Ready or Not!

I am completely overwhelmed and swamped with non-garden stuff this week but wanted to check in - it's 87º today and I'm too busy with other stuff to even get outside!  Ugh, just as well as that's way too hot for me.  What happened to the period of nice 60º temps to do chores in without sweating?  

Ready or not, things are happening!

Put on your squinty eyes, that's lettuce!  I'm not very good with seeding this stuff, I just fling it in and thin it later :)

Spinach - but yikes it was 80 yesterday and we broke a record of 87º today, maybe Virginia is skipping spinach weather this year?

Self seeded Cilantro below, in MARCH?  LOL...

Onions peeking up...

Irises peeking up...

Fountain grass has late April growth already, time to cut them all down.  I've only gotten to this one so far, the rest are still 7 ft high and have birds nests in them - time to vacate!

Mazus is attracting the bees already.  This ground cover is AMAZING if you can get it, spreads very quickly and the little flowers look like butterflies!  Flowers last all season too...

Some herbs that wintered over this year in a pot -

After planting those 108 pansies last week...

this is what I have left... 

I'm not sure who is the villain here, but tonight I'm leaving the window down on the screen door to these deck pots so Sprocket can alert me!  I have a feeling it's the one squirrel we have that constantly is brave enough to sit on the railing and taunt the dogs.  Left flowers all over the place and just ate the stems!  Yes, I said "the one squirrel"... can you believe that they really aren't that common here?  It took me a few years to even notice that I never saw them... it was only when I DID see one that I realized I hadn't for several years!  Instead we have disgusting creatures like Nutria, Copperheads and Water Moccasins - I sure won't miss those when we move someday :)

Sorry, kids!

As soon as the school bus gets here, I'm going to hear a lot of "oh, mo-ommmmm"!

Yes, it's that time of year again.

Simple math eluded me yet again this year, or is it that I choose to ignore the amount of real estate that "only 2 little flats" morphs into? The kids' stuff just got literally kicked to the other side of their room, and I stole their Lego table, nothing they haven't dealt with before, but square footage is precious here!

I'm only half way done with repotting ...

Is there a good reason for needing at least 32 tomatoes and at least 12 jalapeno plants among all the other?

Nope.

Freaky Friday

That's what I'll call this post of random stuff that was in my camera and in my head!

**P.S. warning -  there is a photo of a mummified animal corpse below!

How awesome is this?  Loch made me some rosemary soap at one of his Garden Club meetings, probably the one when the "goat lady" visited -

Heard in the kitchen this week: "Mom, come read the tag on my shirt...."

you would have to look really hard as it's the back side of the tag LOL.... clever :)

Below, this one is for Thomas!  Here is a stand of Artichokes outside a local coffee shop down at the beach - perennial indeed!  Look at that thing already, it's only March.  Growing in just about pure sand also... I'm thinking sometimes we fuss too much and should just let Mother Nature step in!

Okay, here's the yucky photo...

Who needs a cat?  Look what the Jack Russell mix drug in...

Ugh, Sprocket drug this thing UP the back steps to the deck (it's almost as big as she is) and stood there all proud of herself.  What IS THAT THING?!!!  It has an elongated head so I was thinking opossum, but hubby got up close and said it had rabbit teeth LOL... it's MUMMIFIED!  I screamed when I saw it and Marley "the smart one" just looked at me as if to say "I told you I wanted sheep, not a Jack Russell mix puppy, now do you understand why?"

The moon last night...

Just for fun...

Can you find Finnegan?

Bored one rainy night, we headed out to a local furniture store just to look around and waste time and stumbled upon this monstrosity!  I swear it's as big as our house.  This must be the Duggar/Kate Plus 8 model.

More rainy days ahead, temps dropped from a high early this morning in the 60's to down in the 40's, damp, windy, rainy weekend in the forecast.  Just for fun we are headed to the "RV Show" tonight, the kids love looking at the campers and I admit we do too, even though we are die hard tent campers :)  The rest of the weekend will involve Cub Scout Pinewood Derby and fixing some things around the house.  Hopefully repotting seedlings too.  Hope you all have a great weekend!

2012 Seed Flats

The early seeds were started in flats on 2-23-12 this year, which is the same time I start things every year here.  I used to do some at the end of January also but found that the later February starts actually were much healthier and caught up and surpassed the early plants' growth in a matter of days, so I no longer get crazy in January!

My favorite stage below- having personal experience with infertility and the numerous tests we always anxiously awaited results on - this point where the little cotyledon pops up is so exciting!

It has taken me many years to overcome the pangs of guilt as I "cull" the extras...

I can deal with it now, but I still can't bear to plant fewer seeds - maybe it's that infertility thing again that makes me hedge my bets and plant several in each cell!  Do you still have those feelings of guilt pulling out seedlings so that others have room to grow?

