A new year of growing is on its way!

Hello! I hope you are staying warm and enjoying the snow. Hopefully Santa brought you a little something to make your garden greener in the new year! Today we've experienced our first big thaw after a perfectly picturesque Christmas snow, and my faith is renewed that Spring will come again!

I'm enjoying resting up during this garden down time, but it really is almost time to get the plans flowing for the next growing season! Mike has been getting new seed catalogs in the mail, and he's already picking out his new favorite varieties. I'm also looking forward to being a little more involved in the vegetable planning this year. We had a great year of hot peppers, but I'm very much looking forward to convincing him to let me grow snap peas, lettuce, and zucchinis! I'm also thinking about increasing our herb production, and maybe finally getting a nice plot of herbs just for making tea!

As soon as I get a little more time off work, I'll start perusing the catalogs myself to make some plans for the flowers. Burpee has an exciting new zinnia variety called Queen Red Lime. Check it out-- it's beautiful!:

For now, here's a few pictures from last year to remind you that Spring flowers really do exist. Perhaps I should go get the rest of my Fall bulbs planted now that the snow is melting away? Flower gardens are like Christmas light displays; you just keep wanting to make them bigger and better every year!

First Snowflakes of the Season!

Today marks the first snowfall this winter.


It did leave a light dusting of snowflakes on the ground, making it feel even more like Christmastime! I've left the stems and crunchy leaves from most of my beautiful plants in the ground. I think it makes a statement: this is not just a dead patch of wintry ground, this is a beautiful garden that is sleeping. And the architectural interest of the stems most definitely beats plain old snow drifts.


I also enjoy those super hardy, stubborn plants that stay green and even try to bloom in freezing weather. It's always inspiring to look out in the middle of December and see some fleshy green Kale or a pansy blossom that refuses to stop just because it's the dormant season!


We've even had a radish here or there, and had a salad of freshly picked Spinach just about a week ago now. But-- as soon as I get the rest of the bulbs in the ground (oops! procrastinated on that one again!)-- I'm pretty sure the gardening will have to come indoors. I already have a beautiful poinsettia, and the other indoor plants will probably be getting a little more attention, too.

And Mike has found a new gardening pursuit to focus his energy on: Aquaponics.


Aquaponics is the growing of crops in water utilizing the waste from aquatic animals as fertilizer. Apparently it's the only form of hydroponics (aqueous vegetable farming) that can be done organically. Typically the water from a fish tank is circulated into a tank where vegetables are growing in nothing but nutrient-filled water for soil. And the yield is supposed to be great.

Above, you see Mike's first aquaponic experiment: radishes and lettuce grown in the turtle tank, with the turtle pictured above as well. No, we won't eat these-- I'm sure we'd get a great case of Salmonella if we did! But he assures me that it can be done safely, and is not at all as disgusting as it sounds, growing your food in fish excrement. Delish.

So if you haven't brought in your glass patio table or unscrewed your hose from the faucet, it's time, because winter is here!

Autumn

The harvest season has come and gone. I have some great pictures that are stuck on my SD card, so I'll just have to wait until later to share them. It's been a great Fall. It stayed warm for quite awhile, and there was a nice peak of color, but even now a few trees (including our own bright yellow Maple out front) are just passing their own color peak now. The first frost was mid-late October (apparently I was too busy to write down the date), and it was very obvious in the morning which plants could tolerate a frost and which could not, as the non-hardy annuals' leaves just withered and darkened and died after that first bit of cold.

I regret not having gotten out much during those last glorious Fall days, but in my past month of much less work than usual, I'm finding that I've still got more than enough to do. Even the quieter months in my job would be busy months for the average person. Time to start looking for a part-time position for when this job is over!!

Despite the ample room Mike and I have to garden (all 4 sides of the house and a vegetable garden), we still feel like we're two gardeners crammed in a very small space, bumping elbows and knees in a small closet of green. We just want to plant too much! Mike's planning to rent a garden plot next year for some more space-occupying crops, and he's been ordering lots of varieties of heirloom tomatoes ("All of the good ones are going to sell out!"), already declaring next year the year of the tomato. I've bought a few bulbs-- tulips and hyacinths-- to fill out my Spring garden, although I haven't even gotten all of those planted yet.

And I'm kind of ready for winter. I won't mind too much sitting inside and planning the perfect garden plots, even though I might not be able to use all of my plans for next year. It will be nice to have some time to just sit and think about gardens; there is a lot to discover from reading about flowers.

