Winter at the Whitlock's

As far as snow goes, this winter has been lame. We have gotten many days with terrible driving conditions but only one inch of snow at a time! No sledding for us.

However, no amount of snow is too small for this girl to attempt a snow angel (with tongue stuck out to catch the falling snow).

 

Fort-building, using the couch cushions and anything else available, is a daily occurrence in our house in winter. Unfortunately it means that we don't have a couch to sit on for most of the day.

Also, wrestling occurs every day throughout the year, until Daddy falls asleep, that is. This is usually how it begins.

This Momma is aching for spring to get here already! We are all ready for sunny walks, digging in our garden, and putting our winter clothes away. Ugh...how many more weeks of winter?

The Progress of a Garden: Late September

The Brussels are getting HUGE!

On the Right a Brussel has fallen over. Basil is ready to be harvested and frozen before the first frost

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Still getting a lot of tomatoes and peppers and the winter crops of peas and radishes are in.

If you are interested in seeing how much produce we picked from our two small gardens in September head on over here.

The Progress of a Garden: Early August

 I pulled out the tomato plant that wasn't producing and we have started putting in our winter crops. The trellis is covered in green apple cucumber and spaghetti squash vines.

The Tomatoes are Taking Over!!! (This is after I pruned them back)

The Progress of a Garden: The End of May

From our gardens in May we harvested: strawberries (4 lbs!), radishes, lettuce, spinach, green onions, bok choi and swiss chard. It has been a really hot week so the spinach and bok choi are bolting. Next spring I plan on planting the bok choi MUCH earlier. I also read on a forum that spouting the seeds indoors on coffee filters and then planting the sprouts gives the seeds a head start on growing, so I may try that. The cold weather crops are definitely slowing down although I think we have a little while longer on the lettuce.

Everything is in the garden now! For our big summer producers we have a grand total of 6 tomato plants, 3 bush cucumbers, 1 vining cucumber, 2 zucchini, a rotation of 20 bush beans, and seven pepper plants.

Check out my peas on the trellis! They just started flowering

 

 The daikon radishes in the pot in the foreground are getting huge but no root development yet. I am afraid they will bolt before they do.

 In the front the bed is really full but I am still waiting on some green beans to germinate for the next rotation.

 The dill is flowering and it is beautiful. Behind it you can see the nearly ready Kohlrabi.

This is what green onions look like when they go to flower

Up for June: Kohlrabi, lettuce, carrots, chard, kale, green beans, zucchini, basil, snow peas, and maybe cucumbers at the end of the month.

Garden(s) At The End of April

At the end of April, the first harvest: A dozen French Breakfast Radishes

The new backyard garden space: A 3X8 foot raised bed, pea trellis, a perennial herb bed and deep mulching to get rid of grass.

Currant and daikon radishes in pots. Plants being hardened off (they are now in the ground).

AND...the front garden: More strawberry plants; last years plants going crazy with berry production and a somewhat empty bed waiting for seedlings to grow.

Carrot Emergency!

I realized today that I used the last of the carrots in making dinner last night. What to do? I just went grocery shopping yesterday and REALLY don't want to go two days in a row, plus I buy organic carrots and the Country Store doesn't carry organic carrots which means I will have to trek to the Giant grocery store. I hate Giant they are always out of buttermilk (and pretty much everything else I need). But then I realized that I do have carrots! Garden to the rescue! 

Is there anything as lovely as carrot tops? I think they are gorgeous and I really don't want to cut them off. These are Tom Thumb carrots which seemed to do quite well in the shallow beds.

My garden at the end of September is looking much better than it did all summer. The intense heat wasn't good for the seedlings so many died despite my diligent attempts at watering. The sweet pepper plants are also now producing since I discovered their secret and the cherry tomatoes are producing in full force!

This is what I am getting every other day, and doesn't count all the tomatoes that were split because of yesterdays and today's rain. They are so sweet and delicious!

 Look at these beauties! Strawberries in September?! Yes, ma'am! I am pretty sure everbearing strawberries are the best thing in the whole world. How are your gardens doing?

P.S. Infested with tomato horn worms? Check out this post on my other blog.

My Garden in May

Do you remember what my garden looked like a month ago? Isn't it amazing what one month can do? My broccoli is gigantic, though sadly, one of them died of some kind of wilt. We have been enjoying lettuce and peas and soon we will have beet greens! The summer crops have all gone in, though I definitely want to add a few more peppers, but I will buy those already grown and plant them in the next week or so.

