27th I put a layer of dead leaves over my garlic as mulch. I did not have any organic straw, so that is what I ended up using. I'm not sure how it is going to work. lol!!!

Well, that is my garden all tucked in and ready for next spring. I am looking forward to it. I am going to keep composting over the winter. I will also continue to read as much as much as I can and learn. We have a few more chores that need to get done like building the cold frame and ordering the small greenhouse, but it is mostly ready to go. The big jobs are done.

What I Will Do Different Next Year...

2011-10-07T15:00:00.000-07:00

I will not use garden bags next year!!! In a pinch, it's not a horrible idea, but for a whole garden, I do not recommend this method (cutting a part of the garden bag out and planting in the bag). I went with this method because the spring was very, very wet and we were unable to get our raised garden boxes done. Over all, I had a mess with the plants growing together and the bags were too close, so we could not mow between the bags, so grass and weeds grew high between the bags.
I will put cages on the tomatoes, peppers, ect. when I plant! I made the mistake of waiting way too late to try to cage things and by then it was impossible. I had tomatoes flopping all over the place. lol!!!
I will add stakes and trellises when I plant. See note above about cages!
I will provide enough room between the garden boxes to make sure the mower can go through.
I will do better at adding organic fertilizer next year. This year I didn't do this and I think my plants were deficient.
I will use rain water when I can, or let my water sit out for the chlorine to dissipate before adding to may garden.
I will do better at controlling the weeds! I really let this go because I was unsure which were weeds and which were plants. lol!!! I am getting better at educating myself.

I'm sure there will be other things I think of, but for now that is my list. This post links to: Garden Tuesday

More Tomatoes and Onions!

2011-07-27T16:21:00.000-07:00

Yum!

Today I harvested more tomatoes and green onions. It seems like that is all I can harvest. lol!!! I had to pull one green tomato today with what I think is called blossom end rot (I think tomatoes get that... don't they? lol!!!). The other day, about five tomatoes were on the ground. Two were almost ripe, one had a few holes in it so I buried it (hey, maybe it will grow! lol!!!) but one seemed to be ok. There were no holes or breaks in it, so I brought it inside to finish ripening. Three of the tomatoes were still green and had bites in them, so they went into the compost.

It continues to be very hot. We had a couple of days break from the over 100 heat indexes that were were having, but it looks like it will be back up tomorrow. We also got a really good drenching on Sunday. But things were back to being dry today. Also a few of my plants are looking a bit sick, like they need some nutrients. I don't have any organic fertilizer on hands, so I mulched them today with grass clippings and coffee grounds and gave them a good watering before and after. I don't know if it will help or not, but I figured it probably wouldn't hurt. lol!!! Right now is my year to experiment and learn and that is what I am doing.

Here are more pictures of my garden:

My Cucumber Plant

Tomatoes in a Cage

More Tomatoes

Peppers

Squash

Pumpkin Plant

Here is the tomato I saved from the ground a few days ago:

Well, there you have it... :) This post links to: Tuesday Garden Party, Garden Tuesday, Barn Hop, and Harvest Monday.

Hard Day for Tomatoes

2011-07-20T18:32:00.000-07:00

Ugh! I lost a tomato. It was one that was almost ripe. Something bit into it. It was one that was under the netting even. *sigh* Well, I went ahead and picked the other two that were in a cluster with it even though they weren't quite ripe and plan to let them ripen inside. I know the picture looks ripe, but they are a bit more orangish than they look in the picture. If you look at them from the other side, you can see that they aren't quite ripe:

I didn't realize the one was as green as it was until it was picked because that was on the underside. I hope it will continue to ripen. These 3 tomatoes were the only ones that were close to being ripe. :( Here is the next closest:

It's going to be a long time before we have more tomatoes! lol!! So those other 2 need to finish ripen and need to taste as delicious as I know they can!

this post links up to: Oh, My How Your Garden Grows!

1st Harvest!!!!

2011-07-18T22:21:00.000-07:00

Our 1st harvest!!!! Yay!!! Can you tell I am excited? I know it wasn't exactly big, but it was delicious, especially the tomato. The onions we picked as green onions. If you remember, my son dumped the entire pack of onion seeds in about a foot square area, so they have to be thinned out. We use them in our salad. The tomato we sliced up and ate mostly the slices with a bit of salt and a small portion we chunked up and put in our salad. The best part is our very, very picky little eater (Little One) tried both the onion and the tomato because they came from our garden. At first he liked the tomato, but after a couple of bites, he didn't. lol!!! He didn't like the onion right off. I do think he could develop a taste for the tomato. He use to wouldn't eat carrots, but after eating a bite here and there, he now eats them and likes them. We should have some more tomatoes soon and I can pick more onions at any time. The weather is going to be very hot for the next several days, so I need to water every day. We have been having heat indexes over 100.

