Friday Favorites

Good morning! Here are some of my favorite things this morning- things I'm loving, and things I'm thankful for!

Tomatoes!

Tomato basil & mozzarella salad- lunch or dinner every day this week!

Canning- it is pretty awesome.

The garden is still looking green, despite the heat. 

I think the straw mulch is helping!

Happy Friday! What are your Friday Favorites?

DIY Plant Labels out of Used Canning Lids

Since I am lucky enough to be featured on a local urban garden tour on Saturday, I have been spiffing things upon around the gardens here. Weed-pulling, plant staking- all those fun garden chores that seem to slip past me for weeks at a time! 

One of the projects I tackled today that I'd be meaning to get to for a while is plant labels! I looked at buying plastic or wooden labels, those awesome pinterest spoons, event popsicle sticks, but the idea of purchasing something new to label plants for 3 months just seems a bit wasteful. 

My mom was in town and we were brainstorming creative ways to re-use materials and also create plant labels are functional: Big enough to read, Eye-catching but not an eye-sore, and Tall enough so people don't have to squat down to see them! I'm pretty satisfied with what I ended up with, so I'll share the glory with you!

DIY- Canning Lid Plant Labels

Supplies needed:

Used (already canned-with) Wide Mouth jar lids 
2 pkgs. Floral Cloth Wire 
Duct Tape 

Permanent Marker

Seed Packets for reference 

the internet, to look up latin names if necessary

Directions: (This is real easy, friends!)

• Sort through your seed packets and set out any that you planted in the garden this year on your table, essentially making a list.
• Flip all the lids white-side up and make sure they are clean and blemish free
• On the white-side of each lid write the plant type in large letters straight across the middle of the lid in permanent market
• Write the variety across the top of the lid, in smaller-sized writing. I chose to add quotation marks too.
• Write the latin name of the plant across the bottom of the lid, again in a smaller size
• Once you are finished with the entire pile of lids, get out your floral wire
• Bend each wire in half, leaving a sort of upside-down "U" shape at the top
• Flip all your lids over, careful to set them down so the text is aligned and straight
• Tape a bent floral wire piece to the back of each lid, and press the tape down around the wire so it's secure

Now label up those mystery plants!

What's Up Wednesday

I re-seeded more Speckles lettuce. Not sure how it will do in the heat but its growing nicely so far! 

My backyard raspberries are ripening, right on schedule! 

First green tomatoes- Sungold cherry tomatoes, of course. Can't wait for these guys to ripen up! 

Kidney bush beans and Provider green beans are going wild!

It's like a jungle every time I step outside! Potato plants that are 3ft tall, tomatoes growing bigger every day, tall crazy cilantro that's gone to flower.

Each day I enjoy it and each day I'm thankful for it.




What's Up in your Garden this week? Share some pics!

The first raspberries of summer

The raspberry bushes out back have been slowly turning redder each day. Every evening when I get home from work I go check on them- I don't want to miss those precious first few ripes raspberries!

Yesterday evening, I found the first ripes berries! I "harvested" them- two to be exact! I ate one, and brought one in to my husband, who loves those raspberries and will probably make like a bear and just go out there and start muching soon. :)

Speaking of berries, I'm still hoping to catch the end of the strawberry season this weekend, and pick at least a few quarts for canning and freezing. If not, I'll just have to buy some from the Farmers' Market and process in a really small batch.

Do you grow any fruit in your backyard or garden plot?

New Potatoes- Harvesting early potatoes from the garden

This is my third year growing potatoes in the garden- they're one of my favorite things to grow. Potatoes are relatively low-maintenance, the plants are surprisingly    pretty, and potatoes are easy to harvest- I'd recommend them for your planting list next year if you haven't grown them before!

I had a few plants that have had yellowing leaves, despite frequent watering. All their neighbor plants look green and healthy, but these two sad individuals were languishing. When this is the case, or when you get a hankering for potatoes, you can harvest some potatoes early- these are called "new potatoes".

