Garlic

The garlic is growing and poking through the straw because we have had Spring like temperatures.  However the next couple of days the temps are going down in the 20s so I am not removing the straw just yet.

Seeds Ordered!

I finally got my act together and ordered my seeds.  This year I ordered from High Mowing and Johnny's.  Last year I ordered from Pine Tree but they are slow in getting their catalogs out and I like to open the catalogs, spread them out and compare seeds.  You can do this online but it just isn't the same.  Hopefully they will come in time to get the spring crops planted by my goal of March 17th.  Last year I was late in planting and had poor results.  Although I still need to get a truck of compost in to refill/amend my beds before planting the seeds.  Here is what I ordered:

High Mowing

Provider Beans

Kentucky Wonder Pole Beans

Improved Rainbow Chard

Astro Arugula

Mizuna

Tatsoi

Lacinto Kale

High Mowing Mesculun Mix

Sugar Snap Peas

Yukon Gold Potatoes

Palco Spinach

Success PM Straightneck (Yellow Summer Squash)

Bouquet Dill

Genovese Basil

Green Star Lettuce

Nevada Lettuce

Lettony Lettuce

Antago Lettuce

Johnny's 

Napoli Carrots (Pelleted)

Northern Pickling Cucumber

Lancer Parnips

Dunja Zucchini 

Red Giant Mustard Greens

Double Click Mix Cosmos

Animation Mix Snap Dragons

This year I am ordering significantly more from High Mowing because their prices for most packets were 70 cents less each than Johnny's and when you buy as many as I did it adds up.  I am trying a bunch of Asian greens for the first time because they hold up well in the cold and we want more greens.  I could have gone crazy with the lettuce options but I figured I could pick a few more packets up locally without hiking up my shipping charges.

This year I am also going to try cucumber and summer squashes from seed directly planted in the ground.  I always thought you needed to start them inside and since we don't have grow lights I always bought starts.  My sister in law said that she had done both before with great success directly planting in the ground.  I decided to go ahead and try it because the cost of seeds is cheaper than buying multiple starts and there are significantly more plant options.  Last year my store had one choice in variety for zuchinni and pickling cucumbers.  By buying seeds I was able to pick out varieties that I think might work best for my location and garden issues.  I just hope this works out otherwise it will probably  be too late to buy starts by the time I realize the seeds completely failed.

Jamaica Mon!

I've been away for awhile because life has been busy and oh yeah, we went to Jamaica.  We were lucky to get to go on a work trip for Andy's company.  It was wonderful to get away and spend some time relaxing.

 The water and countryside was beautiful!

The view from my beach chair. 

What's better than coconut milk and rum straight from the coconut?

Snowdrops

Look at what one of my coworkers did.  She picked snowdrops that were blooming right along the school parking lot and nestled them into old antique door knobs as centerpieces for our workroom.  ADORABLE!  

Late

I am super late in putting in my seed orders.  I almost have them ready but I still need to make a couple more decisions.  I wanted to put in my order weeks ago.  But vertigo has kept me from reading lots of tiny print and life has just gotten busy.  I better get a move on it or I won't get my seeds in time for my earlier March planting dates that I want to try this year.

Seed Packaging

This week at school we were getting ready for Spring by counting, weighing and packaging seeds as part of the district's gardening program.

Grapefruit Knife

One of my favorite salads combines avocados and oranges.  The oranges in the salad are sectioned which is much prettier since all of the membrane is cut away.  If you have ever sectioned an orange it isn't difficult but it can be tedious and time consuming.  You want to cut as close to the membrane as possible so as not to waste any fruit.  Cutting down each side of the membrane can take awhile.  When you are doing this on multiple oranges it quickly becomes old, very fast.  I actually haven't made this salad in over a year because I'm often not in the mood to section the oranges.

However I recently picked up this knife which has made me willing to section oranges again.  One end has a double blade that cuts down both sides of the membrane with one swipe.  I worried that the gap between the blades wouldn't cut very close to the membrane, but it did!  The curved end helps to cut the pulp away from the peel.  The knife is called a grapefruit knife but I use it specifically for oranges. With this knife sectioning an orange is definitely less tedious and only takes about half the time it used to.

Happy Valentines Day

I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentines Day!  Andy and I kept it simple we exchanged cards and treated ourselves to Chipotle.  However it was quite exciting at school for the kiddos.  In first grade Valentines are a big deal.  This picture from our party is my favorite.  I can just imagine him thinking: Oh My Gosh SHE Likes Me!

Blue and Green Eggs

You might think that green eggs are only in Dr. Seuss books but they actually exist.  I bought eggs when I was at Dogwood Farm checking out the baby goats.  They have Araucana chickens which lay eggs in blue and green hues.  There is something more fun when your eggs look like it's Easter all the time.

Babies

I went back to the massage therapist to have some more craniosacral work done to help my vertigo.  I got to see the baby goats again this time in daylight.  Its amazing how much they grow within a week.  I also noticed this week they had a brooder box with lights where they are raising new young hens.

Cuteness

Over the weekend my mother in law took me to a message therapist who did some work on my head and neck in an attempt to alleviate and give me some relief from my vertigo.  She believes in a holistic approach to health which includes of course the food that you eat.  She runs her practice at her house and in her backyard she raises goats and chickens. 

She has a small shop where she sells sustainably farmed and raised products along with handmade soaps and such.  The store is not manned by anyone.  You take what you want, write down what you took and put the money in the box.  I found it quite interesting and refreshing the trust she has in the honesty of other people. 

