Goodbye New England

Posted on October 4, 2007 at 08:21

Well we've moved to Florida. We moved down here back in March and I'm still trying to get used to it.  It's a huge change from CT.  I miss my very large garden that I had. Since we're renting, I didn't want to tear up the backyard for a garden.  My hubby did built a sq. foot garden square for me, but I wasn't able to find Mel's mix stuff exactly, so I did the best I could with garden soil and different compost mixed together with some fertilizer.

I don't think it's deep enough and it's been raining here so much that my plants are looking quite water logged.  I do have 2 green tomatoes and 2 bell peppers growing, I hope my little plants hang in there. 

Winter

Posted on January 22, 2007 at 06:54

Rain

Posted on November 14, 2006 at 10:35

Learning to can/jar

Posted on October 22, 2006 at 06:31

Garden is about through for the season

Posted on September 22, 2006 at 08:49

Garden update

Posted on July 18, 2006 at 11:50

We've had some things from our garden already!  The pickling cucumbers (which I don't pickle, we just eat them fresh) are doing awesome and taste wonderful!  We've already had about 10 of them.  We've harvested around 50 green beans already and there are more ready to pick.  Our romaine lettuce is great and we have a few heads that are overgrown...we need to eat a lot of salad this week.  Let's see..oh our summer squash and zucchini are doing well, we've had about 5 of each so far.  Our red leaf spinach is doing great, radishes almost all eaten (dh and oldest dd only eat these) and we're going to plant another row of them and see if we get another harvest...we should.

Something has been eating my basil very badly and I put soapy dishwater over it and it's not helping much.  All my other herbs are growing great and I've been using them in my cooking. 

Waiting patiently for our tomatoes (have lots, but all green still) and our eggplant...nothing yet with those.

We've had a heat wave here this week, but tonight storms have come through and hopefully cooled things down.  I love it when it rains because I don't have to water the garden!

Although Chandler and Zarek have been great about doing the watering for me lately.  Well we're doing VBS this week and I'm the K teacher, I'm SO tired, I'm not used to waking up early, so I better get to bed.

OH I think I forgot to say that a while back my daughter Alexis and I made strawberry-rhubarb jam.  I may have already wrote about this...but just in case.  It came out great, it was hot, sticky work though, but I love seeing the kids eat my homemade jam!  Strawberries from store, rhubarb from our garden. 

Garden is growing great!

Posted on June 24, 2006 at 03:12

All our veggies are now growing wonderfully!

I can't wait.  Our romaine lettuce and radishes are ready to eat.  Someone asked what do I do with the jalapeno peppers.  Well, we're from TX...we eat them!  We eat a lot of mexican food and my dh will put them on sandwiches and even in his soups.  We usually get a bit more than we can handle and now living in New England, none of our friends seem to want any!  We do have a neighbor from  Alabama who will take some off our hands.

We have had a ton of rain this season and it's great for me, after I finally was able to get in a dry day here and there to finish planting, because we don't have to water the garden so much!  Only have had to water it once so far.  The weeds are also enjoying the water, but yesterday before a storm came I went out there and raked around the rows and hand picked all the little weeds growing right by the veggies. 

I feel so great about the garden this year because usually my husband did the bulk of the planting and work.  This year I've done it all myself, with a bit of help from the kids.  They like picking the food better than working in the garden.  Zarek is growing gourds and the plants are growing like weeds.  I think I'll take a picture over the weekend and post it on here. 

Gardening is on hold

Posted on June 7, 2006 at 01:43

as the rain keeps falling.  Things are going well.  I ended up ordering more brandywine tomato seeds since I believe that I killed my first batch.  So far, things that are growing well from seeds are:

green beans

spinach

peas

radishes

from seedlings bought:

roma tomatoes

jalapenos

white eggplant

romaine lettuce

zucchini

summer squash

cucumbers

The rain has prevented me from planting more.  Hopefully by the weekend it dries up enough so I can work in it.  Oh, and Zarek's gourds are growing very well also!  He's very proud of them.

My seedlings...or "they are maybe dead"

Posted on May 30, 2006 at 04:38

Well my seedlings for my heirloom tomatoes are not doing well.  In fact, they might be, well probably ARE dead.  They were growing in egg cartons which I don't think I'll ever use again.  Probably too shallow?  If anyone has experience with that, let me know.  Then one day I went out there and they were gone.  Just dirt remained.  Did they shrivel up?  I have no idea.  The same thing happened to my herbs and my broccoli and eggplant.  They were out in a rain storm, so I brought them inside for a week then outside again and they were doing ok and then nothing.  So I'm pretty sad about that.