This post links to Garden Tuesday, Homestead Barn Hop, Tuesday Garden Party and Harvest Monday.

Hard Week for the Garden!

2011-07-14T13:20:00.000-07:00

This week has been rough for our garden!

Monday (7-11): We had heat indexes over 100 degrees. I watered the garden in the afternoon and then in late evening we had a terrible storm with high wind, rain and lightening. One of our trees fell down the wind was so high. (Luckily our compost bin did not fall over.) We had to leave our home (for a few days) because the electricity went out.

Tuesday (7-12): We were not at home so I could not water. Plus we had an electrical wire down in our backyard so I wasn't about to water "just in case". It got very hot again on Tuesday. The heat index was again over 100 degrees.

Wednesday (7-13): I did not get home until after dark, so still no watering. Luckily, it didn't get quite as hot on Wednesday. The high was in the low to mid 80's.

Thursday (7-14): I finally got out to water! It is cooler today in the low 80's. I also got to look around the garden finally. Unfortunately it looks like the squash were attacked. *sigh* Not sure what it was, but both of the squash look like they were scratched up. The smaller one (which was under a net) looks the worse. I think it was destroyed. Not sure yet about the bigger one, but I'm betting it was.

On a more pleasant note, one of my tomatoes is finally started to turn! :) My cucumber plant is getting bigger too and it is getting a few buds. I am getting hopeful. Here are more pictures:

Cucumber Plant

My Tomato

Either Pumpkin or Squash Buds

My Poor Little Squash!

My Onions

Some More of Tomatoes

Garden Pictures!

2011-07-10T14:36:00.000-07:00

Pumpkin?

Squash? Zucchini?

Tomatoes

Onions

Cucumber

Pumpkins? Squash? Zucchini? Not sure... lol!!!

This post is featured on Garden Tuesday and Outdoor Wednesday.

We Have a Pumpkin and Some Squash!

2011-07-09T14:39:00.000-07:00

Ok, first the bad news... we lost a tomato plant. It got dug up by something, probably a squirrel. Luckily, it was a small plant that only had 2 tomatoes on it. So into the compost bin it went...

Good news... I saw at least one small pumpkin and what I am assuming are two squash. I thought that was a pumpkin vine, but I guess not. That area is growing so wild and tangling up, that I can't tell what is what. The reason I now believe they are squash is, the fruits are long almost tear drop shaped. It does not look like the pumpkin based on the shape, but the coloring is about the same right now. I guess we will find out as they get more mature. lol!!!

One of my cucumbers is getting kinda big. It is the one in the pot. That one was planted strange. First I filled the pot about half way with dried leaves and then I filled the rest of the way with dirt. It will be interesting to see how it does long term. My other cucumbers are still pretty small, but they may not be getting enough light because they are close to the fence and it is sometimes shaded there.

Compost Bin

2011-07-04T16:27:00.000-07:00

We finally got our new compost bin up!!! Little One and I worked on it. We used 4 stakes (we may add a few more latter for strength) and then wrapped it with hardware cloth. We used garden twist ties to hold it to the stakes.

In our other garden news, we got a cage around two tomato plants but could not get a cage around the big one. It was just too sprawled out and the pumpkin was too close. We did throw a net over part of the garden including that tomato plant. Hopefully that will help keep the squirrels and birds away from them.

It's Hot Outside!

2011-07-03T11:10:00.000-07:00

My plants were looking parched! It's funny how things can change so suddenly. We were having cool/ wet weather until about 2 weeks ago. lol!!! I went out and watered the plants today and added a scoop or 2 of manure to each of the plants except the onions. I was worried about adding any manure to the onions since I will be harvesting some of them soon and they live in the ground. I did give them a good drink of water, though. I never made it out to water yesterday because I was feeling exhausted and it really showed today. Some of the plants were starting to droop. Hopefully they will spring back up. Right now it is 89 degrees, with a "feels like" of 91.

Garden Update- July 1st 2011

2011-07-01T11:51:00.000-07:00

Whoahoo!!!! I counted 20 tomatoes, various sizes on our vines with lots more flowers to create more. :) None of them have started turning orange yet. That may be because of the wet, cold spring we had. It's my Early Girls that have the tomatoes, I don't think any of the supersonic have any yet. I lost one of my sweet peppers. Not sure if it fell off or was bit off. It was still pretty small. I still have a pepper growing on that plant and there are a few flowers. There are tons of flowers on my pumpkin plants, but so far I have only seen one flower that looks like it is a female (the ones that produce pumpkins). Hopefully we will get a few more before the summer is over. Most of my other plants are still small. I am hoping my cucumbers make it, but they may have been started too late.