It was dark by the time we got out but her goats recently had babies and of course I wanted to take a peek.  The pictures are dark because the barns aren't lighted well but you can get a glimpse at some of the cuteness.

 

 I also thought the chickens were quite pretty!

Pummelos

It has been citrus season and so there have been lots of fun options at the store.  On one of my recent trips I saw what looked like large grapefruit but were really pummelos.  We have never had one so I decided to try it.  In the store the sign said it is the largest citrus fruit.  I don't know the validity of this statement but I will say it is quite large.

The fruit is extremely fragrant and smells very similar to a grapefruit.  The pulp is pink and surprisingly had a very thick rind.  Despite having similar grapefruit qualities it was sweet and not at all sour.  It was quite delicious and I would definitely enjoy it again in the future.

Exposed Crowns

We've had a lot of mild weather recently.  I went out to see if the asparagus might be coming up because many of our other plants think it's time.  I went out hoping that they haven't started to come up yet because I am afraid February might not be kind to them. 

I got out to the raised bed to find that the crowns have become exposed.  This worried me because I wondered if they were exposed during the ice storm we had a few weeks ago.  It seems with all the rain we have had alot of my soil has become displaced outside the beds.

So I immediately went to the garden center and bought some bags of topsoil to recover the crowns and protect them from possible harsh weather.  I am really hoping that no damage has been done.  We planted the crowns last year.  So being their first year we didn't take a harvest and just allowed them to grow.  This year will be the first year we can take a light harvest from them.  I will be devestated if we lost a year and have to start over.

Exposed crowns, they look like pieces of straw sticking up.

You can see how low the soil has become in the boxes and the mulch that the rain has displaced into the boxes.

Freshly covered and protected.

Too Soon

We have had some very mild weather that has made some plants start growing a bit too soon.

The chives are starting to emerge.

Buds on the hydrangea.

Daffodils popping up.

 

Buds on the trees.

The warmer weather has also allowed the bees to venture out of the hive.

Out of Commission

Things have been quiet over here because I have been struggling with vertigo for over a week.  I went to bed feeling fine one night and woke up the next morning with my world spinning.  I have been to the doctor twice the first time being told it would pass and then when it didn't the second time I was given some antibiotics and other meds in an attempt to kick it.  I am hoping that the medication works but I know that if it was caused by a virus it has to pass on it's own.  Although there are many ways you can get vertigo and there is no way to determine which cause it is.

Other than going to work when absolutely necessary I have spent most of my days laying on the couch trying not to move and aggravate the dizziness.  The worst part is that in all this resting my body feels fine and I am itching to be productive.  But my head does need the rest which means no reading or being on the computer.  I have watched way too much crappy TV the past few days and I think my brain cells are dying a slow death.  Today I was up for reading and catching up with blogs and I am jealous of all the planning and work people have had the chance to do.  I feel like I have wasted two perfectly good weekends on doing nothing.  Yes, calling pity party for one.

Four Season Harvest

Eliot Coleman has a wealth of knowledge especially in multi-season gardening which is why I got this book.  I read his Winter Harvest Handbook first and felt that this book overlapped a lot with the other book.  I wish I had read them in opposite order because Winter Harvest Handbook expands on the Four Season Harvest.  This book has a lot of great info for gardeners beginning to think outside the "regular" gardening season.  I personally didn't get too much from this book because most of the information I have already been exposed to.  However I did like the detailed instructions for cold frame and greenhouse construction.

Getting Organized

 

Before ordering seeds I need to organize the seeds I have to determine what I want more of and what I don't need.  Last year I stored all my seeds in a Ziploc bag but this year I decided I wanted something that kept them sorted and more organized.

I went to the craft store in search of an inexpensive recipe box to put the seeds in but instead found this box.  It was only $3, cheaper than the recipe boxes, deeper than a recipe box, sturdier, and has a clasp so that the packets won't tumble out if it accidentally gets dropped or jostled around.

For now I have pieces of left over card stock from other projects as dividers between groups and filling tabs as labels.  I would like to have dividers that fit properly but these work for now.  I have already filled this one up so I might just have to go get another.

I was thinking I could use old seed packets to decoupage onto the box.  Although these are the only seed packets I have left.  There isn't much variety in them and I write the year they were bought on the outside so I am not thrilled with my selection.  I am tempted to go buy packets that look pretty just to use for this project which would make an inexpensive project pricier.

Harvest

It might seem that I have my first harvest of 2012 but really these are 2011 harvests.  The beans and cilantro seed were pulled back in early fall and then life got busy so they sat in the garage until this weekend.  I finally shelled the beans and pulled the seeds off the old stalks.  I ended up saving about 2 ounces of cilantro seed and will have plenty for this upcoming season.

 A whole whopping 2 ounces of Kenearly Yellow Eye beans.  

 The Jacob's Cattle beans are beautiful, speckled with red and white.  However the measly 2.5 ounces may not have been worth the garden space they took up.  I am really going to have to consider if I want to try them again this year or grow something more productive.

Ice

Last night we got freezing rain and ice, everything is coated in a quarter inch of ice.  If you don't need to go anywhere it looks quite pretty.  It doesn't look like it will melt today but tomorrow we are going to warm up enough.

 

 The ice makes the window box look gorgeous!

 The hive is also covered in ice and icicles.

Dead bees encased in ice.