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.

No fun :P

Do you know what is absolutely no fun?  Taking the items from an abandoned project and trying to figure out what the heck you were going to do with them.  That's what I'm doing today after not touching this sewing project for 2 years...

Now, which fabric was for the body of the bag, and which fabric was for the straps?  I have no idea since I have about the same amount of BOTH pieces of fabric!  (What was I thinking?)

On closer inspection, the print fabric is sturdier, so that must be what I was going to use for the body of the bag.

New plants

Today I was browsing my local nursery, and found two new plants to bring home...

The left plant is peppermint and on the right is Citrosium Scented Geranium.  I thought the geranium was the correct plant for keeping mosquitoes away.  However, I found out that this is not the right plant to do that... and that this plant will grow 2-3 feet tall.  Umm... not the plant I was looking for.  :(

First snow pea harvest!

The first snow peas of 2016!!

They are so sweet & crunchy!  No cooking needed!

Plant Progress!

Just a couple of pics to show the garden progress...

Pea pods almost ready to be picked!!

The bell pepper (the middle plant) and the zucchini are growing!!

Lettuce!

We finally have lettuce from our garden!  This is going into a nice salad!  (For comparison, the cutting board is about a foot long.)

(Sorry for the sideways picture - I can't figure out how to make it "sit" correctly.)

The full garden

Now that all threat of frost is finally gone for the season, I transplanted the tomatoes and bell peppers outside.  The garden is all put together!

From left to right we have:

Cherry tomatoes in the large black pots (11 plants).

Six yellow bell peppers in some of the colored pots.

Three "bush-type" zucchini plants in colored pots.

Three pots of wildflowers in colored pots.

The bag of lettuce.

The bag with the snow peas (that is staked).

I think the pots for the peppers and zucchini aren't big enough.  I'm going to try to find larger pots to transplant these to.  I'm all out of pots at the moment.

I'm so excited to have so many plants this year!  I can't wait for them to really be growing this summer!!

Also, here are some close-ups of the lettuce and snow peas progress:

Hopefully it won't be long until we can pick some lettuce!  I'm actually not 100% sure when it's ready to be picked.  

The peas are flowering!  This is very exciting.  :) :)

Garden tips

It occurred to me to share some tips about what has worked for me in regards to my garden.

Every year I start my tomato and/or bell pepper seeds early in the house.  This year, I planted my seeds around the beginning of March.  I didn't do anything fancy.  In fact, I used the Jiffy Greenhouse Kits that I got from my local big-box store.  You can pick a kit for tomatoes only (the pellets are larger) or there are kits for all other plants.  You can also buy pellet refills for the "all other" kits; I have yet to find the larger tomato pellets sold separately (I had to buy another complete tomato kit just for the pellets this year).  The kit comes with instructions.  It's really incredibly easy to use.  All you need is an area in your house with a decent amount of sun once the seeds sprout.

**IMPORTANT TIP** Only start the tomatoes with the larger pellets!  When I planted the first seeds this year, I didn't have any of the larger pellets for tomatoes.  Now that the seedlings are really growing, I see why they need larger pellets!

If you want to try cold-weather crops (spinach, scallions, lettuce, peas, etc.), try to grow these in the spring instead of the fall.  I have found that the spring growing season here is much longer than the fall season.  It gets SO hot here in the summer that it is really hard to tell when is the right time to plant cold-weather crops because it is hard to tell when the seasons will finally change.  And when they do change, it seems to go from very hot to pretty chilly very quickly.

This spring, I decided on a whim (and because I found myself in my local hardware store staring at the seeds) to try lettuce and snow peas.  I've been wanting to try lettuce for awhile and it's difficult to find snow peas in any form anywhere around here (even the grocery stores).  I waited to plant either of these until the 7 day forecast did not have any days going below freezing (how very scientific of me), which was the first week of March.  The temperatures did go up and down after that date, but I did some research and found that as long as the temperatures didn't go below 19 degrees Fahrenheit the plants would be fine (and they were).

I found a great free app for my phone for gardening - it's the Burpee Garden Time planner.  It lets you create a garden (or two or three) in the app and then add plants (vegetables, herbs, flowers or fruit).  Once you put in your zip code, it customizes to-do lists to let you know when the best times to plant those items are.  It's really cool!  I was browsing through the list of vegetables and started creating a "dream" garden (Zucchini?  Cool - add that!), which helped me plan the garden out better.  It's also nice to have a list with reminders of when to plant what (although I don't think this app will integrate with other calendar apps like Google Calendar).  Another nifty thing about this app is that it also has videos related to planting different vegetables and videos related to gardening in general.  Again - super awesome feature especially if you're trying to grow something new.

Garden update

Well, the lettuce doesn't look a ton different:

But the peas have grown so much I had to do something to stake them!  I watched an online video and saw that peas will climb, but I didn't realize their "feelers" would be trying to make them climb this early!  So, with nothing else to use, I re-purposed my tomato stakes into a somewhat pea-friendly vine "trellis":

Hopefully this will work ok.  I had to try to untangle some of the peas from each other because they were already latching onto each other since there was nothing else to hold onto.  I will keep an eye on them and add more of the cross-bars as needed to the stakes as the peas grow.

The peas are cold-weather plants, so they will be long gone by the time the tomatoes are tall enough to need these stakes.  Hopefully I will get a decent amount of snow peas from these plants!  (Why are snow peas so difficult to find?  I can't even find them in the frozen sections of grocery stores around here.)

Sprouts!

Lettuce sprouts!

Pea plants! 

Exciting!!

Gardening has begun!

I knew this year I wanted to try planting items that aren't usually for container gardens - like lettuce and peas.  Then I saw an awesome Facebook post showing how someone modified a bag of garden soil to be the "container" and grew lettuce out of that.  Perfect!

So, the bag on the left has lettuce and the bag on the right has snow peas.  According to the lettuce seed package, you should space out planting seeds 2 weeks apart to prolong the harvest, so I have planted only the left side of the bag right now.  We will see what sprouts!  This is exciting - I have never tried planting either of these vegetables before!

I have also planted tomato seeds and yellow bell pepper seeds in "seed pods" inside the house.  I can't wait for the first tomato of the summer!