Well, here's a few pictures from our vacation to Rocky Mountain National Park in early September, where I was inspired to incorporate some boulders and mountain asters into my garden design, build a rock-filled stream in the yard, and decorate everything like a log cabin!

pink flowers that made every spot they decorated look even prettier


the tundra

some of the other few flowers left blooming


big rosehips!

berry-looking things that weren't eaten,
but we DID have a few mountain blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries....
and you have not eaten a berry
until you've tried one fresh from a mountain bush!

(Check out my facebook page for some really awesome mountain scenery!)

The Beauty of Late Summer

The days are beautiful and just starting to get a touch cooler; time to start planting Fall bulbs, vegetables, and perennials. Mike is looking at garlic plants and I'm trying to figure out just where I could possibly fit in another new flower variety.

I had lots of successes with starting flowers from seed this year. In fact, my front flower garden is almost full of annuals I grew from seed:

Note the big non-blooming dahlia in the front, light yellow zinnias in middle and red and yellow zinnias to the left of those, and the mondo purple coleus in the upper left corner. Not quite the look I'd like to end up with, but I've definitely seen how annuals really are awesome fillers, and cheap to grow from seed.

What I'd like to do next year is take the time to plan how I want the perennials to fit in, transplant what needs to be moved this fall, then use low growing annuals as accent flowers next Spring. And for any coleus I grow next year, I just might refrain from cutting back the flower spikes. I like their delicate contrast in the garden, as opposed to the overwhelming coleus bush that develops after pruning.

For the planning, I'd like to focus on color to set the garden mood. I love simple things, like the way these lavender-hued hosta blooms make this area feel so serene.


In the vegetable news, peas and lettuce will be going in the ground soon. There's a baseball-sized watermelon finally growing-- the vine climbed from one side of the garden to the other, and decided to fruit on the part that has climbed up the asparagus. We still don't have any zucchinis (how can I make those work next year?), but we've had enough basil to make some pesto, enough sweet peppers to cook with and eat raw, and more than enough tomatoes. The wild plums are ripe as well, but Mike only found a few decent fruit to harvest.

Overall, I'd say we're doing well! I think it's time to buy a garden magazine and spend my time off browsing for ideas and inspiration. I can't get back the weeks I worked non-stop this summer without ever stepping out into my garden (no more ICU months during the growing season next year!!!), but at least now I can relish all there is to garden at the end of Summer!

Eating Out is Obsolete

when you have all these homegrown

Veggies

to eat!

Shots of the garden

what's for supper tonight?

pole beans
not ripe yet

watermelon starting to take over

Can't believe with all this space, that we feel we need even more. A watermelon garden, a pumpkin garden, a dry bean garden, a green bean garden, a pepper garden, a tomato garden... Maybe we see a farm in our future?

slicing a pineapple tomato
low yield from this plant, but great sweet taste

We're definitely making our list for which varieties to grow again next year!

Blossoms

the roses are rebounding despite Japanese beetle invasion

magic lilies

mums starting to bloom
planted these in the ground last Fall
got a bunch for cheap at Menards
SOOO much bigger this year
wish I had an out-of-the-way nursery area
for these to grow during the summer

50 cent begonias from the farmer's market
fantastic centerpiece
the ones planted in the ground didn't do as well

I'm starting to think these begonias would look pretty planted next to the peppers... a decorative vegetable garden could be really fun...

5-a-day

I can't believe how hard it is to get five fruits and vegetables in every day, even when you grow them yourself! We've got plenty of peppers and tomatoes.

pepper planter

one day's harvest


super colorful produce


homegrown green beans and onions
with salmon


homegrown tomatoes and basil
with mozzarella

all that beautiful produce,
and guess how long it took to eat these no bake cookies
compared to the veggies?...

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A couple other fun gardening pics:

my mailbox flowers


from a series I call
"gardening in my pajamas"

Love All the Green

So much cool stuff to eat from the garden. A couple days off coming up, and SOOO looking forward to free time to just sit and ponder the harvest as it ripens. The current state of our crop:

maltese cross tomatoes

the best smelling hosta flower EVER
I want to plant a hedge of these!

watermelon vine, getting unruly!

caged strawberries
Mike found a 2nd cardinal trapped under here
what's the deal?

zucchini!
can't wait for a ripe one
someone furry got to these ones first

basil
can you tell we planted half of this last week?


asparagus
hoping for a great harvest next Spring
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Oh, and we have lots, and lots, and lots of hot peppers! Michael plans to make hot sauce. I just wish we had this many sweet peppers, so we'd have a bumper crop people actually wanted us to share!