I have added several new varieties of tomatoes and peppers this year, and so far everything is going well.  The 2nd set of leaves is now appearing on many of them.  This was taken this morning - 

Egads... I'm terrible with those tiny herb seeds.  I never use tweezers or anything, just sprinkle liberally LOL!  It shows :)

I mentioned this year that most all my new seeds came from Southern Exposure, I'm very excited to try some of these varieties that are historic varieties for our area & climate.  I am really hoping blight will leave us alone this year so I can accurately judge if the new tomato varieties really perform better in our Virginia climate.  With the exception of the 4th of July Hybrid tomato (I still have leftover seed), all of these peppers and tomatoes and most all herbs are non-GMO, organic, heirloom seed.

THE LIST 

Tomatoes 

• 3 - Red Currant (tiny, berry like)
• 6 - Pink Brimmer (large)
• 9 - Old Virginia (large)
• 9 - Virginia Select Roma (Roma/paste)
• 9 - Brandywine  (large - massive!)
• 3 - Hillbilly (large)
• 4 - Orange Wellington (medium-large)
• 2 - Fourth of July (small-med salad type)

*notes from last year: Brandywine was still the #1 performer here in taste, quantity, and size, remains the bulk of my canning, apparently really likes humid coastal VA.  Amish Paste and Yellow Pear were disappointing in 2011.  Amish Paste were extremely susceptible to late blight but Pink Brandywine took all the blight in stride and kept producing 1.5 lb fruit in spite of it.  *Seed of Brandywine are also going on their 5th year in the "seed binder" with 100% germination - they were purchased from Baker Creek!

Peppers

• 2 - Trinidad Spice (hot)
• 1 - Padron Tanas  (hot)
• 3 - Pepperoncini   (hot/sweet)
• 1 - Sigaretta diBergamo  (mild)
• 9 - Jalapeño Craig's Grande  (hot)
• 3 - Quadrato d'Asti Rosso  (sweet)
• 6 - Jimmy Nardello Frying Pepper  (sweet)
• 2 - Sweet Yellow Stuffing  (sweet)
• 6 - Charleston Belle  (sweet)

no special notes here, peppers do well in our hot, humid summers with no diseases or insect issues

Eggplant

• 2 - Purple Rain

Note: blech, why do I still grow this?  Oh yeah, they are pretty!  They also lure all the bad bugs away from the potatoes.

Herbs

• Oregano
• Marjoram
• Summer Savory
• Lettuce Basil
• Summerlong Basil
• Purple Ruffles Basil
• Thyme

Notes: No parsley seeds needed this year, it has self seeded over 100 plants in the garden and gravel perennial beds so far this spring.  Basil continues to be a problem here, it bolts very early so I am going to go ahead and add a hybrid this year called "Summerlong" that is supposed to keep going in the extreme heat.  I'll let you know...

Flowers/Ornamentals

• Pumpkin on a Stick Ornamental Eggplant
• Cotton
• Zinnia
• Marigold

Note:  If you are looking for a fantastic fall combo, cotton and the pumpkin on a stick look great together in a vase!  They are dried also so they last!

Others
**Also started many varieties of lettuces and scallions just for a few jump start plants - these are the same varieties as I listed last week that I also direct seeded outdoors.

***

I know you were rolling your eyes when you saw all those Jalapeños again... before you say it I'll tell you we have already used ALL the canned/pickled ones!  So although 50+ lbs looks and seems pretty ridiculous every summer, we need them all!  Remind me of that when I start complaining the end of July...

gotta run... it's Super Tuesday and time for me to vote!

A NEW LOOK!

I am excited to say I have finally freshened up the blog with a new look.  I've been meaning to do this for the past 4 months or so but other things always managed to take a priority.  Gone are the unseasonable but welcome temps of 80º, replaced with wind, cold and rain - made for a blog updating kind of day yesterday.


That header photo is huge, I can't seem to shrink it down so I'll just have to live with it for awhile.  For anyone wondering, those sunflowers are "Autumn Beauty", they grew to be about 6 feet and have multiple flowers per stalk and indeed were Autumn Beauties, as this photo was taken in October.


I have changed a few things around on the sidebar, and hopefully will have more links of interest in the upcoming months.  Some of you may know that I am somewhat of a closet "prepper" and so I have decided to link one of the neatest prepper sites I know of, as the author is a woman!  Her radio show is linked as well as her website under the "Prepper Blogs" on the sidebar.  The Survival Mom is a very cool site - her blog, numerous links, forums, information in an easy to navigate page.  Food storage and outdoor survival are big interests of mine that you may not know about, but her page is full of common sense stuff that applies to the home as well such as pantries, storm prep and finances.  She also has a book coming out next week that I just pre-ordered and I hope to give it a review after I read it.
*Note, in no way am I doing ads or anything on my blog, I just hope to share yet another interest of mine and link helpful info for anyone else out there interested.  This girl does not live by gardening alone :)


Please let me know if there are any comment box issues I have - I know a lot of us are dealing with this but I had no option pop up to disable the word jumble so I'm wondering how the box appears to you, and if you are seeing the 'subscribe to email' button?  I have noticed on many other blogs I no longer have the option of 'subscribing to comments' which makes it frustrating when I want to see what others are saying or your replies on your blogs.  Blogger growing pains, ugh!


