The Harvest's End

OK, I know you have been tolerating all the flower excitement, but what you're probably really interested in is how the harvest turned out last year! Now that we have these pictures recovered from the broken SD card, I can share that with you!

peppers

beans

watermelons


broccoli

and Mike just doing his thing

collecting seeds
counting and sorting beans
hanging entire pepper plants in the guest room
to let the last green peppers ripen inside after the frost

and cooking homegrown dinners!
all except the salmon
which he does hope to grow someday, too

:)

The season's closing: Flowers!

Mike got the broken SD card to work, so now I have some new pictures from the Fall to share! Here's some random flower action from the very end of the growing season...

The lobelias looked dead and crispy in the summer heat, but revived themselves in the cool Autumn!

These dahlias didn't do much. I had a big green dahlia bush with few flowers in a color I didn't like. No more mixed colors seed packets, and no more dahlias until I learn to prune or do whatever I need to get big flowers!

Just a picture of the back of the house. Peppers with trailing nasturtiums on the left.


up closer


Three pretty colors of nasturtiums. We saved seeds, so we'll see if the same ones grow again next year!

Fall bouquet


More bouquets

a welcome marigold that sowed itself


these pink guys looked great in the late Fall


and these roses always do, too


The front perennial garden, mostly full of annuals.

Another front flower bed view


Cleaning up the flower bed


the garbage can! had to throw away so much pretty stuff.


status post clean-up

Choosing Seeds

I'd like to argue that the best part of winter comes after Christmas: the days grow longer, the weekends are less busy, and the seed catalogs are out, so you can plan away for the new year. And of course, there's lots of leftover Christmas chocolate to eat while you plan!

Mike has most of his vegetables picked out, and has already received a bunch of the seeds in the mail. Having reviewed his choices for this year, I can testify he has chosen NO FEWER than 30 tomato varieties and 15 peppers. And, you know, about 40 other kinds of vegetables, almost all of which are an unusual variety in color or taste. We will be renting a garden plot (or 2) this year to increase our growing space! Here are his 3 favorite seed companies:

Seed Savers Exchange: an heirloom seed company based out of Decorah, IA
High Mowing Organic Seeds: only 100% certified organic seeds
Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds: lots of varieties of heirloom seeds

Mike's mostly choosing heirloom varieties, which are plants that have been grown unchanged for at least 50 years, and many of which are rare. He loves them because you can save the seeds and reliably grow the same vegetable again the next year. I love that so many of them come from just one family that handed the seed down between generations. So unique!

I'm still trying to figure out what annuals to plant. I'd love to find a few great sources for flower seeds, so if you have a favorite, please share it!

Finally, here are some photos of Mike's latest project: homemade hot sauce. He made 5 different varieties to give away as Christmas gifts. All I contributed was making the labels, which show pictures of the actual peppers he grew.



I'm glad he found something productive to make out of all those hot peppers! Now I'm off to browse catalogs for the the best part of our garden... the flowers!