I took the dirt that had the tomato seeds in it and planted them in the garden and I'm just praying they'll grow again, but I think it's a lost cause.  So today I took the kids out to the garden store and we bought a few tomato plants (hybrid, yuck) and some other plants for our garden:  one zucchini and one summer squash to get us going while our seeds grow, onions, romaine lettuce, basil and oregano, jalapenoes, white eggplant and some flowers for our little turtle planter.

My cilantro and bush beans are growing great...that's all that's growing great so far. 

This morning we planted cucumbers, peas, spinach and radishes.  Tomorrow we'll plant some more things.  We gave up early because it was very hot out. 

The Sun Is Out Again!

Posted on May 22, 2006 at 11:40

We have had so much rain where we are...I haven't been able to plant my garden because it's just been pouring every day!

I'm hoping the sun lasts for the next two days so I can finally get out garden planted.

I bought a new cookbook called Simply in Season by Mary Beth Lind, it's great!  It gives you recipies for each season to use what you're growing in your garden or what you can find at your local farmers market.  We've always grown rhubarb (comes up every year with no effort) and never have used it, so in my new cookbook there's a recipie for Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam and it sounds pretty easy.  Today I'm going to pick up some Mason jars and probably make the jam tomorrow or Wednesday.  If all goes well, then we'll make more when it's strawberry season here and we go and pick at a local farm as we do every year.

My seedlings that I was growing inside aren't doing too well.  I'm worried about them.  I just put them out today for some sun.  I had them out when one of our rain storms came and they kinda drowned.  :(  I'm hoping they'll be ok.  I had ordered heirloom tomatoes and I'll be sad if I have to go to the local farm and buy regular old tomato seedlings because I killed mine.   :(

Spring!

Posted on May 11, 2006 at 10:43

I think I waited too long to start my seedlings...I talk to the dirt in the planters every day asking them to please start growing.  Yes, I put off planting you...I'll do better next year.

This week has been all rain and rain is in the forecast for the next 4 days!  Good for homeschooling...children can't escape outside. 

So far the only green thing I am growing is the herb cilantro, which I love in my mexican food.

It's been a cool spring, so I'm hoping to start planting the seeds that I didn't start early directly in the ground within the next 2 weeks. 

spring is here...

Posted on March 24, 2006 at 11:56

So why do we have snow in our weekend forecast?? 

Our seed package arrived a few weeks ago and the children and I are so excited about starting our garden.  I think in April we'll start weeding and getting things ready.  We are in New England, so we have to start things late up here, give the ground time to warm up.  We usually don't start planting until early June, but I think this year we'll try late May.

Our tulips and lillies are halfway up now, the children note their progress almost daily, they are so anxious to see things growing again.  My 11 yr old ds is making notes of birds he sees building nests and one has taken over an empty birdhouse he built with his dad.  I can't remember what kind it was, he knows all about birds and I have learned so much from him.

Our homeschool is going great, we school almost year round, but we take a few weeks off in the summer and then days here and there when the weather is beautiful and we just need to be outside.  I better use these last few (I hope!) cold days to hit the books. 

Brrrr!

Posted on February 27, 2006 at 05:49

It's SO cold here!  My tulips are peeking up through the ground, but it's freezing.  The children were so excited to tell me about the tulips starting to come up, we have just finished reading The Secret Garden and I think it was still fresh in their minds and they were looking for signs of our garden coming back to life.

We're awaiting our seed package in the mail, we'll start some in egg cartons, if it's preferable that they're started early inside. 

We've all been sick for the past almost 2 weeks, Dd 10, is about to go to ballet, so I must cut this short.

Seed Catalogs

Posted on February 10, 2006 at 04:25

Usually we buy our seeds at local stores but this year we're going to order from a catalog.  I think we've narrowed it down to Pinetree Garden Seeds, they have really good prices.  Has anyone used them before, is it a good company? 

Zarek, our 11 year old, wants to grow gourds this year, so he can use them for decoration in the fall and to hollow some out for bird houses.  So that will be his new project in the garden. 

New things we plan on growing this year will be:

spinach

onions

peas

thyme

I'm probably behind everyone else on their seed orders, I plan on getting them ordered next week, depending on how much our order comes to!

Off to visit the farm!

Posted on January 28, 2006 at 08:41

It's been a while since we've been up to our family farm in VT.  Dh has been working a second job and it's made it harder to get away, but this morning we are heading out just for an overnight trip.  You'd be amazed to see how much these children HAD to pack for one night.