I am hoping to get that seed/varieties post up soon, but now I'm off to work on Cub Scout stuff...

Thank You ...

Thank you, nameless lady at the YMCA yesterday - you were rushing out as we were entering, 3 girls in tow with hands full of bookbags and workout bags - and you paused not only to tell my boys "thank you" for holding the doors open for you but you also told me I was doing a great job raising these "fine young men".


If you only had known how my kids and I had started to feel about this whole "opening doors" thing.  I have taught my kids to open doors for people since they were barely big enough to push them open with all their might and leave handprints on the glass.  At first when they were about 3 or 4 they would get comments about "how sweet", or "how cute", but as they grew their efforts at basic kindness would go completely ignored.  Now at ages 9 & 7, people rush through the door while talking on their cellphones with not even a basic acknowledgement or even a nod.  Countless times upon arriving at a school event my boys would hold open a door, where what I thought was common courtesy for another to grab the door for their group, etc - a dozen or more people would rush through the door busy with other things obviously, while I'm left inside the building wondering what happened to my kids!


The basic act of saying "thank you" to our "young men and young women" seems to have left.  I still often get thanks for holding doors but why not my kids?  I can count on one hand the number of times in the past few years that I have had a child open a door for me, and I have realized why - it's the parents.  These children are obviously the offspring of the non-thankers of the world.  Our kids are the adults of the next decade, please show them basic respect for all they do and are trying to do.


Kudos to those of you out there who teach your kids basic kindness and courtesy, there are still some of us out there who really appreciate your efforts, and notice active parenting when we see it!


My kids are probably sick of me telling them that people really do appreciate their efforts even if they don't show it.  YMCA lady, I honor you today for saying "thank you" to my boys, having your daughters thank them (much blushing ensued!), and for calling them "nice young men" within earshot of them.  You have renewed their faith in adults this week!  To you I say "no, thank you"!

Ready or Not....

It's time to plant!  If you live in Virginia Beach anyways :)

My "oil pan carry-all" is ready for another season, it's my favorite thing for carrying planting gear as well as harvesting.  I even had some leftover innoculant from my soybeans last year so the peas got the royal treatment :)

Uhhhh, yeah... this was definitely not in the budget, but how can I pass up a good deal?  Paid 5 bucks for the whole lot of the pansies below.  Every year I wait until the big box stores have flats that are droopy or need deadheading, they mark them way down since they won't do those things and they don't sell when they look that way.  They were just getting too large for their cell packs and needed water but not too bad off, as they perked right up in the rain we had in the yard yesterday.  Need to plant them asap, but what a deal!

This morning at 7:30 a.m. - look at that temp -  the kids wore shorts to school!

Every year at pea planting time I get to use one of my favorite tools...why on earth did it take me so long to splurge on this thing?  It saves way more than the $25 I spent on it in backache and ibuprofen costs.  Now if only it had a reverse, right?  This ADD gardener has to move posts often so I definitely need reverse.  

I even organized all my stakes and random sharp objects that were strewn about still since last fall.

I also created a "special pile" of all my broken stakes and pole bits... 

Do you do this too?  I've got sections of poles that are only 8 inches long in there but I can bear to get rid of any stake-like object LOL!  At least the small ones are separate now so I won't get so frustrated every time I try to dig a long stake out of the pile and "come up short"!

Check out the temp as I came back in the house at 12:30 pm... crazy stuff!

Now for the details on today's plantings - 

(* new to the garden this year)

Sugar Snap Peas - old seed 

Green Arrow Shelling Peas - Southern Exposure

White Onions - local feed store unknown variety

Evergreen Bunching Onions - FEDCO (old seed)

*Deep Purple Bunching Onions - Southern Exposure

*Tokyo Cross Turnips - 35 day variety

*Purple Top White Globe Turnips - Southern Exposure

Swiss Chard - old 2009 seed "just to see"

Olympia Spinach - FEDCO  

Mesclun - old 2008 seed 

Mizuna Greens - Baker Creek

Tango Lettuce -  Sustainable Seed Co.

Bronze Mignonette Lettuce - Baker Creek 

Red Salad Bowl Lettuce - Southern Exposure

Mache/Corn Salad - Sustainable Seed Co.

I had a lot of seed still from past years that I used, but most of my new seed for 2012 came from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange based right here in Virginia.  Part of the reason is that my beloved Baker Creek Catalog appeared too late so they missed the boat with me this year.  Yes, I know I could have looked at the online catalog but it's garden planning in winter - hey I'm loyal to whoever sends me the garden porn to look through on a bleak winter day!  I'm funny like that - I've been ordering from them for years so I expect that my catalog will arrive in a timely manner so if it doesn't so sorry - better luck next year!  Southern Exposure wasn't a hard decision for me though because they are our "local" seed company, organic, non-GMO, heirloom and all that stuff I want plus have varieties that have proven performance and historical significance right here in the Mid-Atlantic (remember how much older my state is than everyone else, that's neat stuff!), so it was a no-brainer.  I still randomly get seed from a few other places of course, but they got the bulk of my order for 2012.