Garden Update- End of June 2011

2011-06-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

My garden is getting big! :) Several of my tomato plants have flowers and/or little tomatoes. One of my pumpkin plants have buds and one of them is stretching itself across my yard. lol!!! One of my pepper plants (the original transplant that survived) has little tiny green peppers on it. The lettuce is already done with. It bolted (I think) and got bitter so I ripped what was left out. The plants that I started later are still small, but most of them seem to be doing well. We had to relocate one of our pumpkin plants. PC had put 4 of the tiny sprouts from the compost bin in about a 12 inch pot. Well, needless to say, they quickly grew too big for it. Unfortunately, by the time he transplanted them again, they had all grown together and he could not separate them. He planted them in the ground. That is the pumpkin plan that has buds. lol!!! I'm still wondering if it is going to survive. On a less positive note, our yard is looking really ragged between the garden bags since mowing has gotten difficult due to the plants. Oh well, I guess that is a sacrifice we have to live with until we get our raised garden beds for next year. Here are some pictures of my garden:

This it the poor plant that was from the compost bin. lol!!!

Planted Sprouts

2011-06-10T11:00:00.000-07:00

Sometime in late May or early June, I planted the sprouts I was growing. I had to plant anywhere I could find space. lol!!! One of my cucumbers ended up in an old wildflower bed. Not sure if it will produce or not. lol!!!

Garden Update- 2011

2011-05-20T10:54:00.000-07:00

Well, we have had a few snags with our garden. A few of our tomatoes and peppers got bitten off by something. A few plants have died, didn't sprout or got dug up. Most are doing fine, but I need to replant a few. I also realized that I forgot to plant cucumbers. lol!!! I have started a few more plantings in cups to transplant. I can't remember when I did this, but it was sometime in May.

Planting Garden

2011-04-30T17:44:00.000-07:00

Planted garden on April 30, 2011. We had hoped to build raised garden beds, but the weather was just too bad and we ran out of time because we were so busy. We decided to plant the garden in the bags of dirt. lol!!! We cut out the top and we punched holed in the bottom of the top soil bags. We dug out some of the dirt and mixed in a bit of peat and manure into each bag. We started onions, squash, zucchini and some of our pumpkins from seeds. We got transplants of lettuce, peppers stevia and tomatoes (Early Girl and Super Sonic) to plant. PC found some pumpkin seedlings growing in our compost bin and decided to plant them also. We ran out of bags, so we started planting things in some of the pots we had laying around from last year.

Dirt!

2011-04-14T11:47:00.000-07:00

I've been sick, so I haven't posted my newest yet. Well, we got dirt for our gardens. Here is what we got:

6- 40 pound bags of organic peat moss
6- 40 pound bags of organic manure
12- 40 pound bags of organic top soil

I plan to layer them in the gardens. Probably will do a manure layer, peat layer, top soil layer, peat layer, manure layer, peat layer, top soil lay, with the final top soil layer being the thickest. I may change my mind on this.

In other news, I am hoping we can stay well enough to get these gardens going. Right now, my oldest son has a hurt toe, so we are being delayed some more. If it's not one thing, it's another.

Seeds!

2011-03-20T21:53:00.000-07:00

Well, I bought most of my seeds last week. I got organic ones. They were on sale at Lowes, buy one, get one free, so I stocked up. lol!!! I figured if I needed to, I could exchange them if I decided I did not want to grow something after I read up on it. There are a few seeds that I have not been able to find among the organics, so I may try to find Heirloom ones or I may just have to go with regular seeds, but I would rather not.

I also have been reading a book about lasagna gardening. It sounds very interesting. I think I may give it a try. It is based on the idea that you don't need to till your ground, that you just lay a bunch of layers of organic materials (shredded leaves, peat moss, grass clippings, compost, manure, ect) and then plant your crops. It sounds a bit easier for a newbie with health problems like me to do. The book then goes into the best way to grow each crop. It's really interesting.

I hope to be able to tell you more about this method of gardening as the summer goes on. :)

Welcome!

2011-03-04T14:58:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my new garden diary. I am new to gardening and I am still in the planning stages. I plan to keep a journal of my garden on this blog. I am a Christian, homeschool mother. I plan to incorporate gardening into out homeschool this year. My two boys are also doing a vegetable garden project for one of their 4-H projects. I hope you will join me on my new journey.