Anyway, dh just got home from his regular job (he works all night) and I'm waiting for him to shower so we can take off.  :)

Nothing new

Posted on January 13, 2006 at 11:59

Not much going on here, just a lot of reading and school work.  The girls are back at ballet and that takes up 4 days a week.  We planted our onion in a pot and it's growing like a weed.  My daughter Alexis has decided to measure it every day to see how it grows.  Isn't it wonderful when they do things like that on their own?  

onion questions

Posted on January 7, 2006 at 03:31

A weird thing has happened.  Dh ran to the store a few weeks ago to get some onions for me, he brings back a sack of OLD onions from a cheap grocery store close to our house (he didn't want to go to the good one which is further away, just for 2 onions)  So I use what I need, throw some out that are getting yucky and had one sitting on the counter for awhile.  One day I come downstairs and the onion has sprouted out the top!  So we leave it on the mircrowave and every day this onion just keeps growing out of itself.  Today I finally put it in a pot with potting soil and now it's by the window. 

I have never grown onions before, but it's something I plan on doing in my garden this year.  Does anyone know...

how much watering do onions need?

how much sunlight?

And...it looks like there are many sprouts coming out...will I be able to carefully seperate the onion into different sections and from them get many onions when it's warm enough to plant them in the ground?

If anyone can help me I'd appreciate it!  Thanks!

It's snowing and I'm knitting

Posted on January 3, 2006 at 05:41

Yesterday we got 6 inches of snow and today we're getting another 6 inches or so.  It's been snowing all day!  It's fine for me, because I love to stay at home and do cozy things, like read on the couch under one of the quilts my mother has made for me.  A few days ago I finished a scarf for my youngest son, Brett and today I've started one for me!  They're so easy to make, unfortunately they're the only thing I can currently knit.  I'm not good at learning from a book (although I did teach myself to knit from a book) it's so much easier to have someone show me, but I don't know anyone who can knit.  :(  There's a fairly new yarn store in my town that offers classes and I'm hoping I will be able to take some beginner classes soon, my daughter Alexis loves to crochet and knit also and she will take them with me. 

Bookstore visit

Posted on December 30, 2005 at 02:31

I LOVE the book store!  It's my favorite place.  I took my oldest (step son) Chandler there today, he loves the bookstore also and I had promised that he and I would go alone without the little ones.  I bought a gardening book called Practical Gardener:  Kitchen Garden by Lucy Peel.  I also bought the CUTEST book called Mrs. Dunwoody's Excellent Instructions for Homekeeping by Miriam Lukken.  It's written in a 19th Century Southern woman's style and has sections on The Art of Homekeeping, Directions for Laundry, the Art of Entertaining, Formality, Marriage and Family, the Garden and even instructions on how to properly make a bed!  I love it.  I bought it for me and my daughters and the best thing was it was only $6.99 from $22.00, it's a nice hardback, but I guess it wasn't selling well. 

Last night I took notes from a gardening book that I had checked out from the library and put it in my garden journal.  I'm aleady excited about the garden and I have quite a few months to go before I can start it.  I'm going to start everything from seeds this year, most of them indoors.  Usually we do half seeds, half seedlings from the garden store, but I'm going to save money this year by growing my own seedlings inside. 

The children are enjoying the sun and 40 degree weather today, tomorrow we are supposed to get rain/snow/sleet, so I'm glad they're out getting some fresh air. 

Wednesday

Posted on December 28, 2005 at 06:37

I had a nice relaxing day at home.  I love to read and I'm almost done with Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry.  Anyone who has seen the movie, the book is nothing like the movie, which I love!  However, the book is good too, in its own right.

I went to the library today and checked out a few gardening books.  I want to find another vegetable or two to add to our garden this year and I checked out a book on herb gardening and how to preserve the herbs and use them.  I usually grow Rosemary, Basil and Oregano and use them fresh but when the season is over I let them die.  Isn't that terrible?  So I want to dry and store them in jars this year.  Anyone know where to get inexpensive, but pretty jars?  Craft store??

I also got a few books on canning and preserving.  My dh would love for me to do this, it sounds good, but like a lot of work.  I'll find out.  I think I need a pressure cooker??  Hopefully they're not expensive or hard to use.  I have no idea what it takes to can, my Grandmother does it, but I've never been at her home when she has.  She used to live here in CT but now lives at our family farm up in VT. 

The farm has been in our family for over 250 years and was a working dairy farm until my Great-Grandmother was too old to keep it going and had no one in the family who was willing to run it.  The house was left to my Grandmother's brother, who after a few years couldn't keep up with the land taxes and it was going to be sold.  My Mother and Grandmother bought it and it will be left to my children.  Zarek, my 11 year old has said he wanted to be a farmer all his life, I remember when he was 2 he said it, before he knew there was a farm in the family and he has kept with that dream to be a farmer until now.  He's only 11.5, but wants to study farming and plans on having our family farm be a working farm once more.  We live 3.5 hours away from it so we do visit quite often. 

Anyway...I've written plenty now.  I'm off to random blog and learn things!