Happy New Year!

So, the new year is upon us.  Time for thought, reflection, and resolutions.  Boy, do I have some for my gardens this year! 

• Start more flowers from seed.  I always think that I will have these wonderful plans and know just what flowers that I want to put in which containers.  Well...ummm...that never happens.  I tend to be a great veggie seed person and the flowers get put to the side.
• Start reasonable numbers of vegetables from seed.  I need to not feel that I am feeding the masses when I seed.  :)  I always over plan for seed failure, which leads me to the next bullet...
• Rethink how I start my seeds.  I usually start my seeds in small dixie drinking cups.  I know that this is not environmentally friendly which goes against most of what I believe, but I continue to do it.  It reminds me of my great grandma.  She started seeds this way.  I need to be better about starting in small containers and pot up frequently. 
• Better planning of my family's needs.  What veggies do I need and how many.  I have been bitten by the raw food bug and hope to increase my vegetable juicing this year.  That will mean more beets, carrots, spinach and adding some kale perhaps.  Celery would be good, but I am not sure about how to grow it.  Not that I couldn't try and learn.
• Move my raspberry patch from the main garden area.  My husband told me in the beginning that putting the raspberries in the garden was not a good idea.  Being my hard headed, stubborn self, I persisted that I wanted them in the garden.  Now I tell him that he was right.  :)  They have become invasive with their runners.  I think that having them in raised beds in the yard where I can go around with the lawnmower will help keep those runners in check. 
• Redo my south facing flower bed.  I had torn this bed apart when we first moved to this house nearly 11 years ago as well as expanded it.  I accepted a gift of a sunflower type flower from my neighbor that she promised was only a couple feet tall.  Needless to say, my dirt must have radioactive properties.  Those darn things grow to well over 5 feet tall and are as invasive as any plant I have grown.  They have overtaken the bed.  The bed is getting everything removed and replanted in the spring.
• Last but not least, weeding.  Ugh.  The bane of my existence.  What can I say, my blog is aptly named.  Spring always starts with the best of intentions and energy.  Along comes the Illinois heat and humidity which I do not like, throw in a summer vacation or two, and you no longer have a neat and tidy garden, but a rambling plot of opportunistic weeds!  This year's plan is to be a better weeder.  How will I accomplish this goal?  The basics of more frequent weeding.  Weeds in general brings me to the last bullet which I need help with from my gardening friends.
• How to control the weeds between my raised beds.  How do others accomplish this?  I don't want to use a pesticide at all.  We have used straw with some success.  Any suggestions?

July 4th

Happy Independence Day!  Proud to be married to a Gulf War veteran.  Thanks to all our service men and women that help to keep us safe and free!

2 1/4 oz of pea pods (total 15 3/4 oz.) and 9 1/2 oz. of red raspberries today (total 1.8 pounds).  No pictures....figured there are only so many ways to display the same thing over and over.  More of a post just to help me keep track.  :)  I have seen other blogs that have a way that they keep track of their harvests in the sidebar of their blog.  Does anyone know if this is a widget of some sort?

Saturday's harvest

We are still on a raspberry and pea pod stretch here.

10 1/2 oz of red raspberries to add to my yogurt.  The Japanese beetles are still around, but doing only minimal damage to the leaves.  The fruit is untouched, so I have left them alone.  We have a lot of crop dusting in our area unfortunately, and while driving on the highway it sounds like rain hitting your car with all of the beetles hitting it.  Yuck!  The only good thing is that they are dead beetles!

11 oz. of freshly blanched pea pods...minus the pods that made it to my tummy prior to the photo.  These are going into the freezer for future stir fries.

Today's harvest

Small but very tasty harvest today.  Needless to say, what you see pictured is not the total harvest.  Half the fun was eating sun warmed raspberries and sweet pea pods directly from the garden.  One of the many benefits of no pesticides.  :)

 After the in garden eating, there were 9 oz. of raspberries that will be part of tomorrows breakfast.

Only 2 1/2 oz. of pea pods made it to the picture.  Lauren wanted to fire up the grill and cook them.  She loves to eat them grilled.  I always tend to eat them before they can be cooked.

Veggie and flower progress

The veggie garden as of this past Sunday (Father's Day).  My husband strawed many of the beds for me.  :)

Baby tomatoes...Roma on the left and Viva Italia on the right.  It won't be long now...

Two of my raised beds of tomatoes on the left.  They seem to finally be growing.  This has been such an odd year for weather.  I have noticed that throughout the country, other garden bloggers are reporting the same conditions.  My okra is on the right.  They are bigger than they look in their bed of straw.  They really like the heat, and there just hasn't been a lot of that over a consistent period.  Today is overcast and in the 60's with highs in only the 60's and 70's for the rest of the week and lows in the 50's.  Great weather in my book, but not good for warm weather loving plants.

I am so proud of my yellow crookneck squash on the upper left.  This is seed from my aunt in Alabama again that I have had for a few years and wasn't sure if it would grow.  I am thrilled to see it sprout!  She says that it is the best yellow squash in her opinion.  I am so glad to have a start of another family heirloom.

Ah, the upper right picture.  This has to be the most pathetic stand of beets that I have ever seen.  The rabbits have been feasting on the leaves that are closest to the fence (the back of the picture).  I hope to harvest these soon and get a second crop in.

Lower left...my volunteer dill.  I love the feathery foliage.

Lower right...onions and a bit of my broccoli and peas.  The blue tubes were over the broccoli while they were still small to keep the rabbits from devouring them.

