It's that time of year again

It's that time of year when I order any seeds and plants I need for the next year. Abby just had to help me while I was going through all the seeds I have.


Like I have the past few years, I will be ordering the Super Sauce Tomato plants from Burpee. I ordered 12 plants last year and am thinking of getting 18 plants this year. I'm going to get my green pepper plants at a local farm this year however.


I believe the only seeds I need this year are herbs. I need more Oregano and Spearmint. For some reason my Spearmint never survives through the winter. That's okay, seeds are cheap.


I already bought some more Butter Bush Squash seeds. Hubby loves butternut squash and this seed makes the perfect sized plant for small spaces. I've had good luck with it the past few years.


I also went through my garden journal binder and printed up some new pages and took out all of last years notes. I still keep the past years notes just in case I need to look up something like the weather patterns or germination and harvest yields.


Now I just need the garden to thaw out and the temperatures go up a little more.

What I have been up to

It's been crazy here in the garden and kitchen. It's been really hot and humid too, which bothers my RA a ton, so I didn't venture out to the garden much. The crazy weeds show my lack of attention too.

I've also been canning beans up like crazy too.

This is when the bush beans were almost ready to be picked. A few days later, I was snippin n snappin them.

My small but productive bush bean plot. Got tons of beans from this little bit of plants. Jade bush beans are wonderful.

Abby inspecting the beans after they were cleaned. She likes to take one and bat it around the living room. This was part of the first days worth of beans. I pulled just shy of a 5 gallon bucket that day.

56 pints of green beans all ready for winter suppers.

Pole beans are now starting to come in, so I will be canning even more beans. Tomatoes are starting to ripen as well. I freeze them as I pick them and can my sauce when it is a bit cooler out.

Flowers around the homestead

We have had a rather lovely summer. We are blessed to not have had a ton of rain like some of the other blogs I read have. We do get rain a couple times a week though, just enough for me to not need to water the garden hardly if at all. Weeds are still a major issue, even after having my dad and sister over to help weed.

Our lilies and other flowers are in full bloom in the gardens now. It looks so pretty, even with all the weeds in the front bed. Enjoy! Warning *Picture Heavy*


These are our free lilies. Our land lord dug them up from another plot and just dumped them across the street from me. Steve and I grabbed three huge bunches of them. Two are in wine barrel halves at the street edge and the other is in a huge galvanized steel barrel near the deck and front garden.

My bee balm. I found some purple bee balm in a vacant lot across the street from me. Going to see if the land lord will let me dig them up seeing how all he does is take out all the flowers and bushes/trees before pouring the new pads. 

The pretty red lilies that dad bought be a couple of years ago. They went nuts this year and are still blooming, even with the yellow lilies in bloom. The orange ones dad bought me will open up shortly.

Yellow lilies from dad. These have a nice smell to them. I never noticed it before this year though.

The orange and red nasturtiums from the veggie garden. And a lone petunia growing in a pot that had black ones in it last year. I didn't plant any petunias this year, but this little guy decided to show up for me.

Crazy busy times here on the homestead

It's been one crazy month and a half. Between planting all the veggies, the weeds that came up like nuts in the garden, finishing up the homeschool year and getting our camp all set up, I haven't had anytime to work or type for my blog. I feel so bad for neglecting it. That will be changing starting now.

We have had a ton of strawberries come in that we pretty much ate all. I did give some away to a neighbor though.

I got a few blueberries off one of my three plants. Another is loaded with berries, so I am hoping I am able to have enough to make some muffins or pancakes with. If not, I will be hitting up the farmers market to buy a few pints.

My sugar snap peas are producing a ton as usual. I have had three gallon sized bags picked so far. I gave away half a gallon and still have tons and tons to pick. I go in for my infusion tomorrow, so I may have to bring some in for my nurses. I am also thinking of pickling some. I see all sorts of veggies pickled, but not snap peas, so who knows.

I had to have my sister help me to weed my garden. It seriously got taken over by crab grass and some really tall weed that I have no clue what it is. I have never seen the garden this over taken before. It all started once a new mobile home was put in three homes away from mine. The person putting the grass seed down used some cheep crap that ended up in my garden and it just took over. I lost all my carrots because of it. I will be planting a fall harvest that had better make it or I will be really ticked. Yes, I know that this has gone to seed. It is all gone now, but I had to use loppers to cut the stalks.