It's a pretty good bet that when the plants are flowering, you've got some small new potatoes available to harvest.
I decided to pull out the two yellowing plants, and got 13 very small-smallish potatoes (left). I believe these are little Yukon Golds from last seasons' garden. I'll be using them up quick in some awesome, ultra-local homefries with garden-grown onions and kale tomorrow- can't wait!

I planted a whole lot of potatoes this year- 60 plants!! Each one of these will yield 5-8 potatoes, and that makes for a whole lotta spuds. I don't usually harvest too many new potatoes, because I like to wait until they get bigger, but with a potential harvest of 300-450 potatoes, I think I can afford to pull a few early!

I think my next early harvest will be some of the Mountain Rose potatoes- those are the dark potatoes with pink flesh. The plants are already really beautiful; the flowers are a pinkish-purple, rather than the traditional white flowers that most potato plants have.

I'll post some pictures on my blog facebook page when I harvest the Mountain Rose potatoes, in case you're curious.

In the mean time, off to enjoy this beautiful weather!

Silent Sunday

I <3 Hostas 

Sage in the front porch pot

Potato Plants

Chives are in bloom

Garden is greening up quickly

Happy Sunday- Enjoy your day :) Stay tuned on Tuesday 5/8 for an exciting giveaway!

Friday Favorites

Sugar Snap Peas climbing up the trellises in the garden

 Kidney and Provider Bush Beans are coming up!

I just can't help it- I like the look of organized rows in the garden!

What are your favorites this Friday?

Silent Sunday

Basil growing in the kitchen windowsill

Garlic- such an amazing plant!

Spring view of the North bed

Happy Sunday, friends :)

Herbs in the Garden

I have big plans to plant a lot of herbs in my outdoor gardens this year. The double-edged sword of concrete block raised beds is the 2 openings in each block- they're a great space to do some extra planting, but they're also a fun space for weeds to quickly crop up!

For the past several years, I've just planted herbs right into the garden, but as I expand my plant list each year, space is at more of a premium. So this year I thought, "Why not plant herbs right into the blocks themselves?"





I'll dry some of these herbs, use some fresh- when you grow them yourself, herbs are so much more flavorful! They add a lot of zing to dishes, they're pretty, and fragrant too- what's not to love?

So far, I've taken a few of my indoor herbs and transferred them back outside- two rosemary plants, an oregano, and a thyme plant. I also had a few lemon thyme plants that survived through the winter, and they got plopped into the holes as well.

They're handling the transplant well! Also inside under lights, waiting to be transplanted are Globe basil, Thai basil, Lemon basil, cilantro, sage, chamomile, lemon balm, bronze fennel, and more thyme. All in all, I'll have about 20 herb plants ready to line some of the raised beds out back.



What types of herbs do you have planted in your garden? 


Any new ones in the plans for this year?

Tour of my Urban Garden

I spend a lot of my time on this blog posting about my garden and the veggies & fruits within it. I thought I'd give an overview of all the food-growing space I have, so those of ya'll who are interested enough to visit again could better visualize the space!

We live on a small city lot, between two streets that forks out in a "V" shape. The lot is about 1/10th of an acre- pretty small! Right now, all of the edible gardening I do, minus some herbs like lavendar and russian sage, are in the backyard. Currently. nearly one whole side of the backyard is devoted to edible gardening. Here's more about the spaces I grow in, and what I grow there!

Vegetable Beds

Raised Bed gardens
First stop on the tour is my vegetable gardens, and my favorite part of my outdoor space!  My veggie gardening mostly happens in concrete block raised beds, which we installed over the past several years- first we started with just the "S" shape you see in the foreground of this picture. The next year, I added the little tail that extends it closer to the house, and then this past fall I added a whole other section that runs up the side of the house up to the front fence.  All in all, this area totals about 260 sq ft.


What's planted in this space is the bulk of the vegetables I grow throughout the year.

Staples always on my planting list include:
potatoes, onions (sets, seeds, or transplants), tomatoes, carrots, peppers, lettuce, bush beans, and garlic.