Look in the foreground of the pictures and you can see what look like weeds but are actually strawberry plants! I planted 18 Everbearing strawberry plants and if I am lucky I will get a small harvest in September.

I have two tomato plants in the front garden beds, two in pots in the back and three still under the lights in the basement! Canning tomatoes this year will be a stupendous endeavor!

I decided to plant some marigolds because they are pretty AND they deter pests. So far so good. Here are some things that I have learned recently:

•  Plant WAY more peas! I only planted 3 seeds to begin with and this variety really likes to be close with other pea plants and produces better when it is; plus I didn't plant enough for our enjoyment. These peas are very sweet and wonderful tasting right out of the shell.
• Mulch, mulch, mulch! Right after I plant seeds I really need to mulch next time. The sun just baked my carrot, spinach and scallion seedlings despite diligent watering. I only have 4 carrots, 3 scallions and 5 spinach plants from the initial 20 or so seeds I sowed for each variety!
• Plan on planting garlic rather than planting it as an after-thought after some cloves sprouted in my pantry. They need to be planted earlier. I have two that are going strong, though, so I should at least make up for that.

I love my garden and so does Andrew. Despite the work that it entails Andrew and I really enjoy working in the garden together. Oh! I checked on my composting worms today and they are doing great! I found tons of cocoons and they seem quite happy. I am glad that they are so easy to take care of!

The First Harvest!

The garden is doing very well so far! We had a problem with a cat using it as a litter box but I think it finally realized that the garden bed was not conducive to clean paws, either that or the animal repellent we put out finally did its job. In the front row you can see my lettuce patch. I just planted six more lettuce seeds. One of my varieties did not germinate at all (grrr...) so there should be more here but c'est la vie. The spinach is doing lovely. We have 4 plants right now but only one is ready to harvest. In the very back we have some bush peas and the big ones in the middle are the broccoli. The second spring planting is finished and there will probably be one more planting in a few more weeks to keep things going.

 Our First Harvest

Indoors we have zucchini and sweet peppers germinating and a bunch of beautiful tomato seedlings basking in the artificial light. Oh and great news! we might be able to get a small raised bed in the backyard! There is one spot in the back that gets sun most of the day. I will probably plant my tomatoes in pots and put them back there to see how they do and then next year, if they do well, we can put in another raised bed and have lots of stuff growing back there.

The Garden is IN!

While I realize that having a vegetable garden at the front of your house is not looked highly upon, I persisted and the bed is finally in (per HOA regulations). It was a lot of work to dig out all that dirt and put a raised bed into the ground to please the HOA. Don't you think it would look better raised and painted white to match the siding like I had originally planned? Yeah, I know I need to get over it but it certainly smarts. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to spruce up the yard to make it look more acceptable?

Here are my babies basking in the sunlight. I had weird germination rates among my seedlings and ended up with a bunch of broccoli, almost no spinach and one type of lettuce didn't germinate at all. Today I am going to start my tomatoes and I already direct seeded spinach, vit mache, peas, and scallions.

We also bought supplies to make our worm composter and I bought our worms off of Ebay. I am hoping they will arrive this week so that I can start composting ASAP.

As far as the budget is concerned, we budgeted $200 for this project

• 
  
  $45 went to seeds and starting supplies (these should last 2+ years)
• $42.31 for general gardening supplies
• $110 to build the bed and fill it with "Mel's Mix"
• $11 for supplies for the worm composter
• $30 for worms

Needess to say we went over budget because of the vermiculite and we had a hard time locating compost. Vermiculite is $24 for 4 cu. ft. and we only needed 6 so we have a bunch left over. Does anyone want to buy some discounted vermiculite? It makes a lovely soil mix when combined with equal parts peat moss and compost. ;)

March Madness

No, I do not mean the March Madness that involves basketball, I mean the March Madness that has enveloped the Whitlock estate. First, I have been working on a project for my church that has literally taken hours upon hours of measuring, cutting, pinning, sewing, cursing, more cutting, sewing and even more cursing and it is yet to be finished. The best part: I am teaching six, 8-11 year old girls how to applique. They are wonderful girls but I think that some of them have attention spans shorter than fish. In any case the project should be done soon and I can post pictures of the crafty-craftiness and forget all the hours (and the cursing) that it took to get there.

