2016 Goals Update

Hmm.. I was looking over some old posts and noticed my 2016 goals that I wrote about in December.  Some of those are going well and some aren't.

Sewing projects - Well, I started on the overnight bag but then stopped after I kind of messed up.  My Mom told me how to probably fix it, but I just haven't done it yet.  I haven't attempted any other sewing projects at this point either.

Gardening - Successes

• Tomatoes - I do have 11 cherry tomato plants and they have produced really well!  I was getting a deluge of tomatoes around the end of July, and it was great!  I have never had so many tomatoes that I have had to make sauce before.
• Herbs (mint, basil, etc) - These have grown really well.  The basil is growing like CRAZY.  I am pretty shocked at how quickly it grew.  The small mint plant that I bought in May got REALLY big (like 3 feet tall!).  
• Lettuce and snow peas - I had not planned on growing these when I wrote my goals post and wow am I surprised at how great these plants did and how they produced.  I will definitely be growing these again next year.
• Misc - I also grew random wildflowers from seeds.  I figured they would help attract pollinators to the garden.  It probably worked, and the flowers are pretty.  I think next year I will need to plant those seeds at the same time I plant the tomato seeds.  It took much longer for the flowers to appear than I thought.

Gardening - Flops / Didn't try

• Yellow bell peppers - Well, I tried with 6 plants.  But ALL of the peppers were rotting on the vine before they were turning yellow.  ALL of them.  I couldn't salvage any of them.  About a month ago, I gave up and threw all of the plants out.  I will probably not try to grow these again.
• Zucchini - I tried to grow these too but was not successful.  When I saw that the plant stems were rotting (ick!), I threw these plants out which was some time ago.
• Blueberries - I did not buy any this year; I was researching my options instead.  Because I am not going to grow the zucchini or peppers next year, I am going to buy some blueberry plants and put them in that area of the garden.  Part of the reason why I didn't buy any this year was because I was out of space in the garden area and could not think of a good place to put them since deer will eat them.

Once I get notice of the first frost, I will pick all of the tomatoes that are left so they can ripen in the house.  I will also have to evaluate the herbs to see what can come in the house (some of them are so big that there is no space for them).  Then the garden will be done for the year.  The fall growing season in my area is much too short to attempt a cool season garden.

Sauce

What do you do when you get three pounds of tomatoes in 2 days?  Roast them so you can make sauce!

I have zero experience with ever doing this, so I looked online and found a recipe.  Basically, you *lightly* drizzle the tomatoes with olive oil and a little balsamic vinegar (if you'd like).  Don't use very much oil because the juices from the tomatoes also will trickle into the pan and you will have a lot of liquid in the pan that you don't really know is oil (that you may not want) or juice.  Roast them in a 450 degree oven for 20-25 minutes until they just start to brown and the skins start to crinkle/shrivel (you can see that in the photo above).  Once they cool down, you can just throw them in a blender or food processor and process until smooth.  I chose the food processor route because I was not going to take the time to take the skins off of all these tiny cherry tomatoes.  Use immediately or freeze for later!  Ours is in the freezer right now.

Another 2 pounds!

Oh, boy.  I'm glad I looked up recipes today!

Tomato city!

Holy cow!  This is just from today...

Between today & yesterday, there's over 3 pounds of tomatoes!!

I think I'm about to become very popular with my neighbors.  Off to spread tomato goodness....

Tomatoes!

So many tomatoes!

That's a sandwich bag.  And that's just from today!

Oh, the things I must do for my garden...

Ding, ding, ding!   In this corner, we have the planter of the seeds, the waterer of the plants, it's...the gardener!!!  Annnnd in this corner, we have the eater of the lettuce, the chomper of the tomato plants, it's.... the deer and bunnies!!!

Argh!  I came out today and half of my lettuce plants had been eaten down to the soil!  And something (I suspect a deer) and chomped on the tomato plants!  This was no hornworm - too much of the plant was gone.  ARGH.

So, after looking around my big box garden store for awhile trying to figure out what to do, I settled on 8 foot tall tomato stakes (the kind with the metal core and plastic coating that are normally used for tomatoes), plastic mesh deer fencing, heavy-duty twist ties, velcro cord organizers, and landscape fabric pins.  This photo shows a pretty good picture of it:

So, I was standing on a ladder with a rubber mallet while the SO was holding the ladder steady.  I was driving the stakes into the clay soil with the hammer about a foot.  Once those were all done, we unrolled the plastic fencing and cut the length we needed.  Since the fencing is 7 feet tall, and the stakes were 8 feet tall but hammered into the soil 1 foot, it worked out perfectly.  I started at the end with the gutter and used lengths of the heavy-duty twist ties to attach the fencing to the stakes.  However, you will notice colored ties right by the gutter.  In that area only, I used the velcro cord organizers so that I could easily undo the fence from the stakes so that I can have access to the garden.  Nifty, huh?!? 

Then I continued using the heavy-duty twist ties to attach the fencing to the stakes.  I put more twist ties towards the bottom since there are bunnies around here and I didn't want them getting in. Then I took the landscape pins and used them to hammer the bottom of the fencing to the ground.  I used about three in-between each two stakes (again, to keep the bunnies out).

However, before I did all of that, I set up an automated watering system for the garden.  Even though I have a way in & out of the garden, I knew that I was not going to want to mess with it every day before going to work.  The former owners of the house were kind enough to leave a very long hose and a couple of digital water timers.  There were also two soaker hoses buried around plants in the front yard which were totally unnecessary.  So, after looking around the local big-box store at their automated garden watering section, I decided that I had plenty of materials to make my own setup.  Basically, instead of burying the soaker hose in the ground (since I have a container garden), I just draped the hose over the top of the plants and threaded the hose between plants to try to keep it in place.  Also, I had the landscape pins that I tried to use to stick the hose to the soil in the containers (which didn't work great since the soil was not filled to the top of the containers which is where the hose was).  I connected the spigot to the timer, connected the hose, and connected that to the soaker hose and gave it a test run.  Of course, there is water that is kind of going all over the place (that's what soaker hoses do), but overall it did a pretty good job.  You can see the gray hose going into the lettuce plants (under the fence) in the photo above.  Below are some other pictures showing the black soaker hose in the plants (you can also see the silver landscape pins keeping the hose in place in the lettuce):

WHEW!  I NEVER thought I would have to put up a deer fence.  At least the automated watering system will save me some time!

Hydrangeas!

The hydrangeas are blooming!  I was super excited to find these in our yard when we bought the house.  Needless to say, I have a lot of fond memories where hydrangeas are involved and it is lovely that these are around the house.