My broccoli and peas.  The peas are growing along with my carrots.

The wild black raspberry bush that I have been feasting on recently.

Also checked in on the red raspberries.  There are a few that are getting some size to them.  I was so happy to find that there was a red one.  Needless to say, I ate it right then and there.  Yum!

In keeping with my "old seed" theme this year, my hyacinth beans have sprouted.  My neighbor would be proud.  :)

I have torn out this wren nest so many times from the bluebird house.  One persistent Momma Wren.  Makes me always think of the book....

Peaches!  Growing nicely....

Hostas that I have growing around the trees on the north side of our yard in the front.  I have a flower bed in the backyard that is very shady.  I am thinking of converting it to a hosta bed.  I don't know why I haven't thought of that before.  That will have to be a next spring job.

On the left is a Glowing Embers hydrangea that has never seemed to look like a glowing ember to me.  It was supposed to be reddish in color.  I have always had pastel pink.  I don't think that this hydrangea is supposed to be influenced by the pH of the soil, but maybe??  My Oakleaf hydrangea is on the right.  It is looking very full this year.

My daylilies will be blooming soon.  Lots of buds.  They will likely need thinned out next year.  I really should think about having a plant sale.

On the right is one of my oriental lillies.  So beautiful!

Chameleon plant is on the left.  It can make a ground cover, but I never allow it that much room.  I really like when the leaves get tints of red to them.

My rouge Sweet Autumn Clematis is threatening to take over my suet feeder.  It hasn't hindered the birds from eating suet.

This is kind of a low key time for the flower gardens.  After such a burst of color in spring, everything just seems green now.  I plan to start more annuals from seed for some additional color next year.

Raspberry update

Nine more ounces of black raspberries picked today.  It sure felt like more.  That is a total of 1 lb. 5 oz.  Not bad for a plant that was started from a bird deposit! 

After checking how the black raspberries are doing, I went to check on the red raspberries.  I was unhappy to find this visitor.

 

  Japanese beetles....they love my raspberry leaves.  This one was the only one that I saw, but I found evidence of their damage.  I have said for a couple years that I need to get some milky spore to help control them, and haven't done so.  Looks like hand based control again this year.

I never realized until just now that those nasty grubs that you find when digging in the dirt become the Japanese beetles.  One more reason to dislike grubs.

 



First black raspberries of the year!

I picked the first black raspberries of the year tonight.  3/4 pound total.  Guess what is going in my yogurt in the morning?  :)

Reclaiming the garden

We had a beautiful weekend, and I was able to get a lot of work done in the vegetable garden.  A busy work season, combined with busy kid's activities, and the horrible biting gnats had made it a challenge to get outdoors.  Weeds were the prevailing crop, but I was determined to regain control.  With the help of my dear husband, we got the garden back to where we could feel proud of our accomplishment....as well as tell that veggies were being grown there!  There were a few things that I had not gotten in the ground yet, so I was able to get that done.  I planted eight okra plants, one hill of crookneck yellow squash from my aunt in Alabama (I love heirlooms....especially ones from my own family!) and a hill of zucchini.  I still need to plant cucumbers, beans, and black eyed peas.  It is getting late, but better late than never!

On the left is some of my volunteer dill that I have let grow. Dill is one of those plants that if you don't keep ahead of it, it becomes invasive. I don't think I have ever seen it labeled as such, but my garden in spring is proof of the fact. On the right is my sage. I severely cut it back in the spring since it was becoming very woody, and it came back very nicely.

Another view of the veggie garden. I planted seeds for more Bachelor Buttons, Zinnas, Sweet William, Stock and Wildflower mix along the right side of the fence. A couple of my poppies have come back this year which made me happy. I thought that they had died out. I would like to also get some Larkspur growing there again. I love flowers mixed in the garden. 

My stand of Roma tomatoes.  Far from the regular garden.  Hoping to have our strawberry patch in here next year.

A Roma tomato in the making....

Some funky fungi that I found while weeding.  A lot of different shelf type fungi seem to grow on the wood of the raised beds, but this was something I had not seen before.  While I was weeding, I encountered lots of different spiders, centipede looking creatures that were quick to get back underground when disturbed, and found that lightning bugs seemed to like my beet bed.  The rabbits must like beets too.  Many of my plants had the green tops munched off. 

Some sort of weed.  The flower was pretty though.  I have never seen it before.

Red raspberries.  There do not seem to be nearly the bees around them this year.  I have seen more wasps than anything.  I don't think I have seen a single honeybee.

I have no idea what this is.  Some sort of dried fungus from last year?  Nest from some sort of insect?



Busy weekend

This was a full weekend of yard and garden work, and I loved it!  However, my body is acutely aware of the fact that I am no longer 25...or even 35 for that matter.  It is a good soreness though, knowing that I accomplished much of what I set out to do.
With such a rainy spring here in Illinois, my spring garden planting has been delayed.  I was able to plant onions (a general red and a Stuttgarter variety for storage), Detroit dark red beets-2 pkgs., carrots (two types of which I will have to double check my variety names), edible podded peas, Green Giant-15 plants and Italian Romanesco broccoli-30 plants that I had started from seed, lettuces, spinach, and radishes.  The raspberries had a lot of dead canes which I cut back also.  My arms look like I have been in a cat fight.  :)  Some weeding was thrown in there for good measure as well. 
The paths between my raised beds are very weedy, and I need to work on controlling that as well.  I have saved up newspapers and plan to layer them in the paths and cover with straw. 
I am hoping for a good year for gardening!