Confession

The thing about gardening is that once you figure out a few things and start to think that maybe you’ve got a handle on this whole ‘growing food’ thing, you get humbled. Then you start a blog and make your random musings public and then you find out you’re wrong and you really feel like you have mud on your face. So it’s confessional time.

Let’s start out with the zucchini’s. I was totally wrong. Those little lady flowers do need to be pollenated by bees that have also visited the male flowers. I found this out soon after my posting when I on my ‘useless male’ high horse went out and clipped off all the male flowers for quesadillas. The next day I found a poor shriveled four inch dying zucchini. The thing with these squash are that they grow really fast, so those woman flowers don’t get a chance to open up until the zucchini are already five or so inches long. If it doesn’t get pollenated it shrivels and dies, if it does get pollenated, it keeps getting bigger.

Want to hear about our garlic failure too? Remember all that lovely hardneck garlic we picked? Yep, well, we picked it too early and half of it rotted. That was a very grim discovery. There’s so much moisture in those garlic heads that you really do need to wait until the plant dries up and browns before you pick it, or, it rots.

Next up. Fenugreek. I don’t know what we did wrong with it. It looked great when it first sprouted, lovely green with pink edged leaves. Then it got kind of spindly, then kind of brown. Were we giving it too much water? Too little? Did we plant them too close together? Are they supposed to look spindly? Anyway, somehow it’s unhappy, but there are a handful of big seed pods forming so at least we’ll have a little bit for making Indian food.

So there you go. Just a few garden failures of many I suppose. Scott attended a weed class this past weekend (more on that soon) and the woman teaching was announced as having 22 years of experience. It sounds like a lot, but the teacher said, “Really, it’s not that much experience, it means I’ve only grown tomatoes 22 times.” When you put it that way, it really doesn’t sound like that much. I guess we’re all just learning as we go, really.

Any gardening confessionals you need to make?

Dandelion Goodness

So by now, my regular readers are rolling their eyes saying, “Another weed post, Kendra? Give it up already, let’s talk about real vegetables.” Well, I can’t seem to give my weed obsession up. And I found another place to cater to it. You may have noticed it on my sidebar, but I have a link now to Learning Herbs. It’s a pretty neat place where they teach you all about how to make herbal goodies out of things you have growing in your own yard, medicines, teas, food recipes, etc.

The owners, John and Kimberly, has compiled an ebook which you can get for free if you sign up for their newsletter and its pretty interesting. It’s all about how to make home remedies. They even have good uses for lavender which is my all time favorite fragrance and flower, and it just happens to be blooming right now.

Their first newsletter has a recipe for how to make dandelion lemonade with dandelion flowers. Our flowers are all gone by now, but I’m going to save this for next year. They say, “dandelion blossoms steeped as tea can help relieve headaches, menstrual cramps, backaches, stomach aches and even depression.” Cool stuff isn’t it?

my favorite flower

This is my absolute favorite flower thats in my garden. Each year I look forward to seeing this little thing blossom. Of course I’ve completely forgotten the name of it, but next time I go to the nursery I’ll write it down. It grows tall, slender stems with these small little red flowers on top. They are so elegant and full of color, like jewelry in my flower garden.

Apple Blossoms

Thought I would share what’s blooming on our Golden Delicious apple tree this morning.

quick shots in the weekend garden

The cherry tree is in full blossom…

..and the peas are up!

Happy Spring

Happy Spring! The sun is shining, the breezes are blowing, and the scented geraniums are just starting to bloom. Looking forward to longer days ahead!

Oh what a beautiful weekend

What a gorgeous weekend. The sun was out, the light spring breezes were blowing and the tulips were up. We spent the weekend working away outside at every moment we could. And now we feel it. You know how you feel that first weekend you garden in spring? How the next day you feel sore muscles in places were you didn’t know you even had muscles? Scott’s ankle is sore, my elbow is tweeked and my back muscles are reminding me of all the digging that was done yesterday.

It felt good though to have dirt under my nails again, the energy (after four solid years of being pregnant and nursing) to dig up that impossibly hard dirt in our front garden, and to get that patch of fence fixed.

Scott turned our compost pile last at the end of the day yesterday and as I predicted this morning he said, “my left arm hurts, do you think I’m going to have a heart attack?” He says each and every time after he turns that huge pile. It’s a big job, a lot of pitch fork work, but it’s worth it for how incredible it’s made our soil over the years. I’ll write more about our compost soon.

In the meantime, enjoy this beautiful weather, even if it’s snowy, rainy, or sunny because soon enough the first radishes will be ready, lettuce will be asking to be picked, and you won’t know what to do with yet another zucchini.

Our Weeping Santa Rosa Plum Tree

Since moving to this spot, we’ve become a little fruit tree crazy. When we first toured the property we were excited about seeing the golden delicious apple tree, pear tree, and orange tree that were here, but since then we’ve planted an additional 10 or 11 trees to our third of an acre.

This Santa Rosa Weeping Plum is one of our newest additions and one of our favorites. It stands at the back of the yard out on it’s own, so it really is a showcase tree. I think this photo really captures a time when it’s at its most beautiful, right before the bud break. This was on February 28th. Now it’s in full bloom with branches touching the ground.

Since we’ve planted it we’ve had a problem with peach leaf curl and we don’t know how to treat it organically. The only thing we’ve been able to do, which is the only non organic thing we do in our yard, is to spray it with copper spray. If anyone knows of a better way to treat it, please comment. We’d love to know.