My dad has been down the past week and kinda sorta helped me weed the garden. He left lines of weeds unpicked around what he cleared out. Looks stupid to me, so I have been going back in and picking what he hasn't been. He also likes to keep all the picked weeds in the garden bed as well. I don't want them there at all. Kinda the point of weeding the garden is to keep the weeds out, picked or not.

Next up is to fix the tomatoes. The Florida weave way of trellising up the tomatoes is totally not working. My plants are loaded with heavy fruit and they are now laying down taking the twine down with it. No matter how tight I wrap the twine or how many times I wrap it, the plants still fall over. So, I give up. Pruning the bottom of the plants and attaching them all to the stakes that I have the twine wrapped around is on my to do list next.

Strawberries and Blueberries

My strawberries are growing like nuts. Right now they are loaded with a ton of flowers and a ton of little greenish strawberries. I can't wait till mid June when they should be ready to eat.

My "little" patch has taken over the raised bed and now covering my gnomes. There are three there, somewhere hehe.

I am excited this year because two of my three blueberry bushes have flowers and the start of baby blueberries. This has me totally excited. We planted these almost two years ago and they were supposedly already two years old when I ordered them. I hate paying the price for blueberries at the store and sadly at the farmers market. I may not have much this first year, maybe just enough for one batch of muffins, but it is a start.

Top picture shows the flowers on one of my blueberry bushes. They are so dainty and kind of remind me of the top part of a jelly fish. The bottom shows the starts of the blueberry themselves.

Busy times in the garden ~ Tomato and Pepper planting time!

I'm sorry I have been away from my blog for a couple of weeks. It's been busy here between getting all the veggies and seeds planted as well as fixing up some of the flower beds and working on the remainder of our homeschool year.

Not to mention, this past weekend, we opened up our camp site. It is almost all set up, but still need to get the screen house up. It will be our home away from home on the weekends. Can't stay away longer than a few days because of the cats and gardens.

I got my shipment of the tomato and pepper plants I ordered through Burpee a couple of weeks ago. I ordered 12 Super Sauce Tomato plants and 6 California Wonder pepper plants. They came in one big box through UPS. When they were delivered, my UPS guy asked what was in the box, which turned into me showing him the big veggie garden. He was pretty impressed with what I can do in my mobile home park.

The plants are packed 3 to a pack and look like this:

I planted the tomatoes first and then the pepper plants the next day. I did it this way because I was so sore after bending over to plant the 12 tomato plants. Thanks to the RA, I don't push myself unless I want to be in bed for days.

I dig a nice sized hole for each tomato plant and add some crushed up egg shells that I have been saving all winter long.

Then I lay the tomato plants on their side in the hole, not straight up and down. Tomatoes will grow roots on their stems. so putting the plants on the side makes them more stable, stronger and gives them more access to nutrients in the soil.

Then I fill in the hole, being careful not to break the stem. Then I give them a deep watering and surround them with straw. I ran out of straw after planting 8 of the tomato plants. I also have straw covering my onions, snap peas and carrots. I use the straw to cut down on the weeds. What weeds do show up are easier to pull up.

My tomato plants look lost in all that straw, but they will get very tall really soon. My pepper plants look tiny too. Last year they filled out very nicely and we got tons of peppers from them.

I found some random squash or cucumber plants growing while I was planting the pepper plants. I managed to find 12 of them. My dad kept burying the over grown veggies in my garden, which annoyed me. I thought I managed to get them all dug up, but I guess I missed some seeds. I did take out all these seedlings and planted them elsewhere.

Let the planting begin and a few visitors

I spent yesterday and today in the garden planting the spring veggies. I have the sugar snap peas, carrots, onions, parsley, lavender, sage and thyme all planted. I need to plant the beets, spinach and a little more lettuce.

I then spent the next hour or so chilling out in the cool shade (It was in the 80's today!) watching the birds. Lots of them at my feeders. Chickadee's, Downy Woodpecker, Robins, Sparrows, Cardinals and Goldfinches. I texted Matt to bring me my new camera, but to be quiet so he doesn't startle the birds.

I love the zoom on my camera. I was able to sit far enough away to not bother the birds, but still be able to take nice up close shots. My old camera could never get this close. I loved watching the robins tilting their heads before they went after a worm or grub. It was like they were listening for the bug.