New additions this year include:
spinach, kale, leeks and sugar snap peas.

Asparagus bed

This season, I cultivated a 10 ft x 1ft Asparagus Bed on the Right side of the house. I haven't seen much action out there so far, but I'm hoping these plants establish. I chose two varieties- Jersey Knight, and Purple Passion. They're a nice addition to the variety of edibles I grow!

We'll see how they do. Anyone have any asparagus advice?

Space for Herbs
During the Spring-Fall, I start seeds indoors using my homemade seed starting shelves. During the Winter months, these shelves have another function- keeping alive more tender herbs that wouldn't produce well outdoors!

This is the first year that I bought/brought in herbs for the Winter, and while I didn't have enough to use them tpo often, it sure was nice to use a little homegrown oregano or thyme now and then!

I ended up planting all the herbs outdoors, in the holes of my cinder block raised beds!

Backyard Fruit

In my backyard, I have several fruit areas, where I've taken advantage of space and sun to grow some sweet treats!

Raspberries
As of this year, I have 7 black raspberry canes- 4 along the back inside fence, and 3 that I transplanted on the side of the house by my raised beds. These really produced for the first time last summer, and it was such a pleasure to walk out back and pick a few berries! The canes I have (not sure what variety I have) produce small, purple/black berries that are really sweet.

Apple Trees

In addition to raspberries, we also have apple trees (planted super-close to the garage for some reason) and several small blueberry bushes.

The apple trees produce small apples that squirrels love to pick off and throw around my yard and eat. This season is going to be the season that I show those squirrels who's boss. I want to eat a few apples, damn it!

Blueberry bushes
The blueberry bushes have been kind of overshadowed in weedy beds for the past several years so this year I dug them up and re-planted them where the majority of the raspberry canes are. I hope they do better in that location- it would be great to have a small, steady crop of blueberries.

I'm also supposed to be getting an apricot tree delivered soon- still looking for a home for that!



Dwarf Cherry trees
We purchased these two dwarf cherry trees last year although one was mis-labeled as an apple tree- whoops! Last year we harvest 1 cherry from each tree which cracked me up! There are lots of blossoms on the trees this year and they've grown some- crossing my fingers for like 8 cherries per tree this year!

In the future, I'd love to add some grapes, as well as some hardy kiwifruit. Both of those grow well on arbors and trellises and it is easy to find cold-tolerant varieties. It's important for me to not get too carried away though- I want to make sure I can manage the garden and plants that I have now and make sure they are healthy and fruitful!

Silent Sunday

Frog weather vane in the garden

Aloe plant drinking up the sun

63 tomato plants, 9 varieties

"Parade" bunching onion starts

Cilantro we started from seed!

Seed potatoes hanging in the window to encourage sprouting

How to Plant Potatoes in your Home Garden

Have you ever grown potatoes in your home garden? If you have a sunny spot and a few feet of space, they're really easy to grow! Today I planted the first of the seed potatoes in my garden, & I'll show you how to plant them in yours too.

A few facts about potatoes:

• The potatoes you order and plant (or save and then plant) are called seed potatoes
• Potato plants get to be about 12-16 inches high!
• Potato plants will have pretty flowers on the top 
• Correct spacing for potatoes is 1 per 12", with 12" between rows

Step 1: Dig a 3-4" deep trench across the length of your bed. If you're planting in a 4'x8', you could have 4 trenches  8 feet long.

Step 2: Place potatoes in trench, 12' apart. You want to place the eye of the potato up towards the sky.

Step 3: Cover the potatoes with 1-2 inches of soil. In several weeks, they'll start to push out of the ground with little buds.

First Potato plant leaves

Step 4: As the plants grow, you can level out the soil. Once potato plants get to be 5-6" tall, you can begin to mound up the soil at the base of each plant, to give your potatoes more space to grow!

Good luck with your potato growing! :)

Mature potato plant- pretty, right?