What's Up Wednesday!

Lots in bloom in the garden this week! All of my plantings for the Fall are really starting to grow- carrots, onions, broccoli, swiss chard, prize choy, lettuce, and sugar snaps. The tomatoes are starting to produce a bit less, so I thinned out the dried and dead stalks to try to make some space for new growth. Here are some pictures of what's up this week:

My one lone sunflower is blooming!

The fall broccoli is looking healthy and getting taller every day

I think it's about time to pick this cantaloupe!

I transplanted some of the "walkers" from the Egyptian walking onions I got this spring.

They are now popping up everywhere in the designated "fall section" of the garden

that will later be covered with a quick hoop. 

 Made and canned some cucumber pickles this past weekend!

Used the Dill Pickle recipe in the Freshly Packed Pickled Foods section of the

Blue Book of Preserving. It's a new recipe for me- we'll see how they turn out!

What's up in your Garden this week?

What's Up Wednesday

Laundry is up (literally)! I only recently discovered the joy that is line-dried laundry.
For me it falls into that 'retro and awesome' category, along with canning and apron-wearing.

The tomatoes I started in the spring that weren't doing well are now finally starting to ripen-

I guess I'll have a sort of staggered tomato season!

 My one lone sunflower this year, getting ready to bloom!

 Prize Choy! A new addition to the garden for Fall.

 'Parade' Bunching onions, and pumpkin plants in the background

 The canned goods shelf is starting to fill up!

Apricots, Blueberry jam, Raspberry jam, Corn, & Green beans!

Tell me- What's Up in your Garden this Week?

Sunflowers

This was a satisfying weekend. A weekend full of friends, family, true relaxing, and some gardening. I needed a weekend like this. Here's the highlights:

• 
  
  I checked on my little lettuces and they seem to be doing well. I'm kind of flying by the seat of my pants here, and I'm not sure how much light or water they need but I've been trying to find more specifics and in the mean time, they've been getting about 12-14 hours of florescent lighting a day.
• 
  
  I installed my second grow light- woohoo! I don't think I'll start anything else inside until the late Winter or early Spring, but I just couldn't wait to experiment and get things set up!
• 
  
  My sunflowers bloomed! See above! They are pretty and graceful and I'm still surprised that they grew from seed to this in one season! I absolutley love sunflowers.
• 
  
  I saw a very depressing and thought-provoking movie called Countdown to Zero. It's about Nuclear Proliferation and it kind of made me want to build a bomb shelter in my backyard.
• 
  
  Since I'm not even sure how to talk about that whole subject with out depressing myself, I will simply say this- write to your congress person and tell them that they need to do their part to safely get rid of nuclear wepaons and safeguards to make building and selling nuclear weapons harder.

Anyway.. here are pics of my new improvements and my baby lettuces.

Here they are close up :)