Of course now I have to fill up the sunflower seed feeder again thanks to the fat squirrel we have. I need to remember to get one of those cones to stop it from climbing up the pole to the feeders.

My beautiful daffodils are finally blooming. I need to plant more bulbs this fall and move the ones I have around. I can't wait for my lilies to bloom!

Updating the garden journal for the new season

About this time every year I get anxious to get into the dirt and start growing my veggies. But we are still under a ton of snow, so all I can do is plan my garden.


I pull out all my notes and plans from the year before and save them in a pocket folder. I use the past year notes to plan the placement of my veggies and for other things that worked in the garden.

Here I am with a clean sheet (I use two because our garden area is so big now). I also have the veggie placement from the past 2 years. I try to move all the veggies around the beds every year. I do companion planting, so I don't want any veggies planted in the current year that was planted in a spot where a non friend was planted the year before.

Snap pea trellis placement last year

I plan on moving my snap pea trellis to the opposite side of the garden where there is more shade. It still gets a ton of sun (6+ hours), but I want to plant more sun loving veggies where the snap peas use to be, like my pole beans.

About a month after planting

The strawberry bed is the only one that I don't move around. I planted 26 plants there last April (well my dad did lol) and they are now well established. I even gave my sister a ton of the runners last fall.

Pole Bean trellis made with trees from the yard

My big pole bean trellis is moving as well. I was thinking where my tomato and pepper plants were last year. It gets a ton of sun there, but I am afraid it will shade a bunch of the rest of the garden. That's why garden planning is important.

Time to get back to the planning. It will have to suffice until I can get my hands into the dirt.

Seed and plant orders for the 2015 gardens

For Valentine's day most husbands buy their wives rose or other pretty flowers and chocolate. Although I would love to get those things, the flowers just look pretty or smell nice, but eventually die and the chocolate never lasts long. My husband usually buys me a plant that will last me years. One year it was this beautiful red lily. However, when we moved from MA, it got left behind. Something about moving Thanksgiving weekend that had me thinking of other things.

This year my husband ordered me a dozen Super Sauce tomato plants, six California Wonder pepper plants and 100 each of three different types of onion sets, all from Burpee. I won't see them until May, but they will produce a ton of fruits and will feed our family for the year. Much better than some flowers that don't last more than a week.

My order from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds came in last week.It is so sad to see me so excited to get seeds in the mail. My son just shakes his head and smiles at me. LOL. I ordered mostly herbs from them. Thyme, Rosemary, Lavender, and Sage. I also ordered some Ice Queen Lettuce and more Danvers Half Long Carrot seeds. I only have a little bit left of those seeds from last year. I also got a free packet of flower seeds too. I got the same one last year, but never planted them. Guess I will plant both packets this year to bring more bees and butterfly's to the garden.

My order from Territorial Seeds was small this year. I have most seeds I use already. Leftovers from the year before or some saved seeds from the open-pollinated plants I grew. I needed some more Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans and some more Snacking Sunflower seeds. Matt loves sunflower seeds roasted with a little salt. I also ordered some Cabbage that is made for small gardens to try out.

Now all I need is for the snow to go away and the temps to warm up to something other than single digits and we will be all set. Don't see that happening anytime soon though.

Picking Seeds For This Years Garden

My favorite time of year is coming closer. Right now my favorite seed catalogs have arrived. The first two are my most favorite, Baker Creek Seeds and Territorial Seeds. I don't need many seeds and one of these days I will learn how to save my own seeds so I don't have to buy anymore. Some seeds I am not going to try to save, like carrots, tomatoes and peppers. I have had no luck growing tomatoes and peppers from seed, so I will keep buying them in plants from Burpee.

Working on what I will be ordering. First up are Danvers Half Long Carrots from Baker Creek. I have a little bit of these seeds leftover from last year, but I want to plant a bunch more, so I need more seeds. Check out my post on how I store my seeds. It's funny to look at the picture of the bucket that held all the pill bottles last year compared to what I have this year.

I sure have gathered a lot of seeds. Our garden was a lot bigger this past year than the year before, so lots more room to grow new things. The packets up at the top of the picture are empty. I keep them and put them in my garden journal for reference. Here is my garden journal from last year.

I'll be placing my seed order in about 3 week or so. Waiting for our tax refund to come in first. Not that I plan on spending a bunch of money, but when I order my tomato and pepper plants, I will spend about 150.00 or so.