Now, for the biggest madness of them all, THE GARDEN. First of all PA has the worst soil in the universe. It is mostly slate and shale mixed with a little tiny bit of dirt. It took me an hour to dig one hole. So today Andrew and I worked to move the three "rhododendrons" to the back of the house which is shady and which they will like better. When I was moving them I noticed a plant tag buried underneath the root ball and I thought "oh cool, after we move these I can see which variety we have." La de dah, we relocated the "rhododendrons" and all was swell. Andrew built the frame for the garden box and I sat down to check out the plant tag. The builder told us that they were rhododendrons; everyone thought they looked like rhododendrons which prefer shade; the plant tag, however says this: Otto Luyken Laurel which is not a rhododendron. Not only that but laurels prefer sun. And so, all of that work probably for nothing. They might die back there, but maybe I will be able to give them to one of my neighbors provided that he moves them himself.

Then, when I thought the madness was over I had to fix my leggy seedlings. Back on that later. I just thought I would post about the craziness and share the love.

Planning my Garden

This is my amazing garden plan that I have to submit to my HOA before I can start because I need to relocate three rhododendron shrubs and that requires HOA approval. Boo. You might also notice that Ravenna had a part in the planning process with the squiggly pencil drawings. Unfortunately her additions did not make it into the final plan being submitted for approval.

I have a 14X12 space to work with in front of my house so I am doing raised beds, made of wood (hopefully salvaged/re-purposed from the Habit for Humanity Re-Store), painted white to match the siding. I am planning on following Mel Bartholomew's method of Square Foot Gardening to get the most out of my small space. The area surrounding the beds will be filled with black mulch, just in case you were curious, and there is an existing boxwood shrub that I will leave in place.

Now, to the good part: What am I am planting? So far I have ordered...

• SPINACH * BLOOMSDALE * HEIRLOOM SEEDS 2010
  
• PEA, SHELLING * TOM THUMB * HEIRLOOM SEEDS 2010
  
• ONION * EVERGREEN WHITE BUNCHING * HEIRLOOM SEEDS 2010
  
• LETTUCE * TANGO * HEIRLOOM SEEDS 2010
  
• LETTUCE * ITALIENISCHER * HEIRLOOM SEEDS 2010
  
• LETTUCE * FORELLENSCHUSS * HEIRLOOM SEEDS 2010
  
• LETTUCE * AMISH DEER TONGUE * HEIRLOOM SEEDS 2009
  
• GREENS * MACHE VIT * HEIRLOOM SEEDS 2010
  
• CARROT * SCARLET NANTES * HEIRLOOM SEEDS 2010
  
• SQUASH * BLACK BEAUTY ZUCCHINI * HEIRLOOM SEEDS 2010
  
• BEET * CHIOGGIA * HEIRLOOM SEEDS 2010
  
• BROCCOLI * DI CICCIO * HEIRLOOM SEEDS 2010
  

FOUR different kinds of lettuce?! You read that right. I made sure that all of the varieties that I ordered will do well in our area and many of the seeds are organic, though not all. All are sustainably grown heirloom seeds, and none are GMO (take THAT Monsanto!). I still have to order my tomato seeds and will probably get them from Happy Cat Organics, which is local. Does anyone know of a great paste tomato, by the way? I am really wanting to can my tomatoes and make lots of sauce. For a great cherry tomato, I recommend Sungolds. We got them at our CSA last year and they were SO SO GOOD! I will probably do 4-6 tomato plants: 2 paste, 1 cherry, and 1 slicing. Is there anything else I should grow? I can't do corn or vine plants unfortunately.

I purchased most of my seeds from Cherrygal.com. I could never figure out exactly where she was located, which kills the whole "buying local" idea but many of her heirlooms were developed right here in Lancaster county. I mainly bought from her because of time: I need to get my broccoli and tomatoes started ASAP. I couldn't depend on the Landis Valley Museum to get my seeds soon enough through mail order, even though they are pretty darn local. Maybe I will get some seeds from them next year? At least I am working on one part of my resolution!

Oh, and here is a fun tool for designing your garden: http://gardeners.com/Kitchen-Garden-Planner/kgp_home,default,pg.html?